News archive 2016

Globally, around 527 million sea container trips are made each year - China alone deals with over 133 million sea containers annually. It is not only their cargo, but the steel contraptions themselves, that can serve as vectors for the spread of exotic species capable of wreaking ecological and agricultural havoc.

The newly released Mid-Year Review of the Ethiopia Humanitarian Requirements Document (HRD) indicates that 900 000 additional households need urgent agricultural support bringing the total number to 2.9 million in August. Meeting additional agricultural sector needs will require $45 million bringing the total requirement for the agriculture sector to $91.3 million for 2016.

FAO has launched a full-scale corporate response to the ongoing crisis and urgently requires $10 million to supply seeds, fertilizers and irrigation equipment for the upcoming irrigated dry season.

The international prices for major food commodities saw a modest decline in July, following five consecutive months of increases. The overall drop of the FAO Food Price Index was largely caused by a slide in prices for grains and vegetable oils, more than offsetting firmer dairy, meat and sugar prices.

A new series of 17 country briefs prepared by FAO and WFP finds that conflicts have now pushed over 56 million people into either "crisis" or "emergency" levels of food insecurity.

Farmers must be able to plant by October and failure to do so will result in another reduced harvest in March 2017, severely affecting food and nutrition security and livelihoods in the region, FAO warned.

The heads of FAO and the World Food Programme have applauded new legislation in the United States aimed at strengthening global food assistance programs.

A FAO-UNHCR handbook published today offers a new tool for helping displaced people access fuel for cooking food while reducing environmental damage and conflicts with local communities.

Governments must do much more to provide the enabling conditions required for indigenous peoples, local communities, smallholders and their organizations to restore degraded landscapes and achieve climate change mitigation and adaptation in practice, according to FAO.

Graziano da Silva briefed Prime Minister Renzi - whose country takes over the G7 presidency in January 2017 - on aspects of FAO's work, especially in relation to fighting hunger, malnutrition and rural poverty and on ways of adapting agriculture and food systems to climate change