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This brochure presents FAO ’s work on agricultural innovation. FAO advocates a shift from interventions focusing on single components of agricultural innovation towards a system-approach aimed at strengthening institutions and stakeholders’ networks that better respond to the needs of smallholder farmers. Agricultural innovation is the process whereby individuals or organizations bring new or existing products, processes or ways of organization into use for the first time in a specific context in order to increase effectiveness, competitiveness, resilience to shocks or environmental sustainability and thereby contribute to food security and nutrition, economic development or sustainable natural resource management. Innovation is central to [...]

Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) and smart contracts provide a unique opportunity to bring greater efficiency, transparency and traceability to the exchange of value and information in the agriculture sector. By utilising digital records, cryptography and the disintermediation of transaction processing and data storage, DLTs can improve both agricultural supply chains and rural development interventions in a number of ways. The technology has the potential to simplify and integrate agricultural supply chains, enhance food safety, facilitate access to trade finance and other types of agricultural financial services, improve market transparency, provide greater legal certainty to land-tenure systems and strengthen accountability for [...]

This ‘Policy Analysis of Nationally Determined Contributions in Europe and Central Asia’ follows up on the previous effort to report on implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions in the region. Specifically, this publication compiles and analyzes the most relevant and updated information on policies and regulatory frameworks related to climate change in the region, including information on access to available climate finance to support countries in the implementation of their goals under the Paris Agreement.   This publication identifies the current commitments, policy and finance gaps and opportunities for enhancing climate change mitigation and adaptation ambitions in countries of Europe and Central Asia [...]

Asia and the Pacific is experiencing major demographic shifts and urbanizing rapidly. E-agriculture technologies (remote sensing, drones, sensors) are emerging, with potentially profound implications for the entire food system and management of the natural resource base. Structural transformation of the economy has also changed the nature of the food security problem. Earlier, many governments thought that producing more staple food was sufficient to improve food security. However, today’s economy, increasingly based on human capital and less on physical strength, requires that policies and programmes promote healthy diets for healthy people. This need for improved nutrition will require shifts in agricultural [...]

The SNA methodology aims to capture the spatial dimension of food insecurity, shed light on how food systems work and understand what determines food security and nutrition levels in a given space and time. It is a first attempt to develop a methodological approach able to analyse the social, institutional and economic dimensions of food systems and their relationships with food security and nutrition outcomes, as well as to assess the spatial patterns of food systems. SNA also provides a useful tool to build scenarios to assess the effects of alternative policies on the configuration of the food systems as [...]

CountrySTAT is a web-based information system for food and agriculture statistics at regional, national and subnational levels. The objective of CountrySTAT is to improve access to food and agricultural statistics. It supports data analysis and evidence-based decision making. It also facilitates informed policy-making and monitoring with the goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. The system implements methods and standards to support institutions in data management and ensures long-term sustainability by developing capacity of regional and national experts.

To promote consistency and comparability of information at the world level, FAO statistics provides national statistical offices with internationally recognized definitions, concepts and classifications. Use this tool to access information on the FAOSTAT Commodity List (FCL). Definitions and correspondences to international standards can be searched either by item code or keyword.

FAOSTAT offers free and easy access to the data of 245 countries and 35 regional areas from 1961 to today. 

Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) is experience-based measures of household or individual food security. The FIES Survey Module (FIES-SM) consists of eight questions regarding people's access to adequate food, and can be easily integrated into various types of population surveys The FIES-SM questions refer to the experiences of the individual respondent or of the respondent’s household as a whole. The questions focus on self-reported food-related behaviors and experiences associated with increasing difficulties in accessing food due to resource constraints.  During the last 12 months, was there a time when, because of lack of money or other resources: You were worried you would not have [...]

Livestock are terrestrial, domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide traction or produce commodities such as meat, milk, eggs and hides. They contribute to diverse agri-food systems globally, playing many roles for different groups of people. From the perspective of the sustainability of the global livestock sector, there are four important and interrelated aspects: food and nutrition security; livelihoods and growth; health and animal welfare; and climate and natural resource use. Sustainable livestock are at the interface of these four topics, which provide the structure of the breakout sessions in the 10th Global Forum for Food and Agriculture. This [...]