News archive 2010

More than 250 000 people have already signed an FAO petition on the 1billionhungry.org website calling on governments to make the elimination of hunger their top priority as the eye-catching campaign spreads across the globe.

Dihé, a nutrient-rich indigenous produce holds out the hope of a better life for the impoverished women who harvest it on the edges of Lake Chad, and may also one day make a contribution to fighting malnutrition. An FAO-EU project is helping the women gather and process a local variety of the blue-green algae Spirulina.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf has praised Namibia for acting swiftly and effectively to halt the spread of Rift Valley Fever (RVF) in the country during recent outbreaks. Alertness and prompt reactions by national livestock bodies prevented potentially devastating consequences on lives, livelihoods and food security.

Governments could save billions of dollars by stepping up the prevention and control of high impact animal diseases, some of which pose a direct threat to human health. Many other animal diseases have a negative impact on people's livelihoods.

Using the energy crop jatropha for biodiesel production could benefit poor farmers, particularly in semi-arid and remote areas of developing countries. But expecting jatropha to substitute significantly for oil imports in developing countries is unrealistic.

A toolkit produced by FAO is designed to help resolve, prevent and mitigate the growing problem of conflict between humans and wild animals. With the world's population growing at some 75 million a year, humans and wildlife are having to squeeze ever more tightly together, thereby increasing the risk of conflict between them.

While timely food assistance and agricultural inputs helped avert a post-earthquake food crisis in Haiti, insufficient funding for agriculture continues to hamstring efforts to improve food security and local food production.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) have signed a cooperation agreement to deliver jointly a series of online courses on knowledge management for developing countries. The first joint online course which is scheduled for the third quarter of 2010 covers social media tools.

In 2008, as the cost of foodstuffs reached record levels, FAO launched a series of input supply projects to help farmers grow more food and earn more money. In Nepal - a country reeling from a decade-long conflict and struggling with drought-induced food shortages - this effort helped generate more resources and kept thousands of vulnerable Nepalese farmers from falling deeper into poverty and hunger.

FAO is granting free and open access to its central data repository, FAOSTAT, the world's largest and most comprehensive statistical database on food, agriculture, and hunger, the UN agency announced today. FAOSTAT contains over one million data points covering 210 countries and territorries and is an important tool in the fight against poverty and hunger.