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FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific Hiroyuki Konuma today briefed Ambassadors and senior embassy officials from some 25 FAO member countries with embassies in Bangkok on the new FAO Director General’s Medium Term Plan (MTP) 2014-17 and the Programme of Work and Budget (PWB) 2014-15. The MTP and PWB will be presented to FAO’s governing Conference in June 2013 for adoption. The document refocuses FAO’s strategic...

The promotion of underutilized indigenous food crops such as Sago palm, which has a high starch yield potential and grows in swamps and wetlands with minimal competition from other food crops for land and water use, is of growing importance as the developing world is headed towards serious future food security challenges in alleviating widespread chronic hunger, Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific...

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations announced today that earlier this week it designated the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute (HVRI), in the Heilongjiang Province of the People’s Republic of China (PR China), as the FAO reference centre for animal influenza. The designation of FAO reference status, awarded by the FAO Director General, is based on a competitive selection and evaluation process. It is an outcome of many...

First forecasts for the 2013 wheat harvest point to production increasing to 690 million tonnes – 4.3 percent up on 2012. This would be the second largest crop on record, according to the latest issue of FAO’s quarterly Crop Prospects and Food Situation report (CPFS). While the production increase is expected mostly in Europe, prospects for the 2013 wheat crop in the Far East are generally favourable with output expected to...

The Bangkok Recommendations were today unanimously adopted at a regional workshop to promote greater employment opportunities for disabled people in the agribusiness sector. The 11 recommendations will serve as pathway to greater employment opportunities in the agribusiness sector for people with disabilities. Disabled people and their families account for about 40 percent of Asia’s total population. Though disability-inclusive initiatives are a growing trend, greater efforts are needed to increase job opportunities...

A regional workshop opened today to promote disability-inclusive agribusiness. The 2-day workshop brought together the Asia-Pacific Development Center on Disability (APCD), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Nippon Foundation in a joint effort to work towards a disability-inclusive private sector engagement. According to the World Report on Disability, a joint publication of the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, disabled people comprise 15 percent...

A consultation with development partners and donors in support of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), today called for more focused efforts to reduce poverty and hunger in South Asia. The consultation was jointly organized by FAO and the SAARC Secretariat in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank. South Asia, despite continued efforts to reduce hunger, remains home to more than half of the total hungry population in Asia....

FAO and TABLE FOR TWO (TFT) International today announced the signing of a 3-year agreement aimed at jointly improving nutrition in Asia while reducing hunger in the region with the long term goal of building a world without hunger and poverty. The total number of people who suffer from chronic hunger in the Asia-Pacific region was 563 million in 2010-12, or 65 percent of the world total. Hunger in Asia...

Ensuring adequate, safe and nutritious food for all is a high priority and long-standing goal of ASEAN and FAO. This goal aims to contribute significantly to achieving the Millennium Development Goal 1 and the World food Summit targets to cut global hunger by at least half by 2015 as well as fulfilling the aspirations set forth by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Food security, as defined by the World Food...

Fisheries experts from more than 13 countries opened the first of two consultations today that could herald new ways of reducing hunger and poverty by cataloguing and improving aquatic genetic resources for food and agriculture. Most farmed fish have not been domesticated the way that farmed crops and livestock have been, so farmed fish remain very similar to their wild relatives. The meeting will consider the benefits of genetic improvement...