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Fall Armyworm (FAW) continues to spread into new territory, moving further east and north in Asia, as well as north from sub-Saharan Africa. As it spreads, more governments are faced with decisions about how to react quickly and sustainably to the arrival of this new crop pest. Fortunately, they can benefit from over two years’ worth of experience gleaned from across sub-Saharan Africa as well as decades of experience from the Americas. The lessons learned there by governments, resources partners and farmers can help guide decision-makers now being affected by FAW. This policy guide reviews the experiences and lessons learned [...]

Meeting the global food demand in 2050 requires increasing the global food production by 50 percent. This intensification will need to be achieved in alignment with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.   

The way food systems have evolved over past decades means that they now face major risks, which in turn threaten the future of food systems themselves. Food systems have seriously contributed to climate change, environmental destruction, overexploitation of natural resources and pollution of air, water and soils. Despite the global average improvement in calorie production and major development of the food and agricultural product markets, huge inequalities in food access and repartition of the added value have emerged, leading to new serious nutritional and social problems. Based on a review of the most recent scientific knowledge, this report emphasizes Low-Income [...]

Well-performing CBF has the potential to rapidly restore forests in ecological terms and scale up sustainable forest management to the national level, while improving local livelihoods of billions of the most marginalized people around the world. The purpose of this framework is to facilitate assessment of the extent of CBF, the status with regards to the enabling conditions, and the impact of CBF on forests and local livelihoods at the country level. Thus, this assessment framework can serve to provide important insights into the successes, as well as the continued shortcomings of CBF at the country level. Also available in Spanish [...]

The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture presents the first global assessment of biodiversity for food and agriculture worldwide. Biodiversity for food and agriculture is the diversity of plants, animals and micro-organisms at genetic, species and ecosystem levels, present in and around crop, livestock, forest and aquatic production systems. It is essential to the structure, functions and processes of these systems, to livelihoods and food security, and to the supply of a wide range of ecosystem services. It has been managed or influenced by farmers, livestock keepers, forest dwellers, fish farmers and fisherfolk for hundreds of generations. Prepared [...]

The Government of Botswana has made efforts in recent years to improve the control of pesticides in the country. In addition to ratifying international agreements, it enacted the Waste Management Act in 1998 and the Agrochemicals Act in 1999. However, there was little evidence of the enforcement of these regulations, and a review of their relevance and application was needed. In addition, serious gaps in the ability to control all aspects of the pesticide life cycle were identified. Against this background, the project sought to reduce the risk to public health and the environment posed by poor pesticide management and [...]

The roots and tubers industry in sub-Saharan Africa has been growing steadily in recent years. Nevertheless, a series of challenges, including lack of access to finance and climate change related events, has prevented the majority of actors in these value chains, who are mainly small farmers and small processors, from taking advantage of such growth. In order to properly assess such challenges, the project “Strengthening linkages between small actors and buyers in the roots and tubers sector in Africa” conducted a series of studies to identify relevant gaps, constraints and opportunities to develop tailored financial products and risk management strategies [...]

This policy brief analyses Ecuador’s trade, productive and price policies for maize and their effect on farmers’ level of protection. The minimum support price enacted until 2017, turned out to be a non-operative policy due to a higher market price, which created incentives for speculative investments by traders. To counteract speculative investments the Ministry enacted a price range for maize, the price ceiling is expected to counteract future speculations. Productive and trade policies aiming to protect small farmers seem to achieve their objective. The effective rate of protection increased for all farm production systems from 2016 to 2017 with the [...]

Advocacy on FAO’s emergency prevention activities along the food chain, in addition to providing information. This series presents FCC-EMPRES core activities through successful programs and initiatives illustrating FAO’s role in supporting member countries to prevent, prepare and respond to transboundary, high impact animal and plant pests and diseases and food safety threats. See more information sheets here.

At the time of project formulation, Eritrea had undertaken a significant amount of preparatory work to characterize the hazards posed by pesticides, and to develop a communication strategy and legislative framework to address these. In 2008, an FAO project identified 400 tonnes of obsolete and unknown pesticides, around 1 400 m3of contaminated soil, 12 000 empty containers and 5 400 contaminated sprayers. The current project was conceived to safeguard and soundly dispose of the stockpile of obsolete pesticides and highly contaminated materials, held in 294 stores scattered across the country. In addition to the environmentally sustainable disposal of the inventoried [...]