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South-South Cooperation (SSC) is the mutual sharing and exchange of development solutions between developing countries, including knowledge, experiences and good practices, policies, technology, and resources.The project in Uganda (Phases I and II) under the FAO-China SSC is among the Programme’s longest and most successful collaborations. Here, you can read the personal stories of some of the project participants, beneficiaries, and stakeholders. Their stories highlight the personal and community-level effects that the project has created. Their stories will also demonstrate the successes and positive impact of the project in their personal and professional lives while bringing to light the persistent challenges [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified development challenges across Europe and Central Asia, generating ever more demand for rapid, accessible and reliable data to guide decision-making. The evolving pandemic and associated economic crisis are impacting food security and jeopardizing countries’ progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Identifying and evaluating the multi-faceted impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the food security situation requires real-time, quality information that enables the measurement of changes in people’s access to food and an assessment of the underlying causes.See the full list of policy briefs related to COVID-19.

This report presents and reflects on the opportunities that new technological developments related to automation and precision agriculture (e.g. robotics) can offer to agriculture in developing countries. These technologies are mainly targeted to support farmers that struggle with the cost of labour when harvesting crops and to tackle the declining availability of manpower for general cropping operations. This report also explores the possible applications of agricultural technology, presents the current trends and discusses some of the principle challenges to successful adoption for sustainable agricultural mechanization in developing countries.

By analyzing agri-food value chains, policy makers and researchers are able to better understand how economic, social and environmental dimensions are intertwined. This is an important step, which allows for identification of areas for potential improvement along an agri-food value chain. EX-ACT Value Chain (EX-ACT VC) is derived from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) EX-Ante Carbon-balance Tool (EX-ACT). The tool is based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) methodology to account for GHG emissions of primary agricultural production, augmented with methodologies from peer reviewed literature to cover the remaining sectors and actors in [...]

Chile has a native forest that constitutes 18 percent of its continental surface area and over 60 million hectares of protected areas. The country is considered a global hotspot of conservation priority due to its endemism and a high degree of habitat loss. The loss of ecosystems could increase if economic development does not progressively adopt sustainability standards that create less of an impact on biodiversity. From August 2015 to May 2020, FAO implemented the project in order "to develop and implement an integrated monitoring and assessment system on carbon stocks and biodiversity in forest ecosystems (SIMEF) supporting the National [...]

This study, the third of its type published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), adds further evidence that in mountain regions of developing countries, food insecurity, social isolation, environmental degradation, exposure to the risk of disasters and to the impacts of climate change, and limited access to basic services, especially in rural areas, are still prevalent and, under some circumstances, increasing. It also shows the technical challenges for producing more comprehensive and representative assessments based on scientific data, and providing a deeper understanding of the underlying factors of vulnerability of mountain people. Mountains cover 39 million [...]

This Practical Handbook is directed to Members of Parliament and Parliamentary Advisors, who are considered “change agents”. It provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of the role that Parliamentarians can play in the creation of reliable, coherent, and transparent “enabling environments” in the range of areas related to investment in agriculture and food systems.The Handbook does so, not through a catalog of prescriptions, but through guidance notes, examples of good practices, and very practical indications. It does not aim to provide a blueprint to be implemented by each Parliament but rather it sets out key stages of processes and mechanisms [...]

Following the impact of COVID 19 on the forest sector, the Advisory Committee on Sustainable Forest-based Industries (ACSFI) and its members call upon FAO, the private sector and other stakeholders to jointly strengthen their engagement on a statement.In the statement, the ACSFI advises those developing strategies to build back better after the COVID-19 crisis that sustainable forest-based industries provide a range of benefits. These include forest products, sustainable livelihoods, green jobs, support to sustainable food systems through the production of wood energy and long-term management of forest resources, as well as tangible contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals and the [...]

There is increasing attention to the importance of biodiversity for food security and nutrition, especially above-ground biodiversity such as plants and animals. However, less attention is being paid to the biodiversity beneath our feet, soil biodiversity, which drives many processes that produce food or purify soil and water. This report is the result of an inclusive process involving more than 300 scientists from around the world under the auspices of the FAO’s Global Soil Partnership and its Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative, and the European Commission. It presents concisely the state [...]

There is increasing attention on the importance of biodiversity for food security and nutrition, especially above-ground biodiversity such as plants and animals. However, less attention is being paid to the biodiversity beneath our feet, soil biodiversity, which drives many processes that produce food or purify soil and water. This summary for policy makers presents the key findings of the main report and is the result of an inclusive process involving more than 300 scientists from around the world under the auspices of the FAO’s Global Soil Partnership and its Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Global [...]