News archive 2015

Some 129 million hectares of forest - an area almost equivalent in size to South Africa - have been lost since 1990, according to FAO's most comprehensive forest review to date, The Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015. It noted however, that an increasing amount of forest areas have come under protection while more countries are improving forest management.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and ActionAid International, a globe-spanning NGO, have agreed to embark on new joint program of work that will focus on empowering rural people.

Cameroon and FAO have agreed signed two new agreements: one creating a $20 million, five-year Partnership Programme aimed at promoting agricultural development in the Central African nation, the other establishing an expanded Partnership and Liaison office in the capital.

Heavy storms, floods and landslides across nearly all provinces in Myanmar have dealt a major blow to the country's agriculture and are expected to severely limit the availability of food if aid is not provided to farmers swiftly, FAO warned today.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and MasterCard are joining forces to create an innovative new alliance against hunger. A new partnership agreement, signed by FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva and Walt MacNee, Vice Chairman of MasterCard Worldwide, at FAO headquarters, paves the way for a collaborative effort that will develop inclusive payment systems to support small-scale farmers and poor families.

FAO and UNDP will work with ministries of agriculture in Nepal, Kenya, the Philippines, Thailand, Uganda, Uruguay, Viet Nam and Zambia to incorporate agricultural sectors into National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) in order to safeguard livelihoods, raise agricultural production and boost food security.

FAO and the Swedish-based development cooperation organization We Effect have agreed to work together to strengthen small-scale forest and farm producers’ organizations in developing countries so they can access land and markets and improve the livelihoods of their members.

The number of acutely and severely malnourished children is likely to increase to 343,400 and 63,400, respectively, through the end of the year. The severely malnourished face a high risk of morbidity and death.

Potato varieties once thought lost to the Andean people who introduced them to the world will now be stored for perpetuity deep in the Arctic ice. The deposit is being made at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a back-up facility in the permafrost far north of the Arctic Circle that currently holds over 860,000 food crop seeds from all over the world.

A new open-access data portal to be developed by FAO will use satellite imagery to help water-scarce countries in the Near East and North Africa better manage this precious resource.