Albania, with United Nations partners, has launched a groundbreaking joint programme leveraging digitalization to advance sustainability goals with systemic interventions particularly targeted at smallholder farmers.  

The “Digital Agriculture and Rural Transformation" (DART), is a three-year (2024—2027) programme financed by the Digital Transformation Window call of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Fund with a total budget of USD 3.3 million.

Raised with livestock, Mahammad and his community have long depended on animals as their main source of income. Moving around together solidified bonds among herding families, fostering collaboration that laid the foundation for their future cooperative. Together, they established Eko-Süd (Eco-Milk), chaired by Mahammad, with the aim of maximizing the production of milk and other dairy products.

In 2023, a new chapter began for Eco-Milk when the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in partnership with the Government of Azerbaijan, provided Mahammad’s cooperative with essential tools, including feed grinders, a dairy processing facility and generators. These tools made basic tasks much easier and faster, allowing the cooperative to focus on what truly matters: producing high-quality milk and dairy products for their community.

In the village of Koram, around 150 kilometers east of Almaty in Kazakhstan, Aishagul's life has been marked by her husband’s debilitating injury and the severe illnesses of her elderly parents-in-law.A turning point came when Aishagul's sister-in-law, aware of her dire situation, introduced her to a greenhouse harvesting training programme. This initiative was part of the broader Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) project, known as CACILM-2, and funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).

New approaches and strengthened collaboration on restoration are needed to ensure that the Mediterranean’s forest ecosystems thrive, experts from the region will hear this week as they gather for the 8th Mediterranean Forest Week (8MFW) in Barcelona, Spain. 

The week, entitled “Working together for sustainable and resilient Mediterranean forests – Towards a collaborative roadmap”, is organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the European Forest Institute Mediterranean Facility (EFIMED) and the Joint Organizing Committee.

World Food Day is commemorated every year on 16 October, the date FAO was founded in 1945. The theme this year – Right to foods for a better life and a better future – was meant to highlight access to adequate, safe, affordable and nutritious food as a fundamental human right. FAO works to build a just and equitable world in which everyone has a food-secure, nutritious, varied and affordable diet. To highlight this mandate on World Food Day, FAO offices in Europe and Central Asia organized activities of an impressively wide variety in nature, format and scope.

On 18 October, the local landowners, by a qualified majority, approved the re-allotment plan, marking Chiflik as the eighth village in North Macedonia to undertake land consolidation. This initiative is part of the European Union-funded “Enhancing Land Consolidation in North Macedonia” project, co-funded and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Water Economy.

For more than a year, FAO has been facilitating and supporting the accession process in Tajikistan under an ongoing pesticide management and disposal project from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in Central Asia and Türkiye. These efforts have paid off, with the Republic of Tajikistan officially ratifying the Rotterdam Convention on 1 October 2024.

Representing 22 national parliaments from across Europe and Central Asia, including both those from the European Union (EU) and non-EU countries, participants at a regional meeting of parliamentarians on agrifood systems have raised their voices for the transformation of rural agrifood systems to be more inclusive and more resilient. After two days of intense and constructive discussions, the regional meeting, hosted by the Speaker of the Parliament of Albania in Tirana, and facilitated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), concluded yesterday.

For centuries, camels were indispensable for the people of Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous and landlocked country in Central Asia, where they once carried yurts and belongings for nomadic families traversing the highlands. They also gave them milk, meat, and wool. “The camel can lift the heaviest load” is still a popular saying here, even though most Kyrgyz are sedentary today, with other sources of income. And even the few who still move their livestock to highland pastures in summer, use pickup trucks to get around. As a result, only 260 camels are left today – of some 12 000 that dwelled the Kyrgyz plains around the 1950s. 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has released a flagship report entitled The state of food systems in the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSEC) region, offering a detailed analysis of agrifood systems across the Black Sea region, highlighting key trends, challenges and opportunities in 12 countries. The publication was produced under the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization Regional Cooperation Centre for Sustainable Food Systems project, which was launched in December 2020 through the FAO–Türkiye Partnership Programme on Food and Agriculture.