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Parliamentarians are agents of change, and their role is critical to ensure a world where all people are eating healthy diets from sustainable, inclusive, and resilient agri-food systems. Members of the Parliament hold a strategic position as they can shape policies and actions for improving food availability, accessibility, and affordability for all people, especially the most vulnerable, to ensure their food security and good nutrition for health and wellbeing. Objectives that are more important than ever in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic.This handbook is addressed to Parliamentarians to support them in adopting domestic legislation, approving budget allocations, and [...]

Against the background of fast expanding trade and a surge in food import bills, which has come to characterise much of developments shaping global food markets in 2020/21, early forecasts for 2021/22 point to resilient food trade and a continuation of strong international prices amidst many supply and demand uncertainties.This report provides supply and demand forecasts for basic foodstuffs, fish and fishery products along with price analysis and policy information. The report’s special feature of this report puts recent trends in global food trade under the spotlight, with particular focus on how commodity flows have measured-up during the COVID-19 pandemic. [...]

The publication aims at presenting best practices and lessons learned from two programmes implemented in Kenya and in the United Republic of Tanzania which capitalized on FAO's experience and knowledge in inclusive food systems development, targeting both the policy and institutional level and the direct support to value chain actors (i.e. SMEs). The focus of the programme was twofold, covering both the policy level (through improved inter-sectoral coordination and capacity building of institutions) and the pilot of inclusive investments strategies by small and medium agro-industries to source from small-scale producers. Four food subsectors were selected, based on their nutrition relevance [...]

14 May 2021, Rome - In a sign that food security and nutrition are increasingly seen as key vectors for sustainable development, the United Nations Commission on Population and Development (CPD) approved a resolution likely to enrich and intensify discussions at the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit.  The agreement, as well as the UN Secretary General's report to the Commission to which FAO made substantial contributions, span a vast array of themes - from the need to make healthy diets affordable to all and the importance of assuring income opportunities for all even as capital-intensive industry transformations may reduce the need [...]

Each year, the Guatemalan State invests about 1 869.2 million Quetzals (USD 245 million) in the national School Feeding Programme (PAE, by its acronym in Spanish), which feeds 2.4 million children. This research estimates that, by including gastronomy in the PAE, it is possible to prevent in a school year (180 days), the waste of 561.6 tonnes of food, equivalent to USD 864 000, or 0.35 percent of the invested budget. This food waste is partly due to children refusing to eat food that they do not find tasty.These data are derived from a small-scale, pre-and post-design pilot intervention in [...]

This action sheet is part of a series of action sheets developed under the seven key priority areas of the FAO COVID-19 Response and Recovery programme, the FAO umbrella programme designed to proactively and sustainably address the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic. Each action sheet includes a project proposal in support of countries most in need for which FAO is leveraging high-level political, financial and technical expertise. All action sheets are gathered on the Food Coalition web hub,  where members of the Coalition - a multi-stakeholder global alliance for a unified global action in response to COVID-19 -  can easily access [...]

On top of a decade of exacerbated disaster loss, exceptional global heat, retreating ice and rising sea levels, humanity and our food security face a range of new and unprecedented hazards, such as megafires, extreme weather events, desert locust swarms of magnitudes previously unseen, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people – most of them in low-income developing countries – and remains a key driver of development. At no other point in history has agriculture been faced with such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a hyperconnected world and a precipitously [...]

La pandemia de la enfermedad por coronavirus (COVID-19) está poniendo en peligro la salud humana y desestabilizando los sistemas alimentarios que conforman los cimientos de la salud. A menos que tomemos medidas inmediatas, podríamos enfrentarnos a la emergencia alimentaria mundial más grave y de mayores proporciones registrada en más de medio siglo.La FAO solicita inversiones iniciales por valor de 1300 millones de USD para dar una respuesta global ágil y coordinada que permita garantizar alimentos nutritivos para todos, tanto durante la pandemia como después.El Programa de respuesta y recuperación de la COVID-19 permite a los donantes aprovechar el poder de [...]

This action sheet is part of a series of action sheets developed under the seven key priority areas of the FAO COVID-19 Response and Recovery programme, the FAO umbrella programme designed to proactively and sustainably address the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic. Each action sheet includes a project proposal in support of countries most in need for which FAO is leveraging high-level political, financial, and technical expertise. All action sheets are gathered on the Food Coalition web hub, where members of the Coalition - a multi-stakeholder global alliance for unified global action in response to COVID-19 -  can easily access [...]

This technical brief discusses the process of development of the Uganda national strategy on post-harvest loss reduction in grain supply chains which was developed in the framework of the project using the FAO food loss analysis methodology. The brief shares recommendations and lessons learned from the development of the strategy, which can be used or adapted by governments developing a postharvest loss reduction strategy to coordinate interventions, engage with key stakeholders, and invest and allocate resources to achieve post-harvest loss reduction goals.