Unusual herding and migration routes stir tensions and pose risk of spreading diseases

Brazil has added US $ 17 million in funding to projects undertaken in its ongoing partnership with FAO, highlighting the Latin American country’s role as a key regional and global contributor to the fight against hunger.

Food security and questions of how to feed a growing world remained high on the agenda in 2014. Here's a quick rundown of some of the top FAO stories of the last twelve months.

FAO and international experts say that a global effort is needed to prevent the rapid spread of the deadly Fusarium wilt disease in bananas, which poses a severe threat to economic welfare and food security in developing countries.

Ten years after the world's worst natural disaster in living memory roared across the shorelines of South and Southeast Asia, countries in the region are better prepared to deal with tragedies like the Indian Ocean Tsunami, but there is still room for improvement.

Over the next 35 years farmers will need to increase annual production of maize, rice and wheat to 3 billion tonnes. This can only be achieved through eco-friendly agriculture that results in higher productivity while conserving natural resources, adapting to climate change, and delivering benefits to the world's 500 million family farms.

Global production of major wood products continues to show steady growth, with the exception of the pulp and paper industry.

Border closures, quarantines, hunting bans and other restrictions are seriously hindering people's access to food, threatening their livelihoods, disrupting food markets and processing chains, and exacerbating shortages stemming from crop losses in areas with the highest Ebola infection rates, the FAO-WFP reports stressed.

FAO's Investment Centre is celebrating its 50th anniversary of work devoted to improving public and private investment in developing and transition countries. The Centre's mission is to work with countries to determine how to best invest in agriculture and rural development to reduce poverty.

Horizontal cooperation between countries of the global South is increasingly important to meeting the sustainable development challenges of our time, according to FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.