Reports and briefs
Enhancing the potential of family farming for poverty reduction and food security through gender-sensitive rural advisory services
This paper is based on an examination of a broad selection of existing literature on the subject of gender-sensitive rural advisory services (RAS) and has four objectives. The first is to document gender-differentiated barriers in access to RAS and the challenges of effectively targeting women...
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Online discussion on ICTs and Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in partnership with the Global Data on Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN); Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR); the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the World Bank are inviting interested individuals to participate in the online discussion on ICTs and Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition currenlty held on the e-agriculture platform.
The proposed online debate on the e-Agriculture platform seeks to explore the interaction between use of ICTs in agriculture and issues around open data in agriculture and nutrition and its effective use, with a focus on establishing what benefits and possible losses, can accrue to farmers, especially small holder family farmers in developing countries, if technology and open data are used conjunctively.
Read more:
http://bit.ly/2qF9cLr
Trainings, tools and databases
Public purchases of food from family farming, and food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean
This book, prepared by the Brazil-FAO International Cooperation Program, presents the most important lessons learned from the experiences currently underway in the region, which serve as guidelines for countries that wish to create or improve public procurement programmes. The book also analyzes the...
Reports and briefs
Rural-urban linkages and food systems in sub-Saharan Africa
This paper examines the role of rural-urban linkages in fostering inclusive and sustainable food systems and how these contribute to rural transformation and, more broadly, to sustainable and inclusive development. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, the paper analyses the interdependencies between...
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Reports and briefs
Food safety, trade, standards and the integration of smallholders into value chains - A review of the literature
This paper analyses how food safety challenges and requirements affect smallholder farmers' access to markets. High food safety standards in destination countries force governments of developing countries to make strategic choices about establishing domestic standards and upgrading the...
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Reports and briefs
E-agriculture in action
E-agriculture or ICT in agriculture holds great promise in providing access to innovative solutions to many challenges faced by smallholder resource-poor farmers. Access to the right information at the right time makes a great impact on the livelihoods of communities involved in agriculture and...
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Reports and briefs
In Brief: Pulses for food security and nutrition: How can their full potential be tapped?
FSN Forum brief based on the online discussions Pulses are praised for their health, environmental and economic benefits. How can their full potential be tapped? and Pulses: innovations from the field to the cooking pot, which were held from 25 May to 19 June 2016 and from 14 October to 4 November...
Rebuilding West Africa's Food Potential
FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) just released a publication dedicated to West Africa food potential which intends to support the decision process in the region. This comes at a time when many countries in the region have embarked on implementing their national agricultural strategies derived from the CAADP process. Indeed, after the food crisis of 2007-2008, West African countries took measures to create the enabling environment for greater investment in agricultural development.
Rebuilding West Africa’s Food Potential, presents a range of successful case studies and recommends priority areas for action. According to the study, boosting productivity, fostering competitiveness and ensuring that small-scale farmers have greater access to markets are key for West Africa to realize its full agricultural potential.
For more information, access the full publication: Rebuilding West Africa's Food Potential: Policies and market incentives for smallholder-inclusive food value chains
Smallholders dataportrait
The smallholder farmers' dataportrait is a comprehensive, systematic and standardized data set on the profile of smallholder farmers across the world.
It generates an image on how small family farmers in developing and emerging countries live their lives. It is about putting in numbers, the constraints they face, and the choices they make so that policies can be informed by evidence to meet the challenge of agricultural development. Currently, the data portrait provides information for 14 countries.
The State of Food and Agriculture 2014
More than 500 million family farms manage the majority of the world's agricultural land and produce most of the world's food. We need family farms to ensure global food security, to care for and protect the natural environment and to end poverty, undernourishment and malnutrition. Goals can be thoroughly achieved if public policies support family farms to become more productive and sustainable; in other words policies must support family farms to innovate within a system that recognizes their diversity and the complexity of the challenges faced.
The State of Food and Agriculture 2014: Innovation in family farming analyses family farms and the role of innovation in ensuring global food security, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. It argues that family farms must be supported to innovate in ways that promote sustainable intensification of production and improvements in rural livelihoods.
Read more:
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4040e.pdf