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ASEAN nations have moved a step closer in their efforts to formulate a framework of a new vision and priorities for the years 2016-2025 in food production , agriculture and forestry sectors, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today. The acknowledgment was made by FAO’s Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative, Hiroyuki Konuma, during the Special Senior Officials Meeting of the Thirty Fifth Meeting of the ASEAN Ministers on...

A high level meeting on family farming and small holder farmers in Asia and the Pacific has concluded with a consensus for greater support for millions of family and small-holder farmers across the region, who constitute more than 80 percent of total farmers, and renewed efforts to eradicate hunger and under-nutrition, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced.   Family and small holder farms are the backbone of agricultural outputs in Asia and the Pacific, producing the vast majority of...

Family farms and small holder farmers, the backbone of agriculture production in Asia and the Pacific, need help urgently in order to meet the demand for increased food production in the region of the world where the most hungry and under nourished people live, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)announced today Nearly two-thirds of the world’s 842 million undernourished people live in Asia and the Pacific. While the region has made gains in reducing hunger, an increasing...

Pursuing sustainable bioenergy opportunities in Southeast Asia without threatening food security is not just possible but achievable, a UN and multi-agency sponsored workshop heard today. “Bioenergy can contribute towards achieving wider and more sustainable energy access,” said Hiroyuki Konuma, Assistant Director-General and Asia-Pacific Regional Representative of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “The key is to develop bioenergy options sustainably, with the inclusion of smallholders and without competition with resources...

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is hosting the second Meeting of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Ad Hoc Task Force on Development of Vision, Objectives and Goals for ASEAN Cooperation in Food, Agriculture and Forestry (ATF-FAF) towards 2020 on 18 July 2014 in Bangkok, Thailand. The Meeting is being organized in the context of FAO’s technical assistance to ASEAN in developing ASEAN’s vision, objectives and...

Asia and Western Africa have produced more rice in the 2013 season currently drawing to a close than expected last April, heightening the global paddy production forecast, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported today. FAO now forecasts 2013 global paddy production at 747.0 million tonnes, or 498.0 million tonnes on a milled basis. The resulting 1.5 percent year-to-year increase still falls short of the long-run pace of 2.0 percent...

The Asia-Pacific region is making good progress in the fight against transboundary animal diseases, FAO announced today. Five years after its establishment in Bangkok, the European Union funded Regional Cooperation Programme on Highly Pathogenic Emerging Diseases (EU-HPED), collaboratively implemented by FAO, WHO and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), has provided significant support to enhance capacities of countries in the region in their response to highly pathogenic and emerging diseases.  The...

With the right strategy and approaches, hybrid rice development in Asia has great potential to achieve a breakthrough in stagnating rice yield growth, and would help produce additional food for a hungry world, a senior FAO official said today. “Achieving a sustainable increase in rice productivity will be a challenge in the years to come due to aggravating constraints in production such as shortages of water, land and labor, and the...

Now is the time for Asia and the Pacific to embrace sustainable and eco-friendly agricultural mechanization, FAO announced today.  However, the process must be systematic as there have been negative consequences of agricultural mechanization in the past which resulted in land and environmental degradation. As the agricultural labour force has been declining sharply the need for mechanization increases. The Asia-Pacific region has emerged as the largest market in the world, in...

With urbanization and increasing scarcity of labour in rural areas across the region, there is a growing need for the development of farm mechanisation to address productivity enhancement in a sustainable manner. It is equally important to address the quality of, and use of machinery and equipment in post-harvest and processing operations. The development of sustainable agricultural mechanisation strategies (SAMS) is critical to ensuring the environmental soundness of agricultural machinery used...