News archive 2015

Major food commodity prices rose substantially in October, spurred by weather-driven concerns about sugar and palm oil supplies. The FAO Food Price Index averaged nearly 162 points in October, up 3.9 percent from September, while still down 16 percent from a year earlier.

To support the process, FAO today published a set of updated guidelines to assist governments in carrying out their national-level agricultural censuses, tailored to various different country needs and capacities. This is the latest edition of guidelines which FAO provides every 10 years.

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva warned that failure to reach a balanced solution on issues relating to production and trade of agricultural products could derail the international community's recently agreed sustainable development goal to eradicate world hunger.

In Lesotho, FAO is distributing a series of illustrated guides, in English and Sesotho, to encourage and facilitate the construction of homestead gardens. The gardens are easily built using locally available material and are specially designed to improve soil fertility and capture moisture. With minimum maintenance, they can provide vegetables all year round.

Hunger eradication and sustainable development will not be achieved if we do not take urgent action on climate change, said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, calling on the global community to put food security and agriculture at the center of the debates on climate change.

FAO and CIHEAM will work together to advance solutions on issues in the region related to food and nutrition security, rural development and improved management of scarce water resources for agriculture.

Three UN agencies today warned that extreme hunger is pushing people to the brink of a catastrophe in parts of South Sudan, as a new analysis found that 3.9 million people nationwide now face severe food insecurity.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is backing FAO's efforts to combat pandemic animal disease threats in Asia, Africa and the Middle East with an additional $87 million in funding covering the 2015-19 period.

FAO and Mars Incorporated, one of the largest global food manufacturers, will work together to achieve better food safety and quality along the food chains especially in developing countries.

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva thanked the world's farmers, fishers, forest workers and other food and agriculture workers for their contribution to the "amazing achievement" of increasing sustenance from all even as the world population tripled since 1945.