FAO.org

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...

FAO's Regional Rice Initiative in Asia, an effort to make rice farming more productive and sustainable, is gaining momentum, FAO officials announced today. The Initiative was endorsed earlier this year by FAO member States at the 32nd Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Today, the Regional Rice Initiative was given a global platform during a side event at the 149th FAO Council Session in Rome, Italy. The Initiative represents a...

Chile, China and Morocco today won recognition from FAO for outstanding progress in fighting hunger, an achievement that sees them join a growing group of countries to have reached international targets ahead of an end-of-2015 deadline. During a ceremony at FAO headquarters, the Organization's Director-General, José Graziano da Silva, awarded diplomas to China and Morocco for obtaining the Millennium Development Goal 1 (MDG-1). Chile, which had already reached its MDG-1 target,...

As territorial disputes and competition for increasingly scarce land and natural resources intensify, government and key land stakeholders across Asia and the Pacific are being urged to improve governance relating to issues of land tenure in both rural and urban contexts. “Millions of people, particularly the rural poor, depend on access to farmland, forests, rangeland and fisheries for their livelihoods,” Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and...

A training course which contributes to more practical and effective management of fisheries in Asia and the Pacific was launched today by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Essential Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM) training course recognizes that traditional stock-based fisheries management approaches have often been ineffective in the complex fisheries of the Asia-Pacific region. The ecosystem...