News

On Wednesday, 24 June 2020, the Flexible Multi-Partner Mechanism held its first virtual annual FMM Resource Partner Consultation. All FMM Resource Partners were represented at the meeting, including: Belgium, Flanders, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.  The Consultation meeting was kick-started with opening remarks by Mr Alexander Jones

23 July 2020 - The FAO-China South-South-Cooperation (SSC) Programme jointly with the FAO Global Action for Fall Armyworm (FAW) control and in close collaboration with FAO’s Office of Emergency and Resilience (OER) hosted last week the Programme’s first online joint formulation technical meeting. In view of the challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic, the Programme is adapting and innovating its work modalities, guided by its three core values: inspiration, inclusion, and innovation. Representatives of four (4) host countries, namely, China, Ghana, Kenya, and Myanmar, and the Southern partner, China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA),...

With the aim to build capacities for research and development to achieve food security and nutrition, the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 15 July, 2020 to promote and disseminate best practices and innovations on sustainable agriculture, food safety and healthy diets.  Founded in 1976 by Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, UAEU is a public institution delivering undergraduate and graduate programmes at very high levels with the objective to promote knowledge creation, dissemination and...

FAO unveiled today its new comprehensive COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme, aimed at preventing a global food emergency during and after the COVID-19 pandemic while working on medium to long-term development response for food security and nutrition. The agency is calling for $1.2 billion in initial investment to support the needs of the new programme.

Rome/Florence – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and University of Florence (UNIFI) have agreed to partner in order to strengthen knowledge and expertise exchanges, capacity development and joint research in the areas of food security and nutrition, rural poverty reduction and sustainable agri-food systems.UNIFI is one of the largest public higher education and research institutions in Italy. The university conducts research and offers degrees in a number of areas that are closely aligned to FAO’s mandate, such as management of natural resources, tropical rural development, development economics and local systems, traditional landscapes and...

The weeks following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease have been filled with grave challenges and uncertainty. As the effects of border closures and movement restrictions become more visible in some countries and are slowly lessening in others, attention must be drawn to a vital component of global health that is under threat of crisis: our food systems. As the Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Maximo Torero, said, “We fully agree with governments that first has to be health and the measures they are taking have to...

As the world copes with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing urgency to prevent the current health crisis from becoming a food crisis. Measures taken to contain and mitigate the coronavirus have affected people’s lives and livelihoods and have disrupted markets, food supply chains and global trade. In the agriculture sector, reduced capacity to produce, sell and distribute food has affected food availability in local markets, with consequent further impacts on food and nutrition security. The pandemic has created a new set of challenges for food and agriculture, and adequately addressing these will require...

Bogotá, 6 de julio de 2020 - La cultura ancestral del cultivo de algodón nativo en Colombia empezó a escribir una nueva historia. Desde la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, municipio de Cienaga, departamento del Magdalena, en la microcuenca del Río Frio, región de tradición cafetera, fueron cosechados los primeros 1.230 kilos de algodón orgánico en rama, producidos sin uso de químicos, en una estación experimental de la Fundación Prosierra. “Esta es la primera paca comercial de algodón nativo no transgénico en Colombia”, comen

Rome - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has signed a new partnership agreement with Rabobank, a Dutch cooperative bank, with the intention of helping targeted rural communities benefit from more inclusive, sustainable food systems. It also envisages jointly exploring the use of innovative financial instruments to bridge financing gaps in emerging markets and to promote sustainability in food systems investments. FAO and Rabobank will work with key food and agriculture sectors on a series of projects designed to help lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, improve land and water use, and empower smallholder farmers to address the...

Water is a scarce natural resource consumed not only by humans, but much more by agriculture. The Isfara river in north Tajikistan, shared with Kyrgyzstan, has been the centre of conflicts over water for many years until five United Nations Agencies stepped in to foster cooperation through fair and sustainable water management under the framework of the South-South Cooperation.