News archive 2016

The ground has been broken on a major international initiative to rid the world of Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) – also known as sheep and goat plague – a highly viral animal disease that causes major losses in regions home to millions of the world’s poorest people.

The lack of sufficient rains in the southern region of Androy alone resulted in an 80 percent decline in maize production this year compared with the already reduced levels of 2015.

Countries and international organizations need to make “tremendous” efforts and increase their investments to improve national statistical capacities to monitor progress towards achieving the 2030 Agenda, said FAO Director-General during his opening address today at the 7th International Conference on Agricultural Statistics.

Some 1,4 million Haitians require food assistance in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, which wrought widespread devastation on supplies and crops across large swaths of the island nation. More than half – 800,000 people – are in dire need of immediate food aid, according to an emergency field assessment.

"The New Urban Agenda places food security and nutrition at the center of urban sustainable development," said FAO's Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, Raúl Benítez, in a statement made during Habitat III.

Burkina Faso’s capital city Ouagadougou will host the closing ceremony of the International Year of Pulses, which over the course of 2016 highlighted the exceptional nutritional benefits pulses offer to human diets via a wide range of events, publications, and other activities.

The agreement signed today by FAO and the NEPAD Planning and Coordination Agency (NPCA) will help the four countries involved draw up and implement policies that seek to boost the development of enterprises in rural areas, including through the transfer of knowledge and skills.

Agriculture generates around a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The sector must both contribute more to combating climate change while bracing to overcome its impacts, according to The State of Food and Agriculture 2016.

The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) opened its plenary today, poised in the wake of international agreements on new global Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to forge ahead with coordinated action to transform the world’s food systems and nutrition.

The World Food Day 2016 slogan: Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too underscores the fact that to feed a global population expected to reach more than 9 billion by 2050, humanity needs to produce more food, but in ways that use up less natural resources and that drastically reduce loss and waste.