FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia

13/12/2024

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.

11/12/2024

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.

11/12/2024

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”.

09/12/2024
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.
05/12/2024
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). 
29/11/2024

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.

27/11/2024

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). 

25/11/2024
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.
18/11/2024

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.

15/11/2024
Five countries in Europe and Central Asia became better prepared to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in their agrifood systems through support of a project implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and funded by the Russian Federation. Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan took initial actions on AMR in the agrifood sectors, with special emphasis on the livestock sector, and implemented measures to reduce the development and spread of AMR.
14/11/2024
The agricultural sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina faces significant gender disparities. Women account for nearly half (49 percent) of the rural population and 20 percent of employed women work in the agriculture sector, yet only 18 percent of farms are managed by women and only 38 percent of women own or have part-ownership of agricultural land. Strengthening capacities of women from rural areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina and supporting agriculture and rural development policies with an emphasis on gender equality are among the main goals of the project "Women Driving Resilience in Agriculture and Rural Areas," implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and UN Women and financed by Sweden.
08/11/2024

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.

07/11/2024

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.

05/11/2024
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).
04/11/2024

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.

31/10/2024
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.
31/10/2024
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.
30/10/2024

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.

24/10/2024
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.
21/10/2024
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.