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In an effort to alleviate the challenges that millions of African families face from abject poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity, FAO and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) signed a new partnership agreement that paves the way for a stronger cooperation in fostering sustainable agriculture.

FAO today hosted a high-level delegation from Japan in a bid to bolster both sides of a strong relationship between the UN agency responsible for fighting hunger and its second-largest donor. Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries sent a number of senior officials to the meeting, one of a series aimed at crafting a strategic plan for further advancing the key partnership. The broader Japanese delegation underscored the increasingly geopolitical nature of assuring food security and putting agriculture on a sustainable and responsible footing in an era of globalization and border-hopping challenges such as...

Canadatoday announced it will contribute an additional $1 million to international bodies that develop the standards for food safety and plant protection. Lawrence MacAulay, Canada's Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, told FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva of the decision while both leaders were in Berlin attending high-level meetings including Sunday's meeting of agriculture ministers from the G20 countries.

Cancun, Mexico - More than 190 countries at a major United Nations conference in Mexico have pledged to step up efforts to integrate biodiversity into the policies of their agriculture, forests and fisheries sectors. On 3 December, countries adopted the Cancun Declaration, named after the Mexican city where the 13th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), known as 'COP13,' is being held. The Declaration represents an unprecedented recognition from the international community that biodiversity protection must involve different governmental and economic sectors and not just environment ministries. At the closure of the COP13 High Level...

Budapest, Hungary – The Director-General met today with Hungarian Minister for Agriculture Sandor Fazekas, on the margins of the Regional Symposium on Agroecology for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems in Europe and Central Asia.