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The Government of Palestine officially endorses a new national food and nutrition security policy and a corresponding National Investment Plan. Read the whole article here.

The urgent need for a positive impact on the livelihoods of livestock keepers is elaborated in this Regional Strategy for Animal Health and Production for FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (REU). This strategy aims to present the main aspects of REU’s work on livestock and includes three pillars – animal health, animal production, and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – along with seven cross-cutting issues, among them gender, environmental sustainability, community farming as a business, and coordination with other international organizations. The strategy follows FAO’s commitment to the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through continuous and dedicated work [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted digital financial inclusion trends across the world in many and complex ways. In developing and emerging contexts, this crisis also holds the potential to propel an unprecedented acceleration in the process of financial digitization and turn out to be a game-changer for digital financial inclusion.The aim of this study is to illustrate the opportunities and risks associated with the surge in uptake and use of digital financial service, providing ideas on how to leverage the paradigm changes affecting the overall approach and perspective towards digital financial services – on the part of various stakeholders – [...]

FAO  urges  governments,  academia,  NGOs,  international  community  and  indigenous  peoples authorities to take specific measures that ensure the respect to indigenous peoples’ rights during the pandemic and that includes an intercultural approach when dealing with the emergency, safety and health aspects of the response. Also available in Spanish and French

Unlike any other crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted food value chains at all levels (production, processing, logistics and even consumer behaviour to name a few). The impacts vary across countries and are constantly changing with the spread of the pandemic as governments, stakeholders and other actors in value chains adopt and implement a broad spectrum of measures to manage the spread of the virus and mitigate its impacts on food insecurity and poverty. The present brief reviews secondary information pertinent to the impacts of COVID-19 on dairy producing/processing cooperatives, and their coping strategies, with a view to developing policy recommendations [...]

This document summarizes the online discussion 'Improving communications for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in Africa: How should we move forward?' held on the FAO Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum) from 2 to 30 June 2020. The discussion was facilitated by Scott Newman of FAO’s Regional Office for Africa in Accra, Ghana.The emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through the misuse of antimicrobial drugs is complicating the management of many infectious diseases, thus endangering animal health and welfare as well as food production. The complexity of the AMR crisis and antimicrobial pollution requires a coordinated and integrated [...]

South-South Cooperation (SSC) is the mutual sharing and exchange of development solutions between developing countries, including knowledge, experiences and good practices, policies, technology, and resources.The project in Uganda (Phases I and II) under the FAO-China SSC is among the Programme’s longest and most successful collaborations. Here, you can read the personal stories of some of the project participants, beneficiaries, and stakeholders. Their stories highlight the personal and community-level effects that the project has created. Their stories will also demonstrate the successes and positive impact of the project in their personal and professional lives while bringing to light the persistent challenges [...]

As part of the efforts to find sustainable solutions to complex land tenure issues, multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) create an inclusive forum where actors can discuss problems and propose solutions to improve governance of tenure and provide better access to natural resources. This publication highlights how MSPs at regional, national and local level demonstrate forward thinking, including innovative practices and approaches to respond to the above mentioned social challenges, for the benefit of all.

The aim of this report is to define the strategy for the Science and Policy Interface under Component 1 of the Resilient Food Systems Programme (RFS) Hub. Under this component, FAO and UN-Environment Programme, in partnership with RFS country projects and a range of other actors and platforms and institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, aim to address institutional and policy barriers to inclusion of ecosystem services-aware approaches into policies and investments for improved and sustainable smallholder agriculture and natural resources. The focus of this component is the facilitation of dialogue, models, policies, and institutions that bridge the agricultural and environmental agendas [...]

The 2008 global food price crisis, and the resurgence of food prices in 2010-2011, caused both widespread concern and expectations. On the one hand, countries whose food supply depends on procuring food from international markets saw food price spikes as threats to their national food security. On the other hand, investors saw in these price spikes an opportunity to make profitable investments in agriculture. Either as threat or opportunity, food price spikes raised interest in Africa, whose lands are fertile and have unrealised potential. Concerns of a possible land acquisitions in Africa, and in particular the impacts of Large-Scale Land-Based [...]