FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific

News and Press Releases

While mud crab farming based on collection from the wild has probably taken place for hundreds of years, farming of mud crabs is a relatively recent innovation, with most research and development taking place over the last few decades. A recent FAO publication showcases innovations on mud crab farming from researchers and farmers in key nations in the Asia-Pacific region where significant industry development and extension of technology have occurred...
Mobile phones and IT as catalysts for sustainable rural livelihoods
An FAO regional workshop in Thailand, 3 and 4 April 2012
28.03.2012 Bangkok
Mobile phones and IT as catalysts for sustainable rural livelihoods
Home to more than 60 percent of the world’s population, the Asia-Pacific region has about 65 percent of the world’s poor. In most of the countries, rural livelihoods could be improved by providing access to the right information at the right time by using mobile phone technologies. Mobile-based information services have been tried in many countries to deliver information services to agrarian communities. More people than ever before have access to mobile phones and many...
Thailand and FAO agree on joint 5-year cooperation
Low productivity and climate change at the centre
28.03.2012 Bangkok
Today the Thai minister for agriculture and cooperatives and FAO signed a country programming framework for mutual cooperation and partnership to redress inequity and inclusive growth. Despite fast economic development over the past 50 years, Thailand faces serious socio-economic imbalances and uneven income and wealth distribution, which put the rural and agricultural segments of its society at a disadvantage. "For agriculture as a whole, farmers have been better off in terms of...
Bangladesh is a learning ground for other nations: DG FAO
The FAO Director-General, José Graziano da Silva, visitedBangladesh from 18 to 20 March, in his first official visit to an Asian country. The Director-General met the Prime Minister Madam Sheikh Hasina and reassured her ofFAO’s increased support to Bangladesh, especially in achieving comprehensive food security,improving nutrition and food safety, and combating avian influenza. Graziano da Silva also met the Foreign Minister, Finance Minister, Agriculture Minister, andFood and Disaster Management Minister, and also...
FAO chief calls for stronger agricultural production, more fairness in food systems
Vowing to take a new approach to ending hunger in the face of soaring food prices and scarcer resources, the Director-General of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) called for sustainable increases in agricultural production and fairer and more inclusive food and agricultural systems, during a regional conference in Hanoi on Thursday. Food prices, already persistently high and volatile, are forecast to rise even higher, resulting...
Policy makers meeting this week in Hanoi began debating Tuesday a paradigm shift to producing food that they believe can prevent a looming crisis that could cripple the region’s development and the turn the Asian Century into an era of hunger and undernourishment. “We have to move beyond the Green Revolution to an Evergreen Revolution, by adopting an approach called Save and Grow,” said Hiroyuki Konuma, regional assistant director-general of the...
FAO: Hunger becoming more complex in Asia and the Pacific
With food prices twice as high as a decade ago, feeding nearly 600 million people suffering from hunger and malnutrition in the Asia-Pacific region is becoming more difficult, according to the regional representative of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, which opened a major regional conference in Hanoi today. “Eradicating hunger has become more complex and challenging in this region,’’ Hiroyuki Konuma, Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative of...
The relationship between rising and volatile food prices, food insecurity and hunger, and diminishing natural resources will be the focus of agriculture ministers, senior officials and civil society representatives from 40 countries in the Asia-Pacific region at a major conference in Hanoi next week organized by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The world food price index re-bounded with one percent last month, its first increase in...
This morning, on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, His Excellency the Secretary of State of Agriculture and Arboriculture of Timor-Leste, Eng. Marcos da Cruz and Mr. Man Ho So, Deputy Regional Representative, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and FAO Representative to Timor-Leste, inaugurated the new FAO Representation Office in Timor-Leste at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) in Comoro, Dili. As the youngest Asia’s...
Viet Nam
Dr. Hoang Van Nam, Director General of Viet Nam's Department of Animal Health welcomed more than 20 participants to EAHMI's second Tripartite Review Meeting in Ha Noi on 25 February 2012, including project staff and national representatives from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Viet Nam, as well as the project's implementation agency, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, and the donor, the Government of Italy. Messages...