In recent years, Armenia has gone through severe structural changes that have affected the forest...
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
Uzbekistan is more a land of deserts and mountains than of rich, black soil. Still, with a commitment to make the most of its limited agricultural resources, and with help from partners and the international community, the country has been making considerable progress.
Now, building on their long-standing cooperation, FAO and Uzbekistan have signed a Country Programming Framework document giving impetus and further guidance to their partnership through 2022.
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan both have extensive agriculture systems, and for each, livestock has long been central. In both countries, though, agriculture sector emissions have been increasing over the past 15 years. In Kyrgyzstan, 95 percent of that increase has been due to a rise in livestock numbers, while in Kazakhstan, livestock emissions have increased by around 50 percent.
Ukraine has been working on priorities for dealing with land consolidation, and FAO, through a project finishing this year, has used international good practice to help with that.
This week in Ukraine, FAO informed the Ministry for Agrarian Policy and Food and the State Service for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre (State Geo Cadastre) on the results of its review of the updated draft law on land consolidation, which was prepared by State Geo Cadastre based on FAO’s 2017 assessment of Ukraine’s legal framework.