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Food systems provide for all people’s nutritional needs, while at the same time contributing to economic growth. The food and agriculture sector has the primary role in feeding people well by increasing availability, affordability, and consumption of diverse, safe, nutritious foods and diets,aligned with dietary recommendations and environmental sustainability. Applying these principles helps strengthen resilience and contributes to sustainable development.

La agricultura familiar es un sector clave para lograr la erradicación del hambre y el cambio hacia sistemas agrícolas sostenibles en América Latina y el Caribe y el mundo. Los pequeños agricultores son aliados de la seguridad alimentaria y actores protagónicos en el esfuerzo de los países por lograr un futuro sin hambre. En nuestra región, el 80% de las explotaciones pertenecen a la agricultura familiar, incluyendo a más de 60 millones de personas, convirtiéndose en la principal fuente de empleo agrícola y rural.  No sólo producen la mayor parte de los alimentos para el consumo interno de los países de [...]

Download the FAO VCA-Tool  This analytical tool allows users to systematically gather, store and manage data for the implementation of cost-benefit and value-added analyses. Users can build different scenarios and analyze the socio-economic impact of various policies — such as domestic prices liberalization, opening to international trade, new technologies adoption. Users can use the software to build a baseline scenario which corresponds to a benchmark situation; once users generate the policy measures or changes in the value chain, their impacts will modify the original reference scenario.  The software is the complementary tool to the "Value Chain Analysis for Policy Making: Methodological Guidelines for [...]

According to FAO, almost one-third of food produced for human consumption – approximately 1.3 billion tonnes per year – is either lost or wasted globally. Food losses and waste (FLW) impact both food security and nutrition and the sustainability of food systems, in their capacity to ensure good quality and adequate food for this generation and future generations. This report adopts a systemic perspective to analyze the impacts of FLW on the sustainability of food systems and on food security and nutrition. It reviews the wide range of causes of FLW, identifying broad categories and levels of causes. The report is deliberately oriented towards action. [...]

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and its national, regional and international partners are committed to monitoring and analysingfood and agricultural policies (MAFAP) in order to provide policy-makers in developing countries, as well as their development partners and other stakeholders in civil society, with the best possible information on the effects of policies and public expenditure influencing agricultural investment decisions and ultimately foodsecurity. Furthermore, MAFAP supports governments in their efforts to identify, articulate and assess options for reforming food and agriculture policies. MAFAPworks with national and regional partners to: establish a community of practice on policy [...]

Food Losses and Waste (FLW) impact the sustainability and resilience of agricultural and food systems and their ability to ensure food security and nutrition for all for this generation and for future generations. Reduction in FLW also supports better use of natural resources. The CFS acknowledges that FLW is a consequence of how food systems function. It calls for all stakeholders – States, including other relevant levels of governance, international organizations, the private sector and civil society – to recognize food security and nutrition as central objectives of sustainable food systems and to individually and collectively address FLW to improve [...]

Eradicating hunger will require a significant increase in agricultural investment and, more importantly, it will require improving the quality of investment so that it benefits those that need it most.  The CFS Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems – known as RAI – acknowledge that the starting point for defining how responsible investment in agriculture and food systems can contribute to food security and nutrition is the recognition and respect for human rights. They are a set of ten principles that apply to all types and sizes of agricultural investment including fisheries, forests and livestock. They address all [...]

Aimed at policy-makers, project designers and field practitioners, this publication provides the conceptual foundation for a new set of FAO handbooks on sustainable food value chain development. It defines the concept of a sustainable food value chain, presents a development paradigm that integrates the multidimensional concepts of sustainability and value added, highlights ten guiding principles, and discusses the potential and limitations of the approach. By doing so, this handbook makes a strong case for placing sustainable food value chain development at the heart of any strategy aimed at reducing poverty and hunger in the long run.

This technical paper focuses primarily on price transmissions in small-scale and large-scale fishery and aquaculture value chains in 14 developed and developing countries. Although the study is focused on the small-scale sector, both the small-scale and large-scale sectors were analysed in order to demonstrate differences between the two. The document begins with an overview of the entire project and its global implications, reviewing the importance of fisheries and aquaculture to livelihoods, food security and trade as well as the rationale for value chain analysis. It then presents detailed and summarized country-specific information on the research and analysis conducted, presenting analysis [...]

Policy-makers worldwide have traditionally assumed that fisheries are a male domain. The policy agenda has for decades given priority to the production sphere,  where men generally predominate, and has largely neglected processing and  marketing activities, where women often play a key role. Recent sex-disaggregated  data (from the World Bank, FAO and WorldFish Center) represent an initial, positive  step in providing the quantitative evidence needed to convince policy-makers of  the impo rtance of women in the sector. The data indicate that women represent  47 percent of the 120 million people engaged in capture fisheries. Worldwide,  they are even more important in [...]