News archive 2016

FAO and Google are working together to make high-resolution satellite data an everyday tool in managing the world’s natural resources in a joint effort to boost "environmental literacy". The recently-established partnership already allows resource managers and researchers in many countries to gauge changing land uses of individual field-sized plots seen by eye-in-the-sky satellites.

The ongoing spread of wheat rusts, a group of fungal plant diseases that stymy the production of the staple grain and other crops, is raising concern in Central Asia and the Middle East and sparking closer international collaboration to study, detect and prevent the threat from advancing further.

Groups of juvenile wingless hoppers and adults as well as hopper bands and at least one swarm formed on the southern coast of Yemen in March where heavy rains associated with tropical cyclones Chapala and Megh fell in November 2015.

Results achieved through Africa Solidarity Trust Fund (ASTF) financed projects are adding momentum to the vision of Africa- Africa cooperation to achieve food security across the continent.

FAO’s first forecast for the new season put world cereal production at 2 521 million tonnes in 2016, just 0.2 percent off last year’s large output. The FAO Food Price Index for March rose by 1.0 percent compared to February, as soaring sugar prices and continued increase in palm oil quotations more than offset plunging dairy product prices.

Africa has made great strides in tackling hunger -- achieving a 30 percent drop in the proportion of its people facing hunger over the 1990-2015 period -- but climate change, conflict and social inequality continue to present major challenges in the continent's quest for a future free from hunger and want, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today.

Cereal prices have shot up nearly five-fold since early last year, making it increasingly difficult for people to get enough to eat, according to a new joint Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

Bolivian quinoa, spices from Cambodia and cocoa from Ecuador are but a few of the products coming sourced from small farmers in the global South that will now be sold in the bistros of the Italian and French roadside eatery chain Autogrill, , thanks to a partnership with FAO.

The annual meeting of the Commission on Phytosanitary Measures (CPM), the governing body of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), brings together senior plant health specialists from 182 contracting parties as well as a number of other international organizations and the private sector.

FAO, China and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have signed a two‑year agreement worth almost $ 1.5 million aimed at increasing food and nutrition security in the conflict-ravaged African nation.