The Family Farming Knowledge Platform (FFKP) Monthly Digest showcases the latest contents uploaded in the FFKP to provide its readers with relevant and up to date information on family farming main themes such as agroecology, smallscale fisheries, pastoralism, indigenous people, and more.

We were launching a rural tourism project just as the Covid-19 pandemic startled the world. How ironic, after waiting years for funding for our local organization Nawaya, we were incapable to do basic field work. We were excited, and decided not to delay important work. As we were unable to...

Au collège d’El Maâmoura, les élèves s’initient aux joies de la permaculture, une belle façon de joindre l’utile à l’agréable. «La terre m’a enseigné la plus belle des vertus : la patience. Plus on y sème de l’amour et de la persévérance, plus la récolte sera fructueuse».Voilà des paroles empreintes...

Small-scale family farmers are the backbone of rural communities in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region. Despite their extensive participation in the agricultural sector, these types of farmers and their farms are disproportionately affected by poverty, ultimately constituting about 70 percent of the poorliving in the region. Apart...

Migration has always been an integral part of people’s lives and livelihoods in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region. At least some of this migration is partly driven by a deterioration in environmental conditions and an increase in the frequency of weather extremes (e.g. drought, sea level rise,...

Waterlogging and shallow groundwater (GW) have caused many environmental problems in many places worldwide due to poor irrigation and nonfunctional drainage systems, particularly with flood irrigation (Ochoa et al., 2007, Zhang et al., 2021). The groundwater depth (GWD) is often considered an essential factor in controlling ET rates (Devitt et al., 2002). Consequently, higher ET rates...

Funded by the Government of South Korea, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) implemented the project “Enhancing the Resilience of Vulnerable Refugee Communities through Cash-for-Work in Anjar” in 2019 and 2020, in collaboration with the Ministry of the Agriculture, two partner NGOs, Lebanon Reforestation Initiative (LRI),...

Globally, climate change is triggering shifts in water availability, especially across arid and desert landscapes similar to that in Yemen, where precipitation patterns are increasingly erratic. Here, we use water budget calculations, drought metrics, and trend analyses to examine climatic water deficits, with the aim of unraveling irrigation demands and...

 The new Food Policy Bulletin for the Near East and North Africa region focuses on agricultural entrepreneurs who are key drivers in developing sustainable food systems and agro-industry growth. They are the market movers who take risks, create jobs and income and stimulate rural development. With their innovations, they can also...

The FAO Regional Office for the Near East and North Africa (FAO-RNE) organized a four-day regional workshop in Cairo, Egypt, focused on improving the capacity of countries in the analysis and design of agrifood value chains in conflict-prone and conflict-affected contexts in the Near East and North Africa region (NENA)....

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) held a virtual training on sustainable food value chain (SFVC) analysis as part of the regional Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP), “Evidence-based policy and investment for sustainable development of the value chains of Special Agricultural Products in the Near East and...

The multispecies (spp.) plant genus Opuntia (commonly referred to as cactus pear) plays a significant socioeconomic, environmental and nutritional role for many countries in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region, which comprises 18 member countries of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Opuntia spp....

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) and tomato (S. lycopersicum L.) are the most economically important vegetable crops in Egypt and worldwide. The winter crop in Egypt is particularly prone to late blight caused by Phytophthora infestans. A total of 152 P. infestans isolates were isolated from the 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2018 winter crops with 82 isolates...

Access to clean and safe water is a prerequisite to meeting basic human rights. Water is essential for all productive activities in Egypt in the agricultural sector and related sectors, including industry, trade and energy generation. Agriculture is a key sector in the Egyptian economy, contributing 11.3 percent to the...

With a clear decrease in the agricultural households’ incomes, the increase of food and production factors prices, and the negative effects of climate change on agricultural production, smallholders’ farmers are facing food insecurity challenge, especially in arid regions. The objective of this paper is to examine the resilience of households to food insecurity...

“Agrifood value chains of small and medium-sized producers in the Near East and North Africa region have the potential to generate more value through improved access to high-value markets. Limited logistics capacity in the region, coupled with lack of access to continuous cold chain, has resulted in weak supply chain...

The farmer field schools (FFS) approach was developed by FAO and its partners more than 25 years ago as an alternative to the dominant extension method, which did not work in situations with more complex and unexpected problems, such as pesticide-induced pest outbreaks.In a typical FFS a group of 20-25...

Recent global crises have led to diverse impacts across the world’s low- and middle-income regions, reflecting local conditions and differing policy responses. These effects are often compounded by more local shocks and crises, including prolonged conflict and violence, natural disasters, and fragile economic and governance systems. This section examines the...

The Guidelines for action on food loss and waste reduction in the Near East and North Africa provide support to Member Countries to implement the Voluntary Code of Conduct for Food Loss and Waste Reduction, an international instrument designed to guide FLW policymaking and interventions at global level. These regionally-tailored...

Land use is an essential component for many areas, from water management to agriculture, from the fight against desertification to that against climate change. The detection of changes in land cover allows a better understanding of the state and dynamics of natural resources and, to a certain extent, of their...