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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...

A more proactive approach is needed to prevent foodborne diseases as food contamination continues to be a significant public health issue in both developed and developing countries of Asia, a senior FAO official warned today. “Food plays such an important role for our health and nutritional status – it is a basic necessity of life and central to our wellbeing, yet foodborne diseases and food contamination are significantly increasing as public...

While improvements in food safety in the Asia-Pacific region have been observed in recent years, many countries in the region have yet to implement internationally accepted standards in food handling and preparation throughout the food chain. Indeed, more than 200 known diseases are contracted through the spread of contaminated food. Governments and other stakeholders in the implementation of food safety standards from across Asia and the Pacific will participate in a...

As countries and stakeholders in Asia-Pacific prepare to join a global alliance promoting agricultural processes that are ‘climate smart’, they must act decisively and urgently, taking into account the needs of food producers and end users, a senior FAO Official told a regional consultation today. The Asia-Pacific Regional Consultation meeting on Climate Smart Agriculture, 19-20 June 2014, in Hanoi is co-organized by FAO, GIFAR, the Governments of The Netherlands and...