News archive 2010

The world's forest biodiversity is threatened by a high global rate of deforestation and forest degradation as well as a decline in primary forest area. In many countries, however, there is a continued positive trend towards the conservation of forest biological diversity via dedicated conservation areas.

The first global guidelines for aquaculture certification have been adopted by the Sub-Committee on Aquaculture of the Committee on Fisheries, part of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Over 50 countries attended the meeting of the sub-committee, which is the only global intergovernmental forum discussing aquaculture development.

Making smallholder dairy production more competitive could be a powerful tool for reducing poverty, raising nutrition levels and improving the livelihoods of rural people in many developing countries. Around 150 million small-scale dairy farming households, or some 750 million people, are engaged in milk production, most of them in the developing world.

By 2025, more than half the developing world's population - an estimated 3.5 billion people - will be urban. For policy makers and urban planners in poor countries, greener cities could be the key to ensuring safe, nutritious food, sustainable livelihoods and healthier communities.

FAO's Intergovernmental Groups (IGGs) on Grains and on Rice have agreed that while there were no grounds for complacency, there was no indication of an impending world food crisis. They proposed exploring new measures to check food price volatility and manage associated risks and recognized that unexpected price hikes “are a major threat to food security”.

USAID has donated $16 million to FAO to support wheat planting, prevent further livestock losses and de-silt irrigation systems in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of the provinces most severely affected by last month’s floods.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB), FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) have joined forces to tackle widespread hunger and build food security throughout the Asia and Pacific region.

Food production in Haiti is slowly recovering but still remains significantly below the levels that existed prior to the January 2010 earthquake, according to the report of a joint Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) - World Food Program (WFP) assessment mission released today.

FAO, WFP and IFAD are working together to address urgent food security challenges in Pakistan, following the recent flood disaster which destroyed food stocks and approximately 10 percent of the country's standing crops, leaving an estimated 10 million people vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition.

The number of hungry people in the world remains unacceptably high despite expected recent gains. The new estimate of the number of people who will suffer chronic hunger this year is 925 million — 98 million down from 1.023 billion in 2009. Continuing high global hunger will make it difficult to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals.