The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has trained Armenian farmers’ formal and non-formal groups in social media to modernize the way rural communities tell their stories and promote their initiatives. 
The Local Empowerment of Actors for Development (LEAD) project, supported by the European Union and implemented jointly by FAO and the United Nations Development Programme, is strengthening farmers’ groups, and giving them the effective social media tools and skills to reach out from rural Armenia to the world to promote their local products. 

Brucellosis is a disease that primarily affects ruminants in many countries around the world. Due to its zoonotic nature – being transmissible from animals to humans – it often affects farm workers and rural populations. To further prevent brucellosis in Central Asia and the Caucasus, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has organized a three-day workshop, starting today, to assess countries’ status in the progressive control of brucellosis. The event brings together representatives from public health and veterinary authorities from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. 

Georgian viticulturalists can now gain in-depth knowledge on winter and green pruning in vineyards by accessing online technical video courses. The video courses by Julio Prieto Diaz, FAO’s International Integrated Vineyard Management Expert, were dubbed in Georgian and are available on the web. The online learning platform was developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) support under the IV phase of the European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (ENPARD IV) funded by the European Union and Sweden.  

From September to December 2024, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in partnership with the Centre for Sociological Research “Zerkalo”, carried out a large-scale assessment in rural areas of Tajikistan to understand smallholder farmers’ interactions with information and communication technologies (ICT), including their awareness, attitudes, the use in farming, barriers to access, and perceptions of the benefits of the technologies.

The second ministerial meeting was held on 18 January in Berlin, Germany on the sidelines of the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture 2025. Speakers included Cem Özdemir, German Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture, Ludmila Catlabuga, Moldovan Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry, as well as Raimund Jehle, FAO Regional Programme Leader and Representative in the Republic of Moldova.

The Investment Centre of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), has launched Digital Technologies for Agriculture in Türkiye showcasing how AgTech solutions – from smart irrigation to traceability and e-commerce – are poised to enhance productivity and sustainability in Türkiye. The publication identifies the most promising AgTech solutions and assesses their current and potential uptake, along with barriers to adoption, and the supporting ecosystem. 

The One Health approach emphasizes the interconnected health of humans, animals, and ecosystems. By fostering collaboration across sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and environmental management, One Health aims to tackle complex global health challenges, such as emerging diseases, through integrated solutions. In a bid to enhance national capacities and bridge gaps between sectors, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), alongside the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), known as the Quadripartite, launched a Russian-language version of its One Health course. 

Although agriculture in Turkmenistan has a modest share of the gross domestic product (GDP), the sector holds strategic importance, as a significant portion of the population lives in rural areas and over 40 percent of the workforce is employed in agriculture. One of the gaps in the transformation process after 1991 is the lack of a modern crop monitoring system that provides reliable and timely crop information for informed decision-making, and thus contributes to sustainable land management and enhanced productivity in crop production. To address this need, collaboration has begun between Turkmenistan and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to introduce cutting-edge technology and skills in land use monitoring and remote sensing.

Nestled in the town of Berd, in the picturesque Tavush region of Armenia, a group of women are proving the power of sisterhood. Much like the beans they cultivate, these women are strong, and their bonds are deeply rooted.
Beans have long been a staple of rural life, symbolizing resilience in agricultural communities. 

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the lives and livelihoods of people living in rural areas could transform to be more sustainable through combining priorities and finding solutions that address needs in both the agriculture and tourism sectors. Recognizing the missed opportunities caused by this lack of an integrated, multistakeholder approach to rural development, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) initiated a Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP), with the aim of establishing local agricultural and rural development plans to advance sustainability.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way food is moved, sold, and bought in urban areas worldwide – creating some new trends and accelerating others. In Europe and Central Asia, the pandemic and geopolitical tensions disrupted supply chains, affecting food availability and prices in cities. Understanding how this new reality has reshaped the urban food distribution landscape is the subject of a joint report by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and FAO’s Investment Centre, titled Building resilience in urban food logistics systems.

