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This report presents the findings of a multi-year FAO study undertaken on over 900 farms in ten different countries that measured, using field data, benefits gained through the use of innovative farming practices designed to boost the resilience of farmers in the face of natural disasters and other shocks. Its findings show that the use of good disaster risk reduction practices offer significant economic gains at the household level, and also that – because they are usually low-cost and easily implemented – they hold significant potential for reducing disaster risks at the national and regional scales as well. These results [...]

This paper is an accompaniment to the FAO study, The Agricultural Sectors in the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs): Analysis. Building on the results of that study, this paper outlines key types of support developing countries will require to effectively implement and report on their agricultural sector commitments, and ultimately scale up ambition in the coming years. 

The food and agriculture sector of Mongolia lacked the technical capacity required to implement national agricultural and livestock policies and programmes. There was a need for expertise to strengthen capacity in farming technology, practices and local expertise, above all in livestock breeding, animal feed, horticulture and vegetable production, beekeeping, aquaculture, poultry production and honey sectors to improve beneficiaries’ farming technology, production, practice and knowledge. The objective of the project was to support the implementation of the National Programme for Food Security, the National Mongolian Livestock Programme and other agricultural policies aimed at enhancing agricultural production and food security and [...]

This paper sheds new light on internal migration processes by estimating migration flows for 31 countries, focusing on step migration and on return migration back to rural areas from urban areas. The approach is to estimate the shares of the population (by gender) that move or stay in rural and urban areas over three periods (childhood and two forward periods). Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the estimation was done with an information-theoretic procedure using maximum-entropy econometrics to estimate migration frequencies by population groups. Sizeable urban to rural migration flows are found, with rural returnees often contributing substantially [...]

The FAO Food Price Index is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities

The bulletin reviews the development of international prices for oilseeds, oils and meals as reflected by FAO’s price indices and spots recent salient policy changes and related private sector measures concerning global, regional and national markets for oilcrops and derived products.  

The Ex-Ante Carbon-balance Tool (EX-ACT) is an appraisal system developed by FAO providing estimates of the impact of agriculture and forestry development projects, programmes and policies on the carbon-balance. The carbon-balance is defined as the net balance from all greenhouse gases (GHGs) expressed in CO2 equivalent that were emitted or sequestered due to project implementation as compared to a business-as-usual scenario. EX-ACT is a land-based accounting system, estimating C stock changes (i.e. emissions or sinks of CO2) as well as GHG emissions per unit of land, expressed in equivalent tonnes of CO2 per hectare and year. The tool helps project designers [...]

The Food Price Monitoring and Analysis (FPMA) database includes over 1400 monthly domestic retail and/or wholesale price series of major foods consumed in 94 countries and weekly/monthly prices for 85 internationally traded foods. The Tool provides easy access to the data, allowing users to quickly browse and analyse trends of single price series, create comparisons among countries/markets/commodities, and download charts, data and basic statistics such as maximum and minimum levels, averages, percentage changes and standard deviations over different time periods. The Tool was developed in 2010 as part of FAO’s initiatives to address the soaring food prices.

Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) and smart contracts provide a unique opportunity to bring greater efficiency, transparency and traceability to the exchange of value and information in the agriculture sector. By utilising digital records, cryptography and the disintermediation of transaction processing and data storage, DLTs can improve both agricultural supply chains and rural development interventions in a number of ways. The technology has the potential to simplify and integrate agricultural supply chains, enhance food safety, facilitate access to trade finance and other types of agricultural financial services, improve market transparency, provide greater legal certainty to land-tenure systems and strengthen accountability for [...]

This leaflet summarizes the modeling framework used in the corporate publication "The future of food and agriculture - Alternative pathways to 2050" and related inputs from the FAO Global Agriculture Perspectives System Partial Equilibrium model (GAPS) and the Environmental Impact and Sustainability Applied General Equilibrium (ENVISAGE). Click here for the publication "future of food and agriculture".