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The food production and supply chain consumes about 30 percent of total end-use energy globally, and contributes to over 20 percent of total annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (excluding emissions or sinks from land use change). A growing worldwide population, changing diets and growing economic development will all serve to increase competition for land, water and energy resources – which already face problems of environmental degradation and, in some cases, scarcity. To address these challenges, agrifood systems at every scale, from the small family farm to the vertically integrated corporate farm level, will have to become more efficient by using [...]

RuralInvest is a free multilingual methodology and toolkit designed to help with the preparation of sustainable agricultural and rural investment projects and business plans. It is participatory, interactive, bottom-up and decentralized way, involving communities, entrepreneurs, government field technicians, project staff and local financing institutions.  Developed by FAO with the support of national and international development partners, RuralInvest contributes to FAO's Strategic Objective to enable inclusive and efficient agricultural food systems.  Any agency, project, organization or private institution managing funds or mobilizing resources for small- and medium-scale agricultural and rural investment can apply RuralInvest to develop: Income-generating projects in agriculture, livestock, fisheries, fish farming, [...]

The report sheds some light on the nature of the challenges that agriculture and food systems are facing now and throughout the 21st century, and provides some insights as to what is at stake and what needs to be done. What emerges is that “business as usual” is no longer an option but calls for major transformations in agricultural systems, in rural economies and in how we manage our natural resources. The following complementary information is available: Overview Summary Infographic FAO's work on Global Perspectives Studies

The smallholder farmers' dataportrait is a comprehensive, systematic and standardized data set on the profile of smallholder farmers across the world.  It generates an image on how small family farmers in developing and emerging countries live their lives. It is about putting in numbers, the constraints they face, and the choices they make so that policies can be informed by evidence to meet the challenge of agricultural development. Currently, the data portrait provides information for fourteen countries. 

This document introduces RIMA-II, the technical evolution of the FAO Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA) tool. RIMA was completely and deeply revised by the FAO Resilience Analysis and Policies (RAP) team; it was technically cleared by a restricted group of high-profile experts. RIMA-II will integrate the old version of RIMA with breakpoint and will guarantee extended analysis and new tools for measuring resilience.

This document introduces RIMA-II, the technical evolution of the FAO Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA) tool. RIMA was completely and deeply revised by the FAO Resilience Analysis and Policies (RAP) team; it was technically cleared by a restricted group of high-profile experts. RIMA-II will integrate the old version of RIMA with breakpoint and will guarantee extended analysis and new tools for measuring resilience.

This document containing the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines on agro-environmental policies is mainly directed at people in charge of making and implementing policies on agriculture, livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture in Latin America and the Caribbean. The guidelines are the result of an extensive consultation process and debates carried out through the project “Strengthening Agroenvironmental policies in Latin America and the Caribbean Through Dialogue and Exchange of National Experiences,” implemented by Brazil between 2012 and 2015 in the framework of South-South Cooperation, with the collaboration of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Nicaragua in the fi rst stage, and Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama and Paraguay in the second [...]

Households living in rural areas of developing countries rely on rain-fed agriculture for their livelihoods and, as such, are highly dependent on climatic conditions. This paper aims at presenting empirical evidence from Zambia to better understand the linkages between climatic shocks, livelihood diversification and welfare outcomes with the goal of highlighting potential policy entry points to incentivize the types of diversification aimed at improving food security and resilience to climate shocks. We also investigate the role of different institutions in shaping diversification decisions to shed some light into potential policy levers at institutional level. We analyze diversification of crops, livestock and income using nationally representative household data from [...]

The purpose of this document is to provide a full description of FAO’s partial equilibrium modelling system known as GAPS. GAPS has been developed by FAO to study the development of global food markets in the long-term and to assess how socioeconomic fluctuations, climate change and investment pay-offs may affect future global food demand. GAPS is a simple self-contained model which specifies demand and supply for agricultural and food commodities with global coverage and great detail for low and middle income countries. It is shaped around FAOSTAT data on production and commodity balance sheets, which enables a detailed specification of agricultural and food commodities. Furthermore, GAPS allows to assess [...]

The calls for action are numerous: at the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in September 2012, governments reaffirmed the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. The same year, the UN Secretary General launched the “Zero Hunger Challenge” campaign to end hunger globally. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, endorsed in September 2015, confirms the importance of achieving food security, and eradicating hunger is the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2). Since 1990, much progress has been made in reducing hunger. Yet, challenges to food security and nutrition remain as pressing as ever. Around [...]