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23 February 2012, Rome - Improving agricultural data systems and boosting support to smallholder farmers in the fight against hunger emerged as key topics during discussions between Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, today at FAO headquarters.The philanthropist and digital technology icon met with the head of the specialized UN agency, discussing ways to improve FAO's data collection systems and to develop a public, multi-agency scorecard to better measure the progress of hunger reduction. They also talked about how to boost sustainable productivity and market opportunities for smallholder farmers,...

Manila/Nairobi - Healthy seas and coasts would pay healthy dividends in a green economy, according to a report released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Maritime Organization (IMO), United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), WorldFish Center and GRID-Arendal, that highlights the huge potential for economic growth and poverty eradication from well-managed marine sectors.The report, Green Economy in a Blue World, argues that the ecological health and economic productivity of marine and...

Dushanbe, Tajikistan - A dramatic decline in brucellosis, a serious disease affecting both livestock and humans in this Central Asian country, is being hailed as the first major victory of the recently privatized national animal health service.Government services in this former Soviet republic all but collapsed during a civil war in the 1990s and by 2004 brucellosis infected 8.5 percent of the country's vast sheep and goat herds. Meat and dairy production declined and people who caught the disease from consuming unpasteurized milk and cheese became debilitated with chronic fevers, muscle pains and weakness.The situation has turned...

Rome - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in collaboration with Bioversity International, will be convening an International Scientific Symposium on "Biodiversity and Sustainable Diets" in the Green Room at FAO Headquarters in Rome, from 3 to 5 November 2010, as part of the World Food Day/World Food Week 2010 celebrations.  The purpose of the Symposium is to mainstream, as a common path, biodiversity and nutrition as central to sustainable development. It will address the impact of food consumption patterns on agriculture production, on the environment and on poverty alleviation. One of its major outcomes will be an agreed...

Washington, DC - FAO welcomed the launch here today of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), a new multidonor trust fund managed by the World Bank to improve food security and incomes in low-income countries through assistance to agriculture.Calling it a "key instrument to bring to fruition the commitments made in L'Aquila", FAO Deputy Director-General Jim Butler said that the Organization looks forward to working with its development partners to make it operational as quickly as possible.The new mechanism is designed to address the underfunding of country and regional agriculture and food security investment plans, making aid...