That Africa has become a net importer of food and of agricultural products, despite its vast agricultural potential, is puzzling. Using data mainly for the period 1960-2007, this report seeks to explain Africa’s food-trade deficit since the mid-1970s. The core finding is that population growth, low...
Entomophagy is the consumption of insects by humans. Entomophagy is practised in many countries around the world but predominantly in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Insects supplement the diets of approximately 2 billion people and have always been a part of human diets. However, it is...
Innovation in family farming More than 500 million family farms manage the majority of the world's agricultural land and produce most of the world's food . We need family farms to ensure global food security, to care for and protect the natural environment and to end poverty, undernourishment and...
The Right to Food: Past commitment, current obligation, further action for the future – A Ten-Year Retrospective on the Right to Food Guidelines analyzes some of the main issues experienced while implementing the Right to Food Guidelines over the past decade and looks to possible avenues for making...
Enhancing the socioeconomic benefits from forests Across the world, forests, trees on farms, and agroforestry systems play a crucial role in the livelihoods of rural people by providing employment, energy, nutritious foods and a wide range of other goods and ecosystem services. They have tremendous...
On 7 August 2014 Russia announced a ban on food imports from Western countries which, in an earlier move, had imposed sanctions on Russian business interests in connection with the crisis in eastern Ukraine. The prohibition was effective immediately, and will stay in place for one year, blocking all...
Recent increases in the levels and volatility of food prices have created significant challenges to efforts to reduce levels of food insecurity both at national and household levels. As a result, significant political attention has been given to the promotion of improvements in food staples...
The Food Security Commitment and Capacity Profile methodology There is a global consensus that strong political commitment by Governments and development partners is key to the elimination of hunger and malnutrition. It is against this background that FAO has developed a methodology to assess and...
Strengthening the enabling environment for food security and nutrition The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014 presents updated estimates of undernourishment and progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and World Food Summit (WFS) hunger targets. A stock-taking of where we stand...
This article summarizes the outcomes of an FSN Forum online discussion on Street Foods (September/October 2011). The discussion was part of a study carried out by FAO’s Regional Office for Africa on possible incentives to improve the safety, quality, and nutritional value of street foods.