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This brochure presents FAO ’s work on agricultural innovation. FAO advocates a shift from interventions focusing on single components of agricultural innovation towards a system-approach aimed at strengthening institutions and stakeholders’ networks that better respond to the needs of smallholder farmers. Agricultural innovation is the process whereby individuals or organizations bring new or existing products, processes or ways of organization into use for the first time in a specific context in order to increase effectiveness, competitiveness, resilience to shocks or environmental sustainability and thereby contribute to food security and nutrition, economic development or sustainable natural resource management. Innovation is central to [...]

This Resource framework is intended as a guidance tool for stakeholders involved in programme design, implementation and monitoring of Home-Grown School Feeding Programmes and the related policy and institutional environment, including, inter alia: governments and development partners providing technical and financial assistance, as well as civil society, community based organisations and the private sector. It is a knowledge product that harmonizes the existing approaches and tools, and builds on the wealth of expertise and experience with home grown school feeding models i.e. those designed to provide children in schools with safe, diverse and nutritious food, sourced locally from smallholders, with [...]

This brochure presents FAO's sustained and consistent work towards gender equality and the empowerment of rural women, which are at the core of the Organization's efforts to end hunger, malnutrition and rural poverty. FAO recognizes the potential of rural women and men in achieving food security and improving nutrition and is committed to working with partners and strengthening its efforts to eliminate the gender inequalities that undermine the performance of the agriculture sector. Also available in Chinese, French, Spanish and Russian. 

Latin America and the Caribbean is falling short of the Sustainable Development Goal 1: Ending poverty. After two and a half decades of progress, poverty and extreme rural poverty increased by two percentage points each between 2014 and 2016. By 2017, there were an estimated 59 million poor and 27 million extreme poor in rural areas of the region. During the last 20 years, Latin America and the Caribbean has been at the forefront of global experiences in the reduction of rural poverty. The new regional context implies that the countries of the region must not only protect the progress made [...]

Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) is experience-based measures of household or individual food security. The FIES Survey Module (FIES-SM) consists of eight questions regarding people's access to adequate food, and can be easily integrated into various types of population surveys The FIES-SM questions refer to the experiences of the individual respondent or of the respondent’s household as a whole. The questions focus on self-reported food-related behaviors and experiences associated with increasing difficulties in accessing food due to resource constraints.  During the last 12 months, was there a time when, because of lack of money or other resources: You were worried you would not have [...]

After decades of progress, hunger is on the rise again. The figures from The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017 report show an increase in the absolute number of people affected by chronic hunger and a rise in the global prevalence of undernourishment. Globally, the number of chronically malnourished people is estimated to have increased to 815 million from 777 million in 2015. In 2017, four countries faced a very real threat of famine and many more saw increasing numbers of people facing severe hunger. Protecting livelihoods by providing emergency agricultural assistance from the onset of a [...]

Social protection is the set of policies and programmes aimed at preventing or protecting all people against poverty, vulnerability, and social exclusion throughout their lifecycles, particularly the most vulnerable groups. This poster will serve to demonstrate the efforts - and advancements made - in reducing rural poverty and increasing resilience through FAO strategic programmes, such as SP3 and SP5 in recent years. It aims to provide to donors, partners, and policy-makers with the information they need to gain awareness of the impacts of social protection initiatives, and to invest in social protection as a valid pathway out of poverty and [...]

Social protection is the set of policies and programmes aimed at preventing or protecting all people against poverty, vulnerability, and social exclusion throughout their lifecycles, particularly the most vulnerable groups. This poster will serve to demonstrate the efforts - and advancements made - in reducing rural poverty and increasing resilience through FAO strategic programmes, such as SP3 and SP5 in recent years. It aims to provide to donors, partners, and policy-makers with the information they need to gain awareness of the impacts of social protection initiatives, and to invest in social protection as a valid pathway out of poverty and [...]

Social protection is the set of policies and programmes aimed at preventing or protecting all people against poverty, vulnerability, and social exclusion throughout their lifecycles, particularly the most vulnerable groups. This poster will serve to demonstrate the efforts - and advancements made - in reducing rural poverty and increasing resilience through FAO strategic programmes, such as SP3 and SP5 in recent years. It aims to provide to donors, partners, and policy-makers with the information they need to gain awareness of the impacts of social protection initiatives, and to invest in social protection as a valid pathway out of poverty and [...]

This paper summarizes evidence on six perceptions associated with cash transfer programming, using eight rigorous evaluations conducted on large-scale government unconditional cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa under the Transfer Project. Specifically, it investigates if transfers: 1) induce higher spending on alcohol or tobacco; 2) are fully consumed (rather than invested); 3) create dependency (reduce participation in productive activities); 4) increase fertility; 5) lead to negative community-level economic impacts (including price distortion and inflation); and 6) are fiscally unsustainable. The paper presents evidence refuting each claim, leading to the conclusion that these perceptions—insofar as they are utilized in policy debates—undercut potential [...]