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Small and medium agrifood enterprises (SMAEs) such as processors, transporters and other service providers, play an important role in achieving sustainable development objectives. For instance, they connect farmers to urban markets; make significant investments in rural areas; provide employment to vulnerable populations such as women and youth; and propel the modernization of agrifood value chains. In sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture comprises 53 percent of total employment and 15.5 percent of gross domestic product, supporting SMAEs can have great implications for pro-poor growth and rural transformation. To support SMAEs in fulfilling their potential, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United [...]

The Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme is a leading policy support initiative at FAO that works with countries in Africa to strategically prioritize, reform and implement policies on food and agriculture.By monitoring and analysing public budgets and trade and market policies, MAFAP guides governments to repurpose their agricultural support to accelerate the transformation of agrifood systems. It also collaborates with policymakers to identify priorities for policy and investment reforms in key commodity value chains and supports implementing policy changes so that agrifood systems can deliver affordable healthy diets to all and inclusive markets for farmers.

Food security means that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. Food safety is interlinked with and essential to achieving food security.In times of food insecurity, humanitarian relief in the form of food aid is often distributed by specialized organizations, such as the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). Under conditions of food assistance there are food safety considerations that must be taken in account so as to carefully evaluate the impact on food availability while [...]

Mobility is a vital strategy employed by pastoralists to capitalize on the scarce availability of resources in variable environments, making pastoralism economically feasible and environmentally sustainable. Through mobility, pastoralists can produce animal-sourced products that provide food and income security to populations in the world’s rangelands. Such a practice also provides a range of benefits to the environment while fostering the capacity to adapt to changing social and natural environments.With a few exceptions, policies have largely not kept up with new scholarship and development discourse that acknowledges the importance of mobility to pastoralism. There is a lag in and resistance to [...]

The need to urgently transition food systems to net-zero, nature-positive that can nourish all people, leaving no one behind is more critical than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic has furthered deepened complex challenges we already face from hunger and nutrition, climate and nature, and societal inequity. Innovation offers a profound opportunity to achieve these transitions and help unlock challenges across food systems. The white paper ‘Transforming Food Systems: Pathways for Country-led Innovation’, published by the World Economic Forum Food Systems Initiative and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), presents an action-oriented roadmap for countries looking to accelerate [...]

Acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in 20 countries or situations – hunger hotspots – in the next months. Organized violence or conflict remain the primary drivers, followed by weather extremes and climate variability. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt economies. High food prices and low household purchasing power are major economic concerns for food insecurity rising. The report provides country-specific recommendations on priorities for emergency response and anticipatory action to address existing humanitarian needs and ensure short-term protective interventions before new needs materialize.

The 2022 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2022) highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or equivalent in 53 countries/territories, driven by persistent conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic shocks, and weather extremes. The number identified in the 2022 edition is the highest in the report’s six-year existence. The report is produced by the Global Network against Food Crises (which includes WFP), an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger.

Sustainable Public Food Procurement (PFP) represents a key game changer for food systems transformation. It can influence both food consumption and food production patterns. It can deliver multiple social, economic, and environmental benefits towards sustainable food systems for healthy diets. This publication aims to contribute to the improved understanding, dissemination, and use of PFP as a development tool in particular in the case of school meals programmes. In this Volume 2, researchers, policymakers, and development partners can find extensive evidence of the instruments, enablers, and barriers for PFP implementation. It also provides case studies with local, regional, and national experiences from [...]

This paper presents a new methodological approach aimed at measuring progress towards sustainable agriculture in countries and across agri-food systems typologies, by measuring socio-economic and environmental dimensions with available national statistics, with sixteen indicators defined and constructed from FAOSTAT data. A trend analysis is carried out at country level over the time series 1961-2018, with country results aggregated by four agri-food systems typologies: traditional; land-intensive and capital-intensive mixed systems; and modern food systems. The analysis provides a novel framework for the analysis of progress in achieving sustainable agriculture by country and agri-food system type, that can be implemented effectively and [...]

The Progress towards Sustainable Agriculture initiative (PROSA) is a framework that seeks to complement ongoing efforts on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and particularly indicator 2.4.1, to support country-level assessments using data already available at the national level. Making agriculture more sustainable – productive, environmentally friendly, resilient and profitable is fundamental, as agriculture remains the main source of livelihood for the majority of the world’s poor and hungry. The pathway towards sustainable agriculture must ensure increasing output, but also make more efficient use of increasingly scarce global resources, be resilient to and help mitigate climate change, and improve human well-being. This [...]