UN Food and Agriculture Organization - FAO Newsroom

After a poor rainy season, parts of southern Somalia are now being hit by severe bouts of floods, further aggravating the already alarming food security situation in the Horn of Africa nation, experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) have warned.

Evo Morales Ayma, current chairman of the Group of 77 and President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, urged an expansive reading of state’s duties to guarantee food, land and access to water for all during a speech during a dialogue on nutrition ahead of ICN2.

Widespread looting and insecurity in the Central African Republic have taken a heavy toll on crops, livestock and fishing.

The so-called Oriental, Philippine, Invasive and Asian Papaya fruit flies, the study shows, all belong to the same biological species, Bactrocera dorsalis, which is causing incalculable damage to horticultural industries and food security across Asia, Africa, the Pacific and parts of South America.

How can governments, farmers orgenisations and the private sector seize current global momentum and galvanize concrete action in support of family farmers beyond 2014? This is the central question at the two-day Global Dialogue on Family Farming (GDFF), opened at FAO headquarters today.

he Global Community of Practice on Food Loss Reduction aims to become a global reference point that facilitates the sharing of information and linkages between stakeholders including public entities, civil society and the private sector.

"Hidden hunger" featured prominently at a BRICS- (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) led public discussion on nutrition held at FAO on Wednesday, ahead of the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) scheduled to take place in November 2014.

22 October 2014, Brussels/Rome - The European Union (EU) and FAO in collaboration with the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) have launched a €41 million, 4.5-year programme to bolster sustainable land management and restore drylands and degraded lands in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

The FAO and National Geographic partnership envisages cooperation, a regular dialogue and access to FAO expertise, knowledge exchange, content-sharing, cross promotion, joint activities and participation at events and on publishing platforms.

Nine out of 10 of the world’s 570 million farms are managed by a family, making the family farm a crucial agent of change in pursuing sustainable food security and eradicating hunger in the future, according to a new U.N. report released today. Family farms produce about 80 percent of the world’s food. Their prevalence and output mean they “are vital to the solution of the hunger problem” afflicting more than 800 million people, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva wrote in the introduction to FAO’s new State of Food and Agriculture 2014 report.

While substantial progress has been made in the fight against hunger in recent years, more than 800 million people remain hungry and efforts need to be increased to reach the global target of cutting the percentage of hungry people in half by 2015, said FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva at the annual World Food Day.

Governments from around the world today approved a landmark set of principles meant to guide investment in agriculture and food systems around the world, aimed at assuring that cross-border and corporate investment flows lead to improved food security and sustainability and respect the rights of farm and food workers.

China has announced a $50 million donation to FAO to support the Organization's program of "South-South cooperation" to improve food security and promote sustainable agricultural development over the next five years.

Marking the first in a series of three public discussions leading up to the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) in November, Nancy Stetson, US Special Representative for Global Food Security, stressed the importance of partnerships at a US-led Dialogue on Nutrition.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation, the corporate charity of the world's biggest news and information provider, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today launched a comprehensive global news section dedicated to food issues.

The 41st session (CFS 41) the Committee is expected to adopt a set of principles for responsible investment in agriculture and food systems that have been in development for the past two years. During CFS 41, one policy roundtables will focus on the issue of food losses and waste while the other deals with the increasingly critical contribution made by fish to food security and to healthy diets.

Reaching an important milestone in the fight against global malnutrition, countries today agreed on policies aimed at ensuring that people around the world have access to healthier diets.Representatives of FAO and World Health Organization (WHO) member countries reached consensus on a political Declaration and a voluntary Framework for Action including more than 50 recommendations.

Civil society plays a crucial role helping building consensus, giving a voice to the hungry, representing society’s diversity and being a part of international decision-making processes, FAO Director-General told civil society representatives today at the Organization’s headquarters, where they began the annual forum of the International Civil Society Mechanism, a vehicle for non-state actors to participate in policy making.

FAO has launched free software tools that it hopes will improve the way many developing nations monitor the state of their forests to tackle deforestation and climate change.

Food markets are more stable and prices for most agricultural commodities are sharply lower than they have been in recent years, according to the latest edition of FAO's biannual Food Outlook report and a new update to the Organization's Food Price Index.