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Grameen Foundation and FAO will work closely together to enhance smallholder access to knowledge and technologies for sustainable production and food security through the use of mobile agriculture supported services. The two organizations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today in Rome also aimed at improving farming innovation exchange, strengthening smallholder households to gain better access to agricultural and rural financial services and competitive value chains. Both organizations agreed that this is a great step forward in their efforts to improve food security. During his visit to FAO headquarters, Alex Counts, Chief Executive Officer and President of Grameen Foundation, highlighted...

Rome - Grameen Foundation and FAO will work closely to enhance small-holder farmer access to knowledge and technologies for sustainable production and food security through the use of mobile agriculture supported services. The two organizations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) also aimed at improving farming innovation exchange, strengthening small-holder households to gain better access to agricultural and rural financial services and competitive value chains. Both organizations agreed that this is a great step forward in their efforts to improve food security. During his visit to FAO headquarters, Alex Counts, Chief Executive Officer and President of Grameen Foundation,...

Rome –The President and CEO of Grameen Foundation USA, Mr. Alex Counts, visited FAO headquarters today and gave a seminar for FAO staff titled “Grameen Model Towards Achieving Food Security,” which marked the beginning of the FAO Private Sector Seminar Series. The seminar took place after FAO and Grameen Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which includes goals to increase farming innovation exchange, strengthen smallholders’ access to agricultural and financial services, and increase rural access to competitive value chains.  Mr. Counts first witnessed extreme poverty in 1988 when he was a Fulbright Scholar working with Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. He returned to...

The non-governmental organization Deutsche Welthungerhilfe  and FAO will work more closely in their fight against hunger and poverty. The organizations signed an agreement on Monday in Rome, to promote the progressive realization of the right to food and improvements of the governance of land tenure for the benefit of all, with an emphasis on vulnerable and marginalized people. “Only if we work together will we be able to successfully eradicate hunger and poverty,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva. “Cooperation with civil society groups like Welthungerhilfe is crucial to make the right to adequate and healthy food a reality.”...

FAO and WFP have long been partnering to promote food and nutrition security of vulnerable communities. The Programme Purchase from Africans for Africa is a recent example of how the agencies can design and implement joint work for effective and efficient operations on the ground. PAA Africa is being currently operated in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Senegal since February 2012. With a funding of USD 4.5 million provided by Brazil and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), the Programme is a joint initiative to promote food and nutrition security and income generation of smallholder farmers in...

20 August 2013, Buenos Aires/Rome - FAO Director General José Graziano da Silva highlighted the potential of South-South Cooperation and reiterated FAO's commitment "to strengthen and channel exchanges between Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa with the aim to adopt, adapt and broaden best practices that promote agricultural development"...

If you are reading this website, you might be familiar with one of the larger debates going on around ensuring access to food for everyone--the debate on the future of agriculture as a practice. Fossil-fuel based?  Organics? Small-scale? Fertilizer dependent? This debate lives in the comment sections of many websites that cover these topics, in social media threads, in scientific literature, and pages and pages of books and brochures published every day. It is a rich and colorful debate, with many different approaches proposed. But how do we ensure we are hearing perspectives from all...

Waking up at 4:00 am and walking almost 5 kilometers to work at the farm is not an easy task for grown people, let alone for a school girl. Lydia Sasu has been working as a farmer since her childhood. Despite hard work by all the family members, there were instances that they had nothing to eat. “On my school days, on a Saturday, I and my mother went to the market to get money for cassava we sold on credit a few days ago, but the customer had no money to pay so we could...

Heads of State and Government of African Union Member States, together with representatives of international organizations, civil society organizations, private sector, cooperatives, farmers, youths, academia and other partners have unanimously adopted a Declaration to end hunger in Africa during the high-level meeting co-organized by the African Union, FAO and Lula Institute held in Addis Ababa last week. The declaration aims at promoting sustainable agricultural development with social protection and recognizes the importance of engaging non-state actors to ensure food security. The 3-day meeting allowed for non-state actors and governments alike to discuss and exchange their views and positions on agricultural development in...

26 June 2013, Rome -Unlocking Egypt’s agricultural potential was the focus of a two-day, high-level forum “Private Sector for Food Security: Improving the Investment Climate in Egypt’s Agribusiness Sector” which ended in Cairo today.Organised by FAO and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), in collaboration with Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, the forum brought together policy-makers, investors and representatives of international financial institutions to discuss ways to increase the efficiency of Egypt’s agricultural sector and reduce its food trade deficit.All participants agreed that the private sector – bolstered by cooperation with the...