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Agriculture is feeding the world’s 7.3 billion people but at an unbearable social and environmental cost. Clayton Campanhola, Director of the FAO Plant Production and Protection Division, explains the need for sustainable food and agriculture on a global scale. He describes the FAO policy work, including key policy messages, to achieve this goal. See all videos in the Policy and Governance series :  AR  CH  EN   FR  RU  SP

If global population and food consumption trends continue, by 2050 the world will need 60 percent more food than is available today. Matthias Halwart, Senior Strategic Programmer Officer of the FAO Sustainable Agriculture Programme, explains the importance of sustainable agricultural intensification and its contribution to meeting this demand. He describes the FAO policy work, including key policy messages, to achieve food security.  See all videos in the Policy and Governance series:  AR  CH  EN   FR  RU  SP

The productivity and sustainability of agriculture, forestry and fisheries depend on healthy and biodiversity-rich ecosystems. Thomas Hofer, Team Leader of the FAO Forestry Department and Caterina Batello, Senior Officer with the FAO Plant Production and Protection Division explain the importance of ecosystem services and its contribution to food security. They describe the FAO policy work, including key policy messages, to achieve this goal. See all videos in the Policy and Governance series :  AR  CH  EN   FR  RU  SP

End hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition are at the heart of the sustainable development goals. The World has committed to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2030. But climate change is undermining the livelihoods and food security of the rural poor, who constitute almost 80% of the world’s poor. The effects of climate change on our ecosystems are already severe and widespread. Climate change brings a cascade of impacts from agroecosystems to livelihoods. Climate change impacts directly agroecosystems, which in turn has a potential impact on agricultural production, which drives economic and social impacts, which impact livelihoods. In other [...]

Agriculture and social protection are fundamentally linked in the context of rural livelihoods in Africa. Poor and food-insecure families depend primarily on agriculture and partly on non-farm income and private transfers for their livelihoods, and are the main target of social protection interventions (FAO, 2015). When embedded within a broader rural development framework, stronger coherence between agriculture and social protection interventions can assist in improving the welfare of poor small family farms by facilitating productive inclusion, improving risk-management capacities, and increasing agricultural productivity – all of which enable rural-based families to gradually move out of poverty and hunger (Tirivayi et [...]

There is increasing recognition at the global level of the role that agriculture and social protection can jointly play in combating hunger and poverty. Efforts are also being made at the country level, in Africa and elsewhere, to bring together these two domains. However, more needs to be done. The full range of benefits to be derived from greater coherence between agriculture and social protection is not yet widely understood, nor are the means through which coherence can be promoted. This document presents a Framework for Analysis and Action with the purpose of filling this knowledge gap. By drawing from [...]

The 21st century faces multiple and complex challenges. The new 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda galvanizes and commits the International community to act together to surmount them and trasform our world for today's and future generations. 

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.

The government of Burundi has timidly decreased State involvement in strategic value chains, with a view to open the market, enhance effectiveness, and reduce the fiscal deficit. With regards to social protection, no specific national programmes are in place, though the country joined the Scaling Up Nutrition movement in 2013 committing to tackle the alarming levels of malnutrition in the country (the highest in the region). For more country policy briefs by FAPDA please see here.

This State of Food Insecurity in the World report takes stock of progress made towards achieving the internationally established Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) and World Food Summit hunger targets and reflects on what needs to be done, as we transition to the new post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda. The report reviews progress made since 1990 for every country and region as well as for the world as a whole. Progress towards the MDG 1 target, however, is assessed not only by measuring undernourishment, or hunger, but also by a second indicator – the prevalence of underweight children under five years of age. [...]