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Young people are key agents of change, with enormous innovation potential. FAO recognizes that youth are already at the frontline to build more sustainable agrifood systems and are best placed to rejuvenate the sector, acquire the knowledge and skills needed to innovate, uptake new technologies, and spearhead the digital transformation. The Organization provides support to countries to develop more youth-inclusive policies, strategies, investments and programmes, in order to enhance the overall well-being of young women and men. This compendium of good practices brings together snapshots of selected FAO’s youth-specific projects, activities and products in support of the Rural Youth Action [...]

The analysis presented in this report examines the impacts of repurposing food and agricultural fiscal support and border support on the cost and affordability of healthy diets and several other key socioeconomic, nutritional and climate indicators. The impacts are estimated at the global level, as well as for various income groups and geographic regions. Scenarios include repurposing fiscal support to producer support targeted to high-priority foods (those where current levels of consumption are below that of recommended levels) and to consumer subsidies targeting high-priority foods.

Extending the coverage of social insurance schemes to rural areas of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is challenging because of high administrative costs and a lack of necessary capacity. As a result agriculture workers tend to be left out of these schemes. This research report aims to understand the main administrative barriers and capacity constraints that may hinder the coverage of agriculture workers in social insurance schemes, and suggest possible strategies that could be considered to address them. Also available in Arabic

Legislating for the ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) is complex, due to the holistic nature of the EAF involving multiple factors that underpin the social, economic, environmental, and institutional aspects of fisheries sustainability. These factors include ecosystems integration, risks, inter-sectoral collaboration, research, participatory processes, monitoring, control, surveillance, and enforcement, among others. To assess how the EAF is being implemented through national policy and legal frameworks, FAO developed A diagnostic tool for implementing an ecosystem approach to fisheries through national policy and legal frameworks.The present legal report on the EAF used the diagnostic tool to assess the alignment of selected policy [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of land administration. Online services were embraced. Working at distance became the new normal. Spatial and other information on tenure rights found new users and increased demand. This publication shares how land administration organizations responded to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most cases are drawn from the UNECE region, however, a broader perspective is also provided. The disrupted era that land administration systems must now operate within is revealed. The pressing demand for digital transformation is shown. Digital transformation ensures ongoing system sustainability and responsiveness to changing societal demands. The publication also exposes the [...]

This paper assesses the food security impacts of widespread agricultural interventions, aiming at increasing agricultural yields, and explores the role played by adjustments in rural households’ livelihood strategies in mediating those impacts. Our empirical strategy combines project and remote-sensing data with a household panel survey and exploits the timing and geographic variation in the roll-out of interventions implemented from 2011 to 2016 by the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), recently renamed as Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI).Results show that agricultural interventions are effectively associated with higher agricultural yields, better food security outcomes and adjustments in livelihood strategies. However, when exploring the [...]

This report aims at inspiring strategic thinking and actions to transform agrifood systems towards a sustainable, resilient and inclusive future, by building on both previous reports in the same series as well as on a comprehensive corporate strategic foresight exercise that also nurtured FAO Strategic Framework 2022–31. It analyses major drivers of agrifood systems and explores how their trends could determine alternative futures of agrifood, socioeconomic and environmental systems. The fundamental message of this report is that it is still possible to push agrifood systems along a pattern of sustainability and resilience, if key “triggers” of transformation are properly activated. [...]

At a global level there is increasing recognition of the role that fisheries policies and social protection can jointly play in combating poverty and hunger, whilst simultaneously promoting sustainable natural resources management. Efforts are being made at the country level to bring together these two domains, but more needs to be done. For fisheries-dependent communities, the full range of benefits derived from greater coherence between fisheries policies and social protection is not yet widely understood; nor are the means through which improved coherence can be promoted. This Framework for analysis and action seeks to fill these knowledge gaps. By drawing from [...]

This Diagnostic tool is complementary to the Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper 671/1, titled Strengthening coherence between social protection and fisheries policies: Framework for Analysis and Action, published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It provides practical instruments for assessing the level of coherence between fisheries and social protection policies and programmes within a country. It supports users in identifying and mapping the scope and nature of links between the two sectors, as well as in understanding people’s experiences and perceptions of these synergies and how the synergies (or lack thereof) affect the livelihoods of fisheries-dependent communities. [...]

This review aims to look into the consequences of (1) the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to mitigate the spread of the pandemic and (2) the policies and programmatic responses to mitigate socio-economic consequences of the pandemic and how they have potentially interacted with child labour drivers, especially in agrifood systems. Thus, this review aims to document and spell out how policy and programmatic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular social protection measures, have the potential to prevent or contain an increase of child labour in agriculture at large.