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Trade has a critical role to play in eradicating global hunger. It has a direct impact on food prices and volumes. Boubaker Ben Belhassen, Director of the FAO Trade and Markets Division together with Ekaterina Krivonos, Economist explain how trade policy can contribute to food security worldwide. They describe the FAO policy work, including key policy messages.  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 [...]

The twelfth joint edition of the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook provides market projections to 2025 for major agricultural commodities, biofuels and fish. The 2016 report contains a special feature on the prospects for, and challenges facing, Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the ten year Outlook period slowing demand growth will be matched by efficiency gains in production, implying relatively flat real agricultural prices. However, market and policy uncertainties imply a risk of resurgent volatility. The outlook for agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa is for rising food availability, which will support a declining incidence of undernourishment. The sector’s prospects could be much improved by more stable [...]

This paper uses scenario analyses to investigate how reductions in food loss and waste (FLW) in the European Union (EU) could influence prices in sub-Saharan Africa – as a source and destination of traded agricultural and food products. In addition to a baseline “business as usual” (BaU) scenario, four scenarios with 50-percent reductions are enacted using the Modular Applied GeNeral Equilibrium Tool (MAGNET). The analysis provides insights on potential impacts in terms of medium- to long-term global and local price changes in sub- Saharan Africa and the mechanisms behind them – changes in production, consumption and trade patterns. It also provides [...]

Global trade in agricultural and food products has grown rapidly in recent decades, with countries becoming more engaged in this trade, whether as exporters or importers. This trend is expected to continue over the coming decades. As a consequence, trade will play an increasingly important role in influencing the extent and nature of food security across all regions of the globe. The challenge has therefore become one of ensuring that the expansion of agricultural trade works for, and not against, the elimination of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. This edition of The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets aims to reduce [...]

In a similar but wider scope than the previous special issue produced in 2011 during the 4th UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV), this updated Special Issue of Agriculture and Food Security Statistics now includes information not only for of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), but also for all Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). The current issue presents a compilation of up-to-date available agricultural statistics covering th e general nature of the agricultural sector in LDCs, LLDCs and SIDS ranging across the crops, livestock, forest and fisheries sub-sectors. Basic data and indicators covering [...]

In a high and volatile food price setting, two aspects determine rural women’s  ability to absorb and respond to shocks: the inequalities that create a gender gap in rural development and women’s traditional roles in society and the  household. This discussion paper points to these two aspects that, in general  terms, reduce women’s ability to cope with food price volatility. Rural women,  traditionally responsible for providing food and health in the household, face major  constraints in fulfilling their roles, rendering them more vulnerable to food price spikes. Major recommendations include building on rural women’s resiliency and mitigating negative coping strategies [...]

In Cambodia, the government has given increasing priority to commercial rice production by promoting higher yield seeds and expanding irrigation and post production infrastructure. Relevant reforms have been adopted in favour of the fisheries sector. Child malnutrition remains a critical development challenge for the country despite the enhancement of nutritional policies and programmes over the past few years. For more country policy briefs by FAPDA please see here.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union 15 new countries entered the world stage. The CIS countries are very different in size, economic structure and agricultural profile. The same is true even for the smaller group of seven CIS countries that are members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). By late 2013 seven of the twelve non-Baltic ex-Soviet countries had acceded to the WTO: Armenia, Georgia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Tajikistan. Four others were in the process of WTO accession: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Turkmenistan had started to prepare for an eventual accession process.  This publication examines the experience and main issues of twelve [...]

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 [...]