Food crises continue to dominate the global outlook for 2024. Extreme weather events driven by the climate crisis are interacting with new and intensifying conflicts and economic instability, pushing humanitarian needs higher. The reality of high needs and likely further contraction of bilateral donor funding means that the 2024 humanitarian response planning process must further sharpen its focus on those most at risk and the most cost-effective ways to meet their immediate food security needs. In 2024, within the Humanitarian Response Plans, FAO is seeking a total of USD 1.8 billion to assist 43 million people to produce their own food. At a time of funding cuts, this support is both life-saving and cost-effective – on average for every USD 50 a donor provides, rural families are producing USD 300 in food.

FAO’s Office of Innovation is working with partners on an FAO Chief Scientist initiative on Foresight on emerging agrifood technologies and innovations, aligned with the UN 2.0 process and the FOFA 2022: engaging all key actors of agricultural innovation systems in the foresight on emerging technologies and innovations to better prepare for alternative futures, feeding it into anticipatory action, and convening the global community for constructive dialogue and knowledge exchange. The aim is to support policymakers, investors and innovation actors in their approaches and decision-making. The study assesses a selection of technologies and innovations, which potentially could be of paramount importance in addressing agrifood challenges until 2050, as well as the most important trends and drivers that will influence the emergence of agrifood technologies and innovations and their triggers of change, including some regional aspects. The goal is also to build plausible future scenarios for the evolvement of the emerging technologies and innovations in the future with the time horizon of 2050 to inform future-oriented policymaking.

This publication shares the individual stories of South Sudanese refugees and host communities in Uganda and Kenya that have benefited from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO’s) agricultural livelihood interventions in refugee settings. It explores FAO’s life-saving and resilience-building work with refugees, and calls for a shift in the way durable solutions are achieved. FAO believes that participating in agriculture can transform the lives of forcibly displaced people; that it can build their resilience to climate change, their self-reliance to dictate their own futures, and contribute to local peace between refugees and host communities. Based on FAO’s experience in displacement settings and the testimonies of people affected by forced displacement, the publication also lays out the needed responses required from stakeholders to deliver durable solutions.

Agrifood systems generate significant benefits to society, including the food that nourishes us and jobs and livelihoods for over a billion people. However, their negative impacts due to unsustainable business-as-usual activities and practices are contributing to climate change, natural resource degradation and the unaffordability of healthy diets. Addressing these negative impacts is challenging, because people, businesses, governments and other stakeholders lack a complete picture of how their activities affect economic, social and environmental sustainability when they make decisions on a day-to-day basis. The State of Food and Agriculture 2023 looks into the true cost of food for sustainable agrifood systems. 

Amid a worsening climate crisis and slow progress in cutting greenhouse gases, sustainable agrifood systems practices can help countries and communities to adapt, build resilience and mitigate emissions, ensuring food security and nutrition for a growing global population. FAO is working with countries and partners from government to community level to simultaneously address the challenges of food security, climate change and biodiversity loss. But none of this will ultimately succeed unless the world commits to a significant increase in the quality and quantity of climate finance. Check more here.