News archive 2019

The assessment, which is based on UN Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme missions to the country last month and in November 2018, concluded that the reduced harvest, coupled with increased post-harvest losses, has led to an uncovered food deficit of 1.36 million metric tons after considering the commercial import capacity of the country.

If no action is taken - warns the UN Ad hoc Interagency Coordinating Group on Antimicrobial Resistance who released the report - drug-resistant diseases could cause 10 million deaths each year by 2050 and damage to the economy as catastrophic as the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. By 2030, antimicrobial resistance could force up to 24 million people into extreme poverty.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) today warned that prolonged droughts and heavy rain have destroyed more than half of the maize and bean crops of the subsistence farmers along the Central American Dry Corridor, leaving them without food reserves and affecting their food security.

“Major investments in rural development and agriculture must be integral to peacebuilding efforts”, FAO's Director-General said in a visit to a project for pastoral resilience in the Sahel region, where FAO and the EU are partnering against hunger through strengthened food insecurity and supporting policy change.

The new version of the IPC Technical Manual, in addition to the IPC's Acute Food Insecurity scale, incorporates two new scales, measuring chronic food insecurity and acute malnutrition, and a new classification of the IPC Acute Food Insecurity scale's Phase 5, called ‘Famine Likely'.

José Graziano da Silva called on international community to advance the establishment of trade rules and regulations that encourage the consumption of healthy and nutritious foods.

The five-year RECLIMA project seeks to strengthen resilience of smallholder farmers, who are often on the frontline of climate change impacts, by promoting climate adaptation measures such as the use of seeds tolerant to drought.

Farmers in areas left devastated by Tropical Cyclone Idai in Mozambique have started to receive much-needed agricultural inputs thanks to a joint effort by FAO and Mozambique’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security to assist farmers to plant in the impending secondary growing season.

The five-year project aims to benefit 17 000 vulnerable families, including those from indigenous communities, who depend on forests for their livelihoods, energy and income, by supporting the government’s efforts to safeguard Paraguay's forests.

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have joined forces to protect West Africa’s forests and help safeguard the livelihoods of millions of people who depend on them.