News archive 2019

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva today hailed the countries committed to combating unsustainable and illegal fishing, calling the rapid international adoption of the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) a “fantastic achievement”. 87 countries are signatories and another 18 are preparing to adhere.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) today launched the United Nations' Decade of Family Farming and a Global Action Plan to boost support for family farmers, particularly those in developing countries.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to renew its participation in the UN Rotterdam Convention, an international treaty governing trade in hazardous pesticides.

Family farmers, who are on the frontline of global efforts to fight undernourishment and other forms of malnutrition and to promote healthy eating, require stronger support amid rising hunger and obesity around the world, the President of the UN General Assembly, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, said in Rome today.

Focusing only on producing more food is not enough, it is also crucial to produce food, that is healthy and nutritious in a way that preserves the environment, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today at the Caritas Internationalis’ General Assembly in Rome.

Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus today called for a complete change in the ways to address the often-related issues of hunger and conflict. He made the appeal at an event at FAO headquarters in Rome highlighting progress made by the FAO-Nobel Peace Laureates Alliance for Food Security and Peace.

“Agroforestry can help diversify and sustain (food) production and provide vital social, economic and environmental benefits for land users at all scales,” she said in opening remarks at the 4th World Agroforestry Congress in Montpellier, France.

The global decline in bee populations poses a serious threat to a wide variety of plants critical to human well-being and livelihoods, and countries should do more to safeguard our key allies in the fight against hunger and malnutrition, FAO stressed today as it marked UN World Bee Day.

The heads of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) today concluded a joint visit to the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) with a call for greater investment in nutrition.

“The negative impacts of soil erosion are ever more evident and the need to work jointly ever more urgent,” FAO Deputy Director-General, Climate and Natural Resources, Maria Helena Semedo, said while opening a three-day symposium focusing how to measure soil erosion and its economic costs.