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FAO’s Statistical Pocketbook complements the Statistical Yearbook, by providing, in an easy and simple way, quick access to top-level numbers, charts and maps on many dimensions of food and agriculture – from the characteristics of the sector to production, prices and trade, as well as food security and nutrition and environmental aspects. See Statistical Yearbook 2020 

This publication offers a synthesis of the major factors at play in the global food and agricultural landscape. Statistics are presented in four thematic chapters, covering the economic importance of agricultural activities, inputs, outputs and factors of production, their implications for food security and nutrition and their impacts on the environment. The Yearbook is meant to constitute a primary tool for policy makers, researchers and analysts, as well as the general public interested in the past, present and future path of food and agriculture. See here the Statistical Pockebook

The idea that resilience plays a role in mitigating the effects of disaster and climate change is becoming widespread across the development community. As a result, efforts have been made to translate the concept of resilience into actionable metrics to better understand it. In this paper, we use panel micro-data from coffee farmers in Guatemala severely affected by a widespread attack of Hemileia Vastatrix (leaf rust). This covariate shock provides a unique opportunity to a) check if greater resilience capacity is associated with better reaction to exogenous shock; and b) explore the key drivers of response mechanisms. Ultimately, this paper [...]

Trade liberalization has long been advocated as a means to foster growth and welfare. In developing countries, the expansion of global value chain (GVC) participation of agriculture and food sectors could support transformation from a subsistence-oriented and farm-centered system to a commercialized, productive and off-farm centered one.While empirical evidence examining the linkages between GVC participation and economic performance in the agricultural sector has traditionally relied on case studies at the product level, the availability of new aggregate data on trade in value added, now provides an unprecedented opportunity to carry out a global empirical assessment of the linkages.The present paper [...]

Farmer participation in agricultural markets is of major importance for rural economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries. This paper discusses market failures and constraints in agriculture in low-income countries, focusing on how these failures and constraints affect small farmers, input sellers and output buyers. It then explores innovative models implemented to address these challenges, including: out- grower schemes; input bundling programmes; decommodification through quality product differentiation; information and communication technologies; distributed ledger technologies; and direct purchasing models. Finally, the paper reviews the existing evidence surrounding these innovative approaches and highlights evidentiary gaps. See here The State of Agricultural Commodity [...]

Digital technologies have a high potential to enable further development of the agricultural sector, significantly reshape food value chains (FVCs), and greatly contribute towards more productive, resilient and transparent food systems. This paper provides a non-technical overview of digital technologies that have a high potential to revolutionize the agriculture and food industry, and contribute towards inclusion of small farmers into FVCs. The particular focus is on digital platforms providing e-commerce services and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), such as blockchain, as they mutually enable more efficient and more inclusive local and global agricultural markets by tackling their contribution to reducing information asymmetries, [...]

The background for conducting country studies on the challenges, needs and constraints of smallholders and family farms in seven countries has been a wish to further strengthen the Regional Initiative and develop the initiative towards a stronger programmatic approach at both the regional and country levels. To provide support to smallholders and family farms, there has been a need to develop a better understanding and knowledge platform of the main challenges, needs and constraints of smallholders and family farms in the specific country context. Even though many of the challenges are the same throughout the region, there are still significant [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic has more than ever shown the changing risk environment, as well as the systemic and overlaying nature of risks that affect and threaten all sectors. It has reinforced the call for multi-sectoral, multi-hazard and preventive and anticipatory approaches that consistently integrate disaster, climate and crisis risk management for strengthening the resilience of people, their agricultural livelihoods and the ecosystems they depend on in a sustainable manner. In her opinion paper, FAO Natural Resources Officer Wirya Khim discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the agriculture and food systems through a disaster risk reduction lens and offers some key [...]

North Macedonia’s ambition to join the European Union (EU) makes it necessary to reform the agricultural sector, such that it aligns with the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This involves the “decoupling” of farm subsidies, i.e. a shift to payments that are not linked to area and production levels of specific commodities, livestock numbers, and input use. The decoupling of direct payments has significant impacts on production decisions, prices and therefore on farmer’s income. The study underlying this policy brief identifies five possible scenarios for North Macedonia to align their direct payment scheme with EU regulations and analyses the impact [...]

The members of the International Partnership for Cooperation on Child Labour in Agriculture (IPCCLA), namely FAO, ILO, IFAD, IUF, IFPRI has released a joint statement on the occasion of the World Day Against Child Labour 2020, focusing on the Impact of COVID-19 on child labour in agriculture. The statement reflects on the potential impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the prevalence of child labour in agriculture and the potentially lasting deleterious effects on child growth and development, urging for a call for immediate nationally and internationally coordinated responses. Click here for more publications on COVID19