FAO.org

MOVING TOWARDS HUNGER-FREE PORTUGUESE-SPEAKING COUNTRIES The project worked towards strengthening national capacities to eradicate hunger and malnutrition in the nations making up the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. It brought together leading civil society organizations, the private sector, academic institutions and parliamentarians from the countries involved, as well as fostering cooperation between member states to advance the national implementation of the strategy. The benefits were to be felt deep within communities, as with school feeding programmesin Cabo Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe and family farming in Timor-Leste and Angola. Project duration: 03/02/2014  - 03/10/2016

The publication will contain the following contents: 1. INTRODUCTION 2. CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE GOVERNANCE OF FOOD AND NUTRITIONAL SAFETY 3. KEY FACTORS FOR GOVERNANCE PROCESSES IN THE REGION. Critical general analysis on the key factors of SAN governance in LA: Legal and regulatory frameworks; National systems and local spaces for SAN governance, processes; Territorial scope; Participation of civil society and Regional Governance Instances. 4. CASE ANALYSIS: Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru ,. Ecuador and Brazil. 5. GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS. Policy recommendations, with the aim of improving the governance spaces of multisectoral SANs. 6. REFERENCES 

Women play key roles in rural economies. However, compared to men, rural women often experience greater constraints in accessing resources, services and opportunities. Brave Ndisale, Director Ad Interim of the FAO Social Policies and Rural Institutions Division together with Illaria Sisto, Gender and Development Officer explain the importance of empowering women and achieving gender equality to ensure food security and reduce rural poverty. They describe the FAO policy work, including key policy messages, to achieve this. See all videos in the Policy and Governance series :  AR  CH  EN   FR  RU  SP

The National Inputs Voucher Scheme (NAIVS) will be ending at the close of this cropping year (2013/2014). NAIVS provided access to fertilizer and seeds through subsidized input packages for maize and rice. The Big Results Now (BRN) initiative was launched in 2013, which aims to modernize the agriculture sector by promoting public-private partnership and mainstream market oriented measures.

In Senegal, the government has given great importance and priority to the development and promotion of national rice production to achieve self-sufficiency by 2017. Besides, emphasis has been placed on risk management with the creation of the National Agricultural Insurance Company (CNAAS) and several plans dedicated to flood and water management.

From 2003, the Zero Hunger Program and subsequently, in 2011, the Brazil Without Poverty Plan, marked a deliberate convergence of the purposes and actions focused on farmers and family farmers in Brazil. This allowed simultaneous access to social policies and polices focused on agriculture and livestock activities, through a permanent set of public policies, such as rural credit, climate and income insurance, technical assistance and commercialization. This happened in parallel to affirmative actions related to gender, ethnicity and rural youth. To deal with such complex themes such as eradicating hunger and extreme poverty, the Federal Government began to integrate traditionally [...]

Persistent underinvestment in agriculture in developing countries can be attributed to many issues including: climate risks, fragmented input and service markets, seasonal and long-term financing requirements, weak property rights, and market-distorting political interventions. However, the rapid rise in world demand for agricultural products provides incentives for local actors to develop innovative financial and risk management mechanisms. Commercial investors are starting to recognize agribusiness as a promising sector because of the upwards trend in food markets. As most commercial investors focus solely on financial returns, public incentives and support are required to make investments more inclusive and to create business linkages [...]

Attempts have been made to institutionalize government programmes in favour of long-term and comprehensive strategies: notably, the introduction and reinforcement of conditional cash transfer programmes and free food distribution systems. Input distributions continue to be the main policy instrument to support farmers.

This paper reviews rural women’s access to financial services, a key factor of successful rural development strategies. Designing appropriate financial products for women to be able to save, borrow and insure is essential to strengthen women’s role as producers and widen the economic opportunities available to them. For this purpose it is essential to understand how context-specific legal rights, social norms, family responsibilities and women’s access to and control over other resources shape their need for capital and their ability to obtain it. The paper argues that it is important that development strategies that aim to boost rural women’s productive [...]

With the publication of Save and Grow in 2011, FAO proposed a new paradigm of intensive crop production, one that is both highly productive and environmentally sustainable.  Save and Grow calls for “greening” the Green Revolution through an ecosystem approach that draws on nature’s contributions to crop growth, such as soil organic matter, water flow regulation, pollination and bio-control of insect pests and diseases.  This third reprint of Save and Grow comes following the Rio+20 Conference in June 2012 and the launch of the Zero Hunger Challenge by the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. The challenge has five elements: guarantee year-round access to adequate food, end stunting in children, double small [...]