News archive 2018

FAO's new Biodiversity Mainstreaming Platform can help shift agricultural production onto a more sustainable track -- one that promotes healthy and thriving ecosystems while also producing ample and nutritious food for a growing global population.

The Swedish International Development Cooperation (SIDA) will support drought-stricken farmers and herders in the Sahel's Burkina Faso and Mali, through a $9.9 million contribution to FAO.

"FAO advocates that antibiotics and other antimicrobials should be only used to cure diseases and alleviate unnecessary suffering. Only under strict circumstances they should be used to prevent an imminent threat of infection," he said.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) have agreed to step up joint action to combat health threats associated with interactions between humans, animals and the environment.

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva has called for transformative changes in how we produce our food, grounded in sustainable agricultural systems capable of producing healthy and nutritious food while simultaneously safeguarding the planet's biodiversity.

Countries “should aim towards a forward-looking dialogue” geared to food security and more inclusive rural development to better govern migration dynamics, FAO Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo said at the Forum on Agriculture, Rural Development and Migrations in the Mediterranean Region.

Global tea consumption and production are projected to keep rising over the next decade, driven by robust demand in developing and emerging countries. This will create new rural income opportunities and improve food security in tea-producing countries, according to a new report issued today.

"We strongly welcome this unprecedented move by the Security Council to explicitly recognize the impact of armed conflict on hunger through the often vast displacement of people from arable land, livestock grazing areas, and fishing grounds, as well as the destruction of food stocks and agricultural assets and the disruption of food markets," Graziano da Silva said.

On the eve of the first World Bee Day, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has urged countries and individuals to do more to protect bees and other pollinators or risk a sharp drop in food diversity.

The region "has made substantial progress" in reducing undernourishment over the last years, "but in some countries hunger is still a major concern," Graziano da Silva said, at the opening of FAO's Regional Conference for Europe and Central Asia.