On 21 November 2024 in Syunik Marz, Armenia, high school students in Goris received training in tree planting and forest management. The activity was carried out by the local Forestry branch of Hayantar SNCO, the state organization for forest management in Armenia, together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Armenia. The community awareness raising event was organized within the framework of the project “Sustainable Forest Management in Armenia,” implemented by the Ministry of Environment and FAO. The project is co-funded by a grant from the Green Climate Fund, FAO, the Austrian Development Agency, the World Wildlife Fund and the Autonomous Province of Bolzano-Italy. A significant amount of funding is provided by the Government of Armenia.

Women living in rural areas of Tajikistan, Türkiye and Uzbekistan are a large portion of the population and play vital roles in both farming and non-farming activities. Among the many challenges they face are gender-based barriers that affect their efforts to build resilient livelihoods. Poor social and physical infrastructure, climate variability (which affects crop yields and prices) and structural inequalities widen gender gaps and limit rural women's access to economic opportunities. For the past three years, the FAO Türkiye Partnership Programme on Food and Agriculture has helped these women gain access to technical skills and equipment and has guided responsible institutions to ensure that policies and practices in agriculture and forestry are aware and responsive to the needs and priorities of rural women.

As part of One Country One Priority Product (OCOP) programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), “Sustainable Chestnut Value Chain Development”, the "Chestnut Route" was established to promote sustainable development in the Albanian Alps by capitalizing one of the area’s most distinctive natural products, chestnuts.

The hiking opportunity already awaits mountain lovers and those celebrating  International Mountain Day (11 December) under the annual theme “Mountain solutions for a sustainable future – innovation, adaptation and youth”.

Representatives from over 30 countries gathered on 5 December in Heraklion, Greece, at the “Shaping the future of aquaculture in the Mediterranean and Black Sea Region,” conference. The two-day event is the region’s largest regional aquaculture conference. Organized by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Government of Greece, with the financial support of the European Union, it marked a pivotal moment for the future growth of the aquaculture sector.

In Central Asia, proper pesticide lifecycle management has been overlooked in past years due to gaps in the legal frameworks and a lack of experience and skill among the institutions and stakeholders responsible for managing pesticides. As a legacy of the former Soviet Union, it is estimated that around half of the global stocks of obsolete pesticides are in this region. The first week of December calls attention to proper pesticide use and soil health, with the International No Pesticide Use Day (3 December) and World Soil Day (5 December). 

The Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union hosted an event in Brussels this week to present best practices and initiatives carried out by the Regional Office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations for Europe and Central Asia, located in Budapest. The conference marked the opening of a photo exhibit, offering a visual tour of FAO’s work in the region. The event discussed ways to increase resilience and competitiveness of the food and agriculture sectors of Europe and Central Asia, with a particular emphasis on FAO’s work in the Western Balkans, green agriculture, sustainable diets, preventing food loss and waste, resilience against natural disasters, and digital agriculture.

The growing recognition of sustainable agrifood systems in addressing climate change is reflected in international negotiations at the recent Conferences of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The day dedicated to Food, Agriculture and Water on 19 November 2024 at COP29 highlights this intensified focus. The day opened with the launch of the Baku Harmoniya Climate Initiative for Farmers (Harmoniya Initiative), a collaboration between the COP29 Presidency and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) brought a critical message to the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan: increased investment in agrifood systems is essential to address the climate crisis. Over the two weeks of the international meeting and through events, initiatives and several publications, FAO emphasized that agrifood systems hold the solutions to tackling major interlinked challenges facing people and the planet, including climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, food insecurity, and poverty.

Avian influenza, often referred to as bird flu, is a major transboundary disease with zoonotic potential. By 2024, more than 800 cases of human infection with avian influenza A(H5N1) virus were reported across 23 countries. The disease is present and actively spreading across Europe as well. While avian influenza viruses do not presently transmit easily between humans, continued circulation in poultry could lead to mutations that increase human-to-human transmissibility. In response, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is offering online training to equip European veterinarians, who are the first responders, with the skills needed to detect and react to this cross-species virus, helping to mitigate severe health impacts on both animals and people.