Entrevista com o Representante da FAO em Moçambique, Castro Camarada, sobre Escola na Machamba do Camponês. Cerca de 27.500 camponeses estão a ser beneficiados pela Metodologia das Escolas na Machamba do Camponês (EMCs) introduzida pela FAOMZ, num total de 1.095 escolas, que se estendem por todo o país.  Esta abordagem tem...

Purchase from Africans for Africa (PAA Africa) – a pilot project inspired by the Brazilian learning on institutional food procurement – recently released a report on the lessons learned from the first phase of implementation. This report details the joint efforts in five countries to increase smallholder farmers’ access to...

The land and climate in northern Mozambique make it an agricultural goldmine and farmers should be making a lot of money selling their surplus produce. So why are most of them just scraping by? The key is to start thinking of farming as a business.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are expanding their operations in response to growing food insecurity as a result of poor harvests across much of southern Africa. There will be an estimated 27.4 million food-insecure people in the region...

The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa (NAFSN) launched in May 2012 under the auspices of the G8 aims to create the conditions that will allow the African countries concerned to improve agricultural productivity and develop their agrifood sector by attracting more private investment in agriculture. The...

10 March 2015, Rome - An innovative partnership spanning five African countries is providing important lessons on how governments can procure food for public institutions, such as schools, directly from small-scale family farmers. Modelled on Brazil's achievements in fighting hunger and poverty, the Purchase from Africans for Africa programme (PAA...

Agroecological methods of farming have always been a part of the social and cultural life in Mozambican rural communities. To strengthen these practices in the face of corporate agriculture, the Mozambican Farmer’s Union, UNAC, has promoted the practices of agroecology, such as the conservation of native seeds and local systems...

Climate change is undermining the ability of African nations to feed themselves. Women smallholder producers are on the front line of dealing with the impacts, but are not first in line for international climate finance. Wealthy countries have committed to helping countries in Africa to adapt to climate change, but...

The countries of East and Southern Africa have made major commitments to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment, and they are starting to pay off. A number of countries have achieved substantial progress towards gender parity in primary school enrolment. Nearly all countries have adopted quota systems requiring women’s participation...

Many innovations led by women are based on agroecological principles such as increasing diversity, using fewer pesticides, or building new relationships with consumers. Through small experiments women learn, get organised and strengthen their autonomy. They gain increasing recognition and visibility in their communities and increase their self-esteem. This positive spiral...

This edition of Nature & Faune journal will be a special Issue to mark the International Year of Soils. It is planned to be issued during the Conference of the African Soil Society taking place in Ouagadougou - Burkina Faso from 2nd to 10th December 2015. The special edition of...

This Blog article resumes the work FAO is undertaking with the European Union under the Millennium Development Goal 1c programme (MDG1c) to support smallholder farmers to develop improved post-harvest techniques. Since the inception of the project, over 260 artisans were trained in 15 districts of Mozambique in building and promoting improved...

Although it is widely recognized that land tenure security is an integral part of agricultural intensification, there is no single clearly defined and universally applicable property rights regime to achieve this end. Countries that strive for economic development and food security through agricultural intensification need to utilize land governance strategies...

Cet ouvrage a pour objectif d’expliquer la nature et la force des liens entre la famille et l’exploitation agricole. L’ouvrage est construit autour d’une vingtaine d’études de cas menées dans divers pays de l’Asie, de l’Afrique, de l’Amérique latine et de l’Europe. Les auteurs précisent « ce qui fait famille »,...

Policies affect every dimension of the institutional and legal context in which poor rural people pursue their livelihoods. They shape the world they live in and the economic opportunities open to them. This means that supportive policies can go a long way towards providing the conditions in which people can...

This special issue of Nature & Faune journal, with its exciting variety of papers dealing with issues related to sustainable soil management in Africa is an important contribution towards promoting sustainability on the continent.

Market participation by smallholder farmers has the potential to pull farmers out of poverty while at the same time increasing food security at the more aggregate level. This paper looks at the dynamics of smallholder maize and beans marketing in Uganda and Mozambique. Using panel data from both countries, we...

In December 2012, the programme on “Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume cropping systems for food security in Eastern and Southern Africa” (SIMLESA) commissioned a study to compile case studies of good practices in gender mainstreaming in the areas covered by the programme. This study was a result of an action point...

Women play a critical role in every link of the value chain in small-scale fisheries, although their best-known roles are in processing and marketing of fish and other fishery products. This perception of the highly gender-segregated division of labour (men fishing / women processing) has shaped the generalized approach in...

The IFAD-funded PAMA Programme - the Agricultural Markets Support Programme - supports the implementation of major economic reforms launched by the government during the 1990s, including the commercialization of small-scale farming through better access to markets and improved linkages with private sector operators. The programme enables small-scale farmers in Boane,...