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Achieving Food Security in the future while using water resources in a sustainable manner is a major challenge for us and the next generations. Agriculture is a key water user. A careful monitoring of water productivity in agriculture and exploring opportunities to increase it are required. But how can we monitor the performance of water use in agriculture? FAO has developed a publicly accessible near real time database using satellite data that allows monitoring of agricultural water productivity.

Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA) are essential to sustainable agriculture and food security.  They are the raw materials to meet the current and future needs of crop improvement and adaptation programmes. It is therefore very important to conserve and sustainably use them.WIEWS is the information system used by FAO for the preparation of periodic, country-driven global assessments of the status of conservation and use of PGRFA. WIEWS also monitors, on the basis of country reports, the implementation of the Second Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, adopted in 2011. National Focal [...]

DAD-IS is the Domestic Animal Diversity Information System maintained and developed by FAO. It provides you with access to searchable databases of breed-related information and photos and links to other online resources on livestock diversity. Furthermore, you can find the contact information of all National Coordinators for the Management of Animal Genetic Resources. It allows you to analyse the diversity of livestock breeds on national, regional and global levels including the status of breeds regarding their risk of extinction.

FAO has been monitoring the world’s forests at 5 to 10 year intervals since 1946. The Global Forest Resources Assessments (FRA) are now produced every five years in an attempt to provide a consistent approach to describing the world’s forests and how they are changing. The Assessment is based on two primary sources of data: Country Reports prepared by National Correspondents and remote sensing that is conducted by FAO together with national focal points and regional partners. The scope of the FRA has changed regularly since the first assessment published in 1948. These assessments make an interesting history of global [...]

AIDmonitor gathers information from diverse databases to help users analyze Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows with a focus on Food Security, Nutrition, Agriculture and Rural Development, determine priorities for assistance and formulate resource mobilization strategies. AIDmonitor takes into account only commitments, without including negative (aggregate) re-allocations to the donor country. This might generate a discrepancy with the ODA CRS on the total value for donor, without influencing any other result.

The Food Loss and Waste database is the largest online collection of data on both food loss and food waste and causes reported throughout the literature. The database contains data and information from openly accessible reports and studies measuring food loss and waste across food products, stages of the value chain, and geographical areas. In October 2019, more than 480 publications and reports from various sources (e.g., subnational reports, academic studies, and reports from national and international organizations such as the World Bank, GIZ, FAO, IFPRI, and other sources), which have produced more than 20 thousand data points, were included. Data [...]

Global time series have been maintained over more than 60 years. To meet diverse user needs, data from each statistical collection are available through various formats, tools and information products.

The Food and Agriculture Microdata (FAM) Catalogue provides an inventory of datasets collected through farm and household surveys which contain information related to agriculture, food security,  and nutrition. The FAM catalogue is populated by datasets which are collected directly by FAO and datasets whose collection are supported in some way by FAO. Our aim is to be a one-stop-shop containing metadata on all agricultural censuses and surveys which are publically available as well as provide direct access and/or links to the microdata.FAM is continuously updated as new datasets from FAO and member countries become available. Organizations which collect relevant data [...]

The FAO Statistics Division, the World Bank and IFAD have joined forces to build RuLIS, as a tool to support policies for reducing rural poverty. Information on agricultural income and rural livelihoods is crucial for the formulation of evidence-based development policies.

This paper is the first in a series of ongoing and planned efforts to build on current knowledge and develop methodologies for estimating new components of food systems emissions, with a view to disseminate the information in FAOSTAT. It provides a methodology for estimating the GHG emissions associated with historic and current domestic food transport, in an effort to inform countries of the environmental impact of their food distribution systems.Our efforts respond to the call of the upcoming Food Systems Summit to characterize the role of food and agriculture to accelerate achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. In particular, they [...]