From as early as I can remember, my grandparents inspired me with their love for gardening and growing food. They were enthusiastic, knowledgeable and instinctively knew how to grow vegetables and fruit. As a young child I would spend many days in the home garden with them, helping to weed...

The farmer field schools (FFS) approach was developed by FAO and its partners more than 25 years ago as an alternative to the dominant extension method, which did not work in situations with more complex and unexpected problems, such as pesticide-induced pest outbreaks.In a typical FFS a group of 20-25...

This report presents an overview of how data collected under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and in particular due to the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) (Sagris et al., 2013). This system can contribute to a better detection of LD drivers. LD is an umbrella term considering soil threats...

Estimating emissions and removals from forest degradation is important, though challenging, for many countries. Where forest degradation is a major source of emissions, governments want to cover it when reporting on their mitigation efforts. However, estimating emissions from forest degradation is hard. There are major challenges to accurately estimating emissions from...

Agroecology is a body of knowledge, practices and political movements that aims to support transformation of food and agricultural systems to long-term social and environmental sustainability. African farmers face multiple challenges, and agroecology has been proposed as contributing to solutions and hence is being supported and promoted on the continent....

Many essential oils have antibacterial or anti-inflammatory properties. With the help of an advisor, dairy farmers can test alternative mastitis treatments with essential oils following a common protocol established by RELACS.

Agricultural & Rural Convention ARC2020 Newsletter Summer 2023. This summer, find the time to visit a farm, to chat with farmers, to break bread together. And if you are a farmer reading this, and you can find the time  - reach out to people driven by environmental campaigning passion. Bring them to...

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented shock to capture fisheries and aquaculture sectors. This scoping review of 670 articles explored the spatial, temporal, and thematic coverage of this event. The search period was January 1, 2020 to February 7, 2022. Articles were mainly peer-reviewed journals (88%) with the remainder from...

Le projet ARENA « Appui à la Résilience Economique, Nutritionnelle et Alimentaire des familles ruralesvulnérables » a démarré en octobre 2020, pour une durée de 30 mois, grâce à un financement de 400 000€, attribué par l’Agence Française de Développement (AFD) dans le cadre de l’Initiative « Santé enCommun »,...

Le CIRAD et ses partenaires, dans le cadre de l’Initiative pour l’intensification écologique de la banane plantain en Afrique (IPA), ont saisi l’occasion de la 6ème édition du Salon de l’Agriculture et des Ressources Animale (SARA 2023) à Abidjan, en Côte d’Ivoire, pour organiser une conférence-débat sur le thème :...

A survey on the diversity of bees and wild pollinators and the status of the bee industry was conducted in the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam. The data were made available to the respective National Coordinators (NC) for the Management of Animal Genetic Resources and the Food and Agriculture Organization...

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), through its Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD), kicked off a two-week training course on animal quarantine management in Sing District, a border area between Lao People’s Democratic Republic and China. The training course aimed to accelerate safer cattle...

The abandonment of agricultural land in North Macedonia is a pressing concern, with approximately 32 percent of arable agricultural land in the country having been abandoned – a much higher rate than in most other European countries. Land abandonment has significant implications for North Macedonia, including environmental degradation and lost opportunities...

Women are working to transform fisheries and aquaculture in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. International Women’s Day 2023 is an opportunity to reflect on the contribution of women to the sector, while recognizing that more still needs to be done to acknowledge and advance their key role in the value chain. FAO...

It was the monsoon of 2019 when Stefan and I set forth on our agrobiodiversity hunt into the dense forest and other food production systems of Umsawwar community in Meghalaya. Kong Therisa Nongrum and Kong Angela Nongrum, who are custodian farmers from the community, volunteered to lead us on this...

Wetland ecosystems play key roles in global biogeochemical cycling, but their spatial extent and connectivity is often not well known. Here, we detect the spatial coverage and type of wetlands at 10 m resolution across southern Nigeria (total area: 147,094 km2), thought to be one of the most wetland-rich areas of...

The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030 (hereafter “UN Decade”) recognizes the critical need to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of the world’s ecosystems. Effective restoration of degraded ecosystems is of paramount importance for recovering biodiversity, ecosystem health and integrity, ecosystem goods and services, climate-change mitigation and human...

Agroecology represents an unparalleled opportunity to address biodiversity loss while providing simultaneous, multiple co-benefits to climate adaptation, food security, water conservation, ecosystem resilience, sustainable livelihoods and human rights. As substantiated by scientific evidence, agroecology addresses many of the direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss. Given that monoculture and industrial...

El Plan de acción mundial, diseñado en torno a siete pilares de trabajo que se refuerzan mutuamente, recomienda una serie de medidas interconectadas que abarcan desde la escala local hasta la mundial. Este video describe el pilar 5 del Plan de acción mundial.

OGA webinar with Roger Hitchings, Tim Deane, and Phil Sumption on converting land to organic horticulture. Phil Sumption introduced the webinar with an overview of relevant findings from the Defra-funded Conversion to Organic Field Vegetable Production project, and the latest in conversion payments. Roger's talk focused on the kind of...