News

Rome - FAO Director-General QU Dongyu met with Martin Kropff, Director-General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). The two were also joined by Robert Bertram, Chief Scientist of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). During the meeting they highlighted the urgent need to develop new evidence based solutions and toolkits to tackle the most destructive pests in agriculture, specifically Fall Armyworm (FAW). In this context, QU referred to the launch of the FAO’s Global Action for FAW Control in December 2019 and the establishment of the Steering Committee as a major step forward in this...

A pilot project implemented by Kyoto University (KU) in 2019, aimed at raising awareness on food waste in canteens on the campus, and enhancing the knowledge and engagement of students in reducing food loss and waste, determined that approximately 20 per cent of food is wasted in canteens on campus. Research findings under the pilot highlighted that the most wasted foods on the campus include side vegetables, rice and noodles, and parts of fish.

FAO will bolster the scale and scope of its geospatial monitoring toolkit thanks to collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (

FAO will attend the fourth Annual Strategic Consultation with the Government of Japan on Tuesday 21 January 2020, in Tokyo, Japan. The objective is to review the progress of their partnership and discuss common priorities and new humanitarian and development projects for the year ahead.

Rome - Over the past months, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations continued to support the objectives of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming (UNDFF), signing three new letters of agreement (LoA) with the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA), the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Development in Agriculture (RUFORUM) and the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU). These new agreements will support knowledge exchange and capacity development activities, including two studies on family farming.  More than 90 percent of the world’s 600 million farms are run by an individual or a family and rely primarily...