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Chemical production, use and disposal will continue to increase worldwide; assessments and forecasts predict that global chemical sales will grow by about 3 percent per year until 2050, the major part of which will take place in Asia. South-East Asian countries in particular have shown strong industrial growth in agriculture during the last two decades. Many countries in Southeast Asia lack the capacity to handle chemicals management issues and are in great need to develop institutions, legislation, knowledge and general awareness. The countries face many challenges in the area of chemicals management, in particular pesticide governance. The intensive and often [...]

The vast majority of the world’s food crops are annuals that are grown from seed sown at the start of each production season. The quality of that seed is a key determinant of production. Farmers cannot easily observe the quality or identity of seed at the point of sale, which creates a risk on the part of the farmer. With the development of the commercial seed trade and the increasing number of varieties during the 20th century it became important to reduce this risk. This led to the formulation of laws and regulations intended to protect farmers and increase agricultural [...]

The main objective of this report is to provide a regional synthesis of the climate change mitigation and adaptation commitments in the agriculture and land use sectors set forth in the Nationally Determined Contributions of countries in the Caribbean and to identify opportunities for enhancing mitigation and adaptation ambitions, capturing their synergies and leveraging climate finance and international support options in the region. It aims to guide FAO – and policy makers and practitioners in the region – committed to providing the country support required for accelerating progress on and scaling up NDCs in the agriculture and land use sectors, [...]

The Food Price Monitoring and Analysis (FPMA) Tool was developed in the wake of the international food price crisis of 2007 and 2008 for dissemination and analysis of domestic and international commodity price data collated by Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS). The FPMA Tool provides easy access to data allowing users to quickly browse and analyse trends, serving as a basis for GIEWS analysis, including the FPMA monthly report and website. GIEWS maintains a global version of the tool, which, as of May 2024, included about 2,000 series of consumer food prices in over 120 countries and over [...]

This course analyses climate change impacts on agriculture, food security and food systems and provides an overview of the main climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in agriculture. It also introduces the Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) approach and describes the 5-step process to implement it.  Duration: Approximately 1.5 hours Publication Date: November 2018 AudienceThis course addresses the subject matter from a technical perspective, but is written for the general public. Individuals who would especially benefit from taking the course include: Policy makers Development practitioners and programme managers Sectoral specialists and academics Trainers and extension agents ContentThe course consists of 4 lessons, ranging from approximately 15 to 25 minutes duration each: Lesson 1 [...]

Unhealthy diets now pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than unsafe sex, alcohol, and drug and tobacco use combined. They are at the root of the global obesity and diet-related non-communicable disease (NCD) pandemic. The ways of food production that lead to these unhealthy diets also pose a major threat to climate stability and ecosystem resilience, and constitute the most important driver of environmental degradation and natural resources depletion.In the short term, there is little that we can do to curb the global demand for food and other products that depend on biological resources. Demand will continue to [...]

The content of this guide is twofold: to describe the most important weather and agroclimatic products that are available by the National Meteorological Service (NMS) and to identify the most important needs of farmers concerning climate information. Special consideration will be given to the local knowledge used by rural farmers, too often neglected, but a key factor to their ability to cope with climate variability and change.An additional objective of this guide is to improve communication among the NMS staff, in particular, meteorologists and agrometeorologists and to encourage Agro-Pastoral Field School (APFS) trainers and facilitators to be more aware of [...]

Nigeria's society and the economy will grow swiftly and transform extensively in the next three decades. Along this transformative process, the demand for animal-source food will exponentially increase and livestock is likely to become the most important sector of agriculture.This document is the executive summary and it condenses the main reflections of a broader report about the feasible future scenarios for livestock in the country and how to be prepared to ensure sustainable livestock production.

This brief provides an overview of the potential of distributed ledger technologies to facilitate transactions in agricultural supply chains through enhanced traceability, efficiency, transparency and accountability.

This policy brief is based on the FAO (2018) report “Policy coherence for agricultural transformation in African least developed countries: Aligning agriculture and trade policymaking processes”. The report presents the results of the Multi-partner Programme Support Mechanism (FMM) Project on Trade related capacity development for food security and nutrition in Eastern and Southern Africa, implemented by FAO and focusing on four least developed countries in Africa: Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia.