News archive 2020

Timely and robust actions can reduce hunger as a result of crises, and that’s truer than ever in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, participants in the High-Level pledging event for the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the second-largest donor to FAO’s humanitarian programme, heard.

Policy makers and senior FAO officers today discussed the importance of food and agricultural trade for ending global hunger, seeking to identify critical trade-offs at an online inter-sessional event of the Committee on Commodity Problems (CCP).

In the final report adopted unanimously, Members noted that the Strategic Framework "builds on the momentum and harmonized transformations already taking place in the Organization, including structural reforms, the Hand-In-Hand Initiative and FAO's COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme."

Soil organisms play a crucial role in boosting food production, enhancing nutritious diets, preserving human health, remediating pollution and combating climate change, but their contribution remains largely underestimated, FAO said today in its report on “The State of Knowledge of Soil Biodiversity”.

The Director-General spoke at the High-Level Dialogue on the Establishment of the International Platform for Digital Food and Agriculture, an online event FAO hosted to discuss the digital world’s opportunities for agri-food systems with policy makers, farmers’ representatives, business managers and technology companies.

The FAO Food Price Index averaged 105.0 points during the month, up 3.9 percent from October and 6.5 percent higher than its value a year earlier.

Ensuring the free movement of food across the world and well-functioning markets has been a central pillar of the global response to COVID-19 pandemic but difficulties with access to food at national level still remain, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said today at a high-level panel discussion.

Levels of hunger reach record levels, requiring urgent action

To catalyze ways of accelerating opportunities of increasing carbon sequestration, FAO hosted “Forests and soils: A new opportunity for the Planet”, an online seminar to explore possibilities of carbon markets developed by Costa Rica, a pioneer in the field, for Spanish companies.

The United Nations calls for the targeting of new policies and investments in the lagging territories of Latin America and the Caribbean.