News archive 2012

Strong rural organizations like producer groups and cooperatives are crucial to hunger and poverty reduction. This thinking connects a series of case studies found in a new publication by FAO and IFAD. It highlights successful institutional innovations that have empowered small-scale producers, and contributed to food security in different regions of the world.

Early forecasts for 2012 indicate continuing firm prices for tea, which averaged $2.85 per kg in 2011, according to FAO’s Intergovernmental Group on Tea.High prices reflect the fact that demand for black tea, which accounts for most of world production, has exceeded supply since 2009, the Group reported at its recent biennial meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The European Commission, FAO, and the Association for European Professional Football Leagues have kicked off a joint awareness campaign on the need to fight world hunger and malnutrition. The campaign will concentrate on the Sahel region of West Africa, where the Commission and FAO are working to avert a repeat of the hunger crisis that has been raging in the Horn of Africa.

FAO and the International Federation for Animal Health are working to establish pharmaceutical standards for drugs used to treat Animal African Trypanosomosis. The use of substandard medicines against the disease leaves farm animals inadequately protected, allows drug-resistant strains to evolve, and can pose a threat to human health. The new standards, coupled with training for animal health authorities in their application, will help countries clamp down on the problem.

Improving agricultural data systems and boosting support to smallholder farmers in the fight against hunger emerged as key topics during discussions between Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, today at FAO headquarters.

The Government of Brazil has provided more than $2.3 million for a new local food purchase programme to be set up by FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP) to benefit farmers and vulnerable populations in five African countries – Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Senegal. Brazil will share expertise drawn from its own national Food Purchase Programme (PAA).

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is helping the people of the conflict-affected, South Sudanese state of Jonglei feed themselves and rebuild their lives through a series of emergency and long-term actions. The agency has begun distribution of livestock vaccines, fishing gear, vegetable seeds and tools in the world's newest nation.

Decades of war in Afghanistan and migration away from rural areas have contributed to the degradation and neglect of the country’s irrigation system. In a bid to help farmers increase crop production, FAO is boosting its technical support for rehabilitation of Afghanistan’s traditional irrigation systems.

The FAO Food Price Index rose by nearly two percent, or four points, from December to January 2012 – its first increase since July 2011. Prices of all the commodity groups in the index registered gains, with oils increasing the most, followed closely by cereals, sugar, dairy products and meat. At its new level of 214 points, the index stood 7 percent lower than in January 2011.

Millions of people in South Sudan will face hunger this year if urgent action is not taken according to a joint report issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Food Programme. The report is based on the joint Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to South Sudan, conducted in the world’s newest nation.