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Latin America and the Caribbean is falling short of the Sustainable Development Goal 1: Ending poverty. After two and a half decades of progress, poverty and extreme rural poverty increased by two percentage points each between 2014 and 2016. By 2017, there were an estimated 59 million poor and 27 million extreme poor in rural areas of the region. During the last 20 years, Latin America and the Caribbean has been at the forefront of global experiences in the reduction of rural poverty. The new regional context implies that the countries of the region must not only protect the progress made [...]

The FAO Blue Growth Initiative (BGI) can contribute to resilient communities to maintain and preserve cultural heritage through sustainable fisheries and aquaculture management for Indigenous Peoples. The Blue Growth Initiative seeks to balance the sustainable management of aquatic resources with economic and social benefits for local communities through traditional knowledge and practices, capacity development and knowledge sharing, food security and nutritional benefits, and an increased voice in resource management and policymaking. Blue Growth will support Indigenous Peoples in achieving the 2030 Agenda across multiple SDGs and targets. This infographic will highlight targetted regional facts on Indigenous management and benefits derived [...]

This studies report aims at contributing to achieve SO4. Particularly, it serves to produce and share information and results in order to deliver under Output 2.2 of SO4, notably “Evidence-based food loss and waste reduction programs are developed at national, regional and global levels”. Fresh fruits and vegetables contribute significantly to food and nutrition security, poverty reduction and to economic development in the countries belonging to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Smallholders who make little use of post-harvest (PH) technologies produce most of the fresh fruits and vegetables supplied to mass markets in the Region. The high qualitative [...]

Many social protection programmes, including cash transfers, public works programmes and asset transfers, target women as main beneficiaries or recipients of benefits. Extending social protection to rural populations has great potential for fostering rural women’s economic empowerment. However, to tap into this potential, more needs to be done. There is much scope for making social protection policies and programmes more gender sensitive and for better aligning them with agricultural and rural development policies to help address gender inequalities. Recognizing this potential and capitalizing on existing evidence, FAO seeks to enhance the contribution of social protection to gender equality and women’s empowerment [...]

Sustainable Development Goal 1, ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere, is the most ambitious goal set by the 2030 Agenda. This Goal includes eradicating extreme poverty in the next 12 years, which will require more focused actions in addition to broad-based interventions. The question is: How can we achieve target 1.1 and overcome the many challenges that lie ahead? By gaining a deeper understanding of poverty, and the characteristics of the extreme rural poor in particular, the right policies can be put in place to reach those most in need. This report presents the contribution that agriculture, food systems [...]

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) make a significant contribution to growth and socio-economic development in countries and regions around the globe. The widespread adoption and integration of ICTs has reduced information and transaction costs, improved service delivery, created new jobs, generated new revenue streams, and helped conserve resources. ICTs have also transformed the way businesses, people and governments work, interact, and communicate.  ICT innovation is also revolutionizing the agriculture and food sectors. In developed economies, innovations such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, data analytics and block-chain are changing the way agriculture does business. Remote sensors collect data on soil [...]

With the aim of eradicating poverty and hunger, FAO provides countries with evidence-based policy support to design social protection programmes that are nutrition-sensitive, risk-informed and shock-responsive, and advocates to expand social protection coverage to poor and vulnerable rural people. FAO, together with its main partner UNICEF, has been generating evidence on the productive impacts of social protection in rural areas and supporting the design of broader rural development strategies  that combine social protection programmes and agricultural interventions.  This flyer presents success stories from Zambia and Lesotho, showing how social protection can change the life of rural people, lifting them out [...]

For the third year in a row, hunger is on the rise again and affects 821 million people in the world. In addition, one third of the global population suffers from malnutrition. Eradicating hunger and malnutrition by 2030 requires strategies, public policies, national laws and programs that guarantee the right to adequate food for everyone, contribute to reducing poverty and improve people’s diets according to each country’s specific context. This publication presents the structural causes of hunger and malnutrition and introduces FAO’s framework of action to achieve a solid political commitment and design long-term legal strategies to achieve Zero Hunger. [...]

This document summarizes the online discussion Eradicating extreme poverty: What is the role of agriculture? which was held on the FAO Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum) from 3 to 24 April 2018. The discussion was facilitated by Ana Paula de la O Campos and Maya Takagi of FAO. This online discussion was part of a broader reflection on the part of FAO towards refining and improving its approach to the eradication of extreme poverty, by using its experience in supporting the development of agriculture and the livelihoods of rural dwellers towards the realization of SDG1. Over [...]

The implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda is just at the onset. Pursuing the wide and ambitious Sustainable Development Objectives (SDGs) poses major challenges at all levels, from the sub-national, to the regional and the international level, and calls for a timely decision of effective policy actions in a quickly-evolving world of scarce resources. In this context, the ability to design sound policies and monitor their outcomes is a key requirement. Measuring progress towards international goals and their national and subnational specifications is of paramount importance.  This pocketbook presents, at a glance, selected key indicators on agriculture and food security, [...]