Producing enough food and income remain major challenges for Indonesians affected by the tsunami and earthquakes of 2004 and 2005. An FAO project funded by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department has helped families on the island of Nias get back to work, with a combination of new supplies and technical training.

Each new bird flu death in Indonesia is an opportunity for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus to mutate into a form that can pass easily from person to person. That could result in a human pandemic killing millions of people in a matter of months. The Food and Agriculture Organization is taking the best insurance against this by working to contain the disease at its origin - on the farm.

Civil war and continued insecurity in the Democratic Republic of Congo is leading to widespread hunger. Mass displacement of people from rural areas to the cities has lead to plummeting agricultural production and soaring levels of malnutrition. The situation is worst in the east of the country where numerous guerrilla groups continue to drive people off their land into the cities where there is no work and not enough food. The desperate situation needs addressing.

The exchange of information is a powerful weapon in the fight against locusts; workshops in 10 West African countries have trained more than 600 agricultural experts to control the threat of another desert locust invasion, with a special focus on human health and the protection of the environment.

Years of conflict have destroyed traditional farming systems in Sudan, the largest country on the African continent. But FAO agricultural rehabilitation projects throughout the country are providing the Sudanese people with the means to grow their own food.

Decades of conflict have left Angola in ruins, its people destitute, traumatized and malnourished. When the peace agreement was signed in April 2002, FAO emergency projects were set up to distribute farming kits to hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country.

An outbreak of locusts threatens wheat-growing areas in Northern Afghanistan, an area known as the bread-basket of the war-torn country. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is coordinating efforts to combat this major outbreak, probably the worst to hit Afghanistan in the last 30 years.