FAO.org

The agricultural sector in Lebanon is faced by a series of challenges made more acute by the effect of the Syrian crisis on the country, especially in rural areas. Farmers have increasingly abandoned their livestock as they are unable to cope with rising feed prices and the declining prices of animals and animal products. It is essential to strengthen the dairy sector to ensure that it continues as a viable source of livelihood and employment, particularly for women. The project enhanced the liv elihood and food security of Lebanese women by providing household dairy production materials, and by improving the [...]

A summary of the most significant legislative results achieved on food security and nutrition, school meals, and family farming in Latin America. It includes lessons learned, an overview of mechanisms that have proved useful and an annex with detailed information on 15 regional laws from parliamentary front initiatives. Also available in French and Spanish.

This report captures the State of Food Security and Nutrition in Africa. The Official annual Regional Panorama for Africa In sub-Saharan Africa good progress was made in reducing hunger until 2010, after which time the decline in the prevalence of undernourishment came to a halt and then rose to 22.7 percent in 2016, while the number of undernourished rose to 224.3 million. In many countries, the worsening situation in 2015 and 2016 can be attributed to adverse climatic conditions, often linked to the El Niño phenomenon, resulting in poor harvests and threatening livestock populations. Conflict, sometimes in combination with drought [...]

FAO, in partnership with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, is developing an interactive learning tool to facilitate learning on the potential benefits and trade-offs in linking social protection, resilience and climate change policies at local, national and global level. The tool allows national stakeholders and policymakers to experience first-hand the challenges that smallholder farmers face when dealing with scarce availability of productive assets and deteriorating climate conditions. This will help participants be better equipped to solve complex problems related to social protection, climate change issues and resilience in an uncertain world. The tool capture the essence of real-life [...]

As urban food markets have grown rapidly in recent decades, so too have rural–urban food supply chains. Urbanization and higher incomes are shifting dietary patterns away from staples and towards higher-value products (fish, meat, eggs, dairy products, fruits and vegetables, and more processed foods), thus driving transformations upstream in the food system. See the complete series here.

Following their first formation in Indonesia over 25 years ago, Farmer Field Schools (FFS) have served as a “proof of concept” of how transformative learning can help governments, donors and development stakeholders achieve development objectives. The FFS approach, which has now been used in more than 90 countries by more than 12 million small farmers (FAO, 2016), not only creates a space in which the practical needs of smallholders to solve production-related issues can be addressed but also fosters personal and community-level transformation through empowerment.

Interest in contract farming as a mechanism to coordinate linkages between farmers and agribusiness firms has grown considerably in the recent past, in large part because of the international trends towards tighter alignment in agrifood supply chains. FAO has been responding to this growing demand for information and technical support on contract farming issues by means of actions that include a series of capacity building workshops on planning and implementing contract farming operations, the dissemination of knowledge through the Contract Farming Resource Centre and the development of publications on conceptual, operational and legal aspects of contract farming.  Building on the above, [...]

This brief aims to help regulators and policymakers to achieve a correct understanding of the legal aspects of contract farming (CF). It is based on information extracted from the Legal Guide on Contract Farming (UNIDROIT/FAO/IFAD, 2015), and from field experience in the implementation of contract farming projects by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). See also Legal Guide on Contract Farming

These Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication have been developed as a complement to the 1995 FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (the Code). They were developed to provide complementary guidance with respect to small-scale fisheries in support of the overall principles and provisions of the Code. Accordingly, the Guidelines are intended to support the visibility, recognition and enhancement of the already important role of small-scale fisheries and to contribute to global and national efforts towards the eradication of hunger and poverty. The Guidelines support responsible fisheries and sustainable social and economic development for the benefit of [...]

Market information can play an extremely important role in promoting agricultural development, especially among small-scale producers. Sound market information can help to enhance transparency, competitiveness and the more equitable sharing of benefits among key players in the marketing system. An effective Market Information System or Service (MIS) can increase competitiveness, reduce information asymmetries and improve market efficiency. This Literature Review seeks to review all features relating to MIS development, with a particular focus on information on market prices and on the use of new technologies for price data collection and dissemination. It aims to identify the majority of the relevant [...]