Climate change adaptation and mitigation, rapid urbanization, increasing natural disasters, migration issues and unresolved humanitarian...
Regional Initiatives
As economic reforms in the 1990s shifted land ownership into the hands of private smallholders, family farmers became the predominant source of agricultural production in the region. To address the absence of well-developed institutional support, FAO is implementing a Regional Initiative on Empowering Smallholders and Family Farms for Improved Rural Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction.
While international trade policy is usually implemented at the border, adherence to food safety and quality standards concerns national food safety systems as well as food safety and quality control at the enterprise level. This means that a supportive policy environment for modern agrifood trade encompasses not only border policies, but also policies and institutions at the national and enterprise level.
The impact of climate change can already be felt on food production systems in the region, posing considerable challenges for agricultural production and food security. FAO is helping countries to manage their natural resources sustainably, while also coping with climate change and reducing the risk of disasters affecting agriculture, forestry and fisheries.
Stories from the field
Live animal movement is a major cause of the introduction or dissemination of livestock and wildlife infectious diseases, whether through local and international trade-related transportation or through traditional herd movement. Understanding animal movement can greatly assist veterinary services in controlling the spread of infectious diseases.
An FAO pilot project conducted in the Khotont soum (district) of the Arkhangai Province of Mongolia aims at testing the feasibility of using GPS tracking technology in the nomadic Mongolian context.
Two of her sons were kidnapped. Schools were closed. Syria was in the throes of conflict, and there wasn’t much of a future there for Rasha Kamar and her family.
She and her husband sold their house in Syria and fled to Turkey, hoping to start again.
Because every facet of agricultural activity depends on the weather, unpredictable weather patterns caused by climate change and other meteorological phenomena have increased the need for precise weather data.