This report sets out the BOND Project’s activities and findings in two Central European countries – Poland and Czech Republic – focusing on small scale organic farming. Both countries share a common history as part of the Eastern bloc after WWII and then post-soviet reality from the end of the twentieth...

An FAO training has been a turning point in Rita’s shea business. Now she is an advocate and employer of other rural women, promoting sustainable livelihoods that can offset deforestation in her region. 

Did you know that this squash I am holding has more vitamin A than golden rice?” - Angelita Mangangan, an organic farmer from the Philippines, for #IGrowYourFood

Ana Claudia Rauber es una joven agricultora familiar que vive y trabaja en su propiedad y de su familia en Cantagalo, estado de Paraná - Brasil. De los estudios de posgrado en Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural Sostenible, la agricultora transformó toda la propiedad en producción agroecológica, y contó con el apoyo de...

Every year, FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific celebrates the importance of World Food Day. This year, given the COVID-19 global pandemic and the disruptions it has caused to livelihoods and food security, our celebrations are muted, yet within this context, today’s World Food Day itself has become...

The ecological and risk -management rationales for livestock mobility are well established. Yet, few studies evaluate the economic benefits and costs of maintaining or resuming mobile, extensive livestock production compared to sedentary or semi-extensive production. Here, we empirically evaluate pastoralists’ claims that transhumance, a specific type of long-distance herd mobility,...

This paper examined poverty among rural women in Nigeria with a view to identifying why poverty persists among this population. The paper adopted education, employment and earning as variables for discussions. Secondary data were sourced from the surveys of the World Bank, International Labour Organisation and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)...

A concerted effort is underway to better recognize, promote, and value the different ways women and men contribute to work related to the environment, forests, and climate change. The push is backed by national environmental policies that are helping to restore forest cover, as well as a specific and robust...

The commercialisation of traditional processed products from cassava, such as fufu, potentially offers new opportunities for income generation to rural households in Nigeria, Ghana and other parts of West Africa. Several options exist for the commercialisation of fufu, including the production of a shelf-stable product? This minimises the use of...

The preservation of fruit and vegetables by simple sun drying is practiced widely throughout arid and semi-arid areas, for example in Uganda. The use of low cost, solar drying technologies, can significantly improve product quality thereby providing practical opportunities for developing small-scale enterprise, particularly in rural areas, and creating employment...

This practice describes how Calliandra tree can be planted and grown in Uganda. First starting by seed collection and pre-treatment, then construction of seeds bed, seed sowing, and finally filling of polyethene pots with soil.

Ronnie Cumins, uno de los fundadores de Vía Orgánica y director de Regeneración Internacional, nos explica detalladamente esta gran iniciativa que significa un futuro brillante para el planeta.

Value chains are structured in ways that are unfavourable to smallholder farmers who often struggle to access finance, inputs and markets. An IIED webinar discussed how smallholders in East Africa can use technology to overcome those challenges and negotiate with buyers and input and finance providers from a position of...

Agroecology Newsletter of September 2020

This report responds to heightened concerns over rising levels of farmer-herder conflict across a wide band of semi-arid Africa. We assess the quantitative evidence behind this general impression and review the explanations in the scientific literature, in the light of known issues with long-standing attitudes towards pastoralism and mobile populations....

The RPOA-SSF is a political commitment setting forth an ambitious roadmap for the ten years from 2018-2028. It prescribes concrete and coherent measures to address challenges and reinforce opportunities for small-scale fisheries, including by giving fishers a voice in the decisions that affect their livelihoods, by safeguarding environmentally sustainable fishing...

A small scale farmer shows us how she manages to grow crops in a dry area. She harvests rain water which she uses for irrigating the crops. This has helped her to adapt to the effects of climate change. To learn more about our work on promoting organic agriculture, please...

The queen bee is the sole reproductive female in the honey bee colony. That’s why the queen is very important to the colony due to her main task of laying eggs. If the queen's ability to lay eggs is disturbed, a new queen is needed for the colony. This technology...

In 2009, the Laos government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation entered into a bilateral agreement for the implementation of "The Agro-Biodiversity Initiative (TABI)" in upland Laos. The initiative sought to conserve, enhance, manage, and sustainably utilize the biological diversity found in upland farming landscapes to improve the...

Asia-Pacific’s smallholder family farmers produce most of the world’s food, yet they are facing a disproportionate impact on their livelihoods and food security due to the present coronavirus pandemic, a collaboration of FAO and advocacy groups warned today. The COVID-19 impact on the region’s rural communities, and particularly those in developing...