News archive 2015

Amidst escalating conflict at a crucial time in the country’s cropping season, almost 11 million people in Yemen are severely food insecure and millions more are at risk of not meeting their basic food needs, FAO said today.

"Hunger is only one face of malnutrition. At the other extreme we have obesity, which is becoming a concern as big as or even bigger than undernourishment, particularly in the Caribbean and the Pacific," FAO Director-General Graziano da Silva said speaking before the ACP Committee of Ambassadors in Brussels.

FAO and the World Water Council call for government policies and investments by the public and private sectors to ensure that crops, livestock and fish are sustainably produced in ways also aimed at safeguarding water resources.

Norway and FAO have signed a NOK 35m (around $4.5m) partnership agreement to improve the capacity of developing countries to monitor and report on their forest resources and changes in forest area. The project will facilitate countries' access to earth observation data sources, including satellite imagery, and develop an easy-to-use platform for processing and interpreting this data.

FAO, UNESCO, the World Bank, GEF and the International Association of Hydrogeologists have today called for action by the global community to manage the increasingly urgent depletion and degradation of limited groundwater resources.

Concerns over the spread of high impact transboundary animal diseases are mounting in Lebanon and neighbouring countries as some of the 1.5 million refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria have brought with them large numbers of unvaccinated sheep, goats, cattle, and other animals.

FAO’s work is driven by five cross-cutting strategic objectives that are closely aligned with the most relevant and urgent development problems faced by our member countries and the development community. Learn more via this brochure.

Geothermal energy, the flow of heat energy radiating from the earth’s core, provides unique opportunities for cost efficient, sustainable food production and processing in developing countries, says a new report published by FAO today.

High-level authorities from 15 countries pledged on Thursday to collaborate on a global plan to wipe out forever the devasting animal disease known as ‘Peste des petits ruminants' by 2030, a lethal plague for goats and sheep and the scourge of rural households in vast swathes of the developing world.

A sharp fall in the price index for sugar - which reached its lowest level since February 2009, together with dipping prices for vegetable oils, cereals and meat, more than offset a rise in dairy prices and contributed to the lower index, which in March averaged 173.8 points.