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Eradicating hunger will require a significant increase in agricultural investment and, more importantly, it will require improving the quality of investment so that it benefits those that need it most.  The CFS Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems – known as RAI – acknowledge that the starting point for defining how responsible investment in agriculture and food systems can contribute to food security and nutrition is the recognition and respect for human rights. They are a set of ten principles that apply to all types and sizes of agricultural investment including fisheries, forests and livestock. They address all [...]

Aimed at policy-makers, project designers and field practitioners, this publication provides the conceptual foundation for a new set of FAO handbooks on sustainable food value chain development. It defines the concept of a sustainable food value chain, presents a development paradigm that integrates the multidimensional concepts of sustainability and value added, highlights ten guiding principles, and discusses the potential and limitations of the approach. By doing so, this handbook makes a strong case for placing sustainable food value chain development at the heart of any strategy aimed at reducing poverty and hunger in the long run.

This technical paper focuses primarily on price transmissions in small-scale and large-scale fishery and aquaculture value chains in 14 developed and developing countries. Although the study is focused on the small-scale sector, both the small-scale and large-scale sectors were analysed in order to demonstrate differences between the two. The document begins with an overview of the entire project and its global implications, reviewing the importance of fisheries and aquaculture to livelihoods, food security and trade as well as the rationale for value chain analysis. It then presents detailed and summarized country-specific information on the research and analysis conducted, presenting analysis [...]

Policy-makers worldwide have traditionally assumed that fisheries are a male domain. The policy agenda has for decades given priority to the production sphere,  where men generally predominate, and has largely neglected processing and  marketing activities, where women often play a key role. Recent sex-disaggregated  data (from the World Bank, FAO and WorldFish Center) represent an initial, positive  step in providing the quantitative evidence needed to convince policy-makers of  the impo rtance of women in the sector. The data indicate that women represent  47 percent of the 120 million people engaged in capture fisheries. Worldwide,  they are even more important in [...]

The aim of the Toolkit is to showcase concrete examples of good practices for food loss and waste reduction, while pointing to information sources, guidelines and pledges favoring food wastage reduction.

Malnutrition in all its forms - undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity - imposes unacceptably high economic and social costs on countries at all income levels. "The State of Food and Agriculture 2013: Food systems for better nutrition" argues that improving nutrition and reducing these costs must begin with food and agriculture. The traditional role of agriculture in producing food and generating income is fundamental, but agriculture and the entire food system - from inputs and production, through processing, storage, transport and retailing, to consumption - can contribute much more to the eradication of malnutrition.

Voluntary standards are rules, guidelines or characteristics about a product or a process. They are not mandatory regulations, but are used voluntarily by producers, processors, retailers and consumers. These voluntary standards are usually developed by private sector actors (e.g. firms or consortiums), representatives of civil society, or public sector agencies. Voluntary standards are part of a growing trend in global markets. As a result, FAO and member countries are being asked to respond adequately to the opportunities and challenges presented by business models that could foster both increased food security and better market access for small-scale producers. FAO reviewed the current evidence of the impact of voluntary [...]

These guidelines provide users with the key notions required to carry out analyses of policy impacts by means of a value chain approach and show how to do it in a practical way by making use of relevant tools. In particular, the reader will find this material useful to: Identify the basic units operating in a given value chain (=agents) and the activities they undertake; Quantify the gross revenues, value added creation and profits of every agent; Build different scenarios and measure changes in revenues, value added creation and profits for the different scenarios; Build a Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) and compute protection and [...]

The FAO Value Chain Analysis for Policy Making: FAO VCA Tool 3.2  is a programme that has been developed for Value Chain Analysis to analyze and compare the effects of different policy options for agriculture and sustainable rural development. This tool allows you to create an accounting framework for value chain analysis and to compare different scenarios. It also helps you to build and handle your own database. More specifically, the software enables you to systematically gather, store and use data for the implementation of Cost-Benefit and Value Added Analyses. The FAO VCA-Tool software provides you with an effective alternative to spreadsheets, where you can [...]

A timely publication as world leaders deliberate the causes of the latest bouts of food price volatility and search for solutions that address the recent velocity of financial, economic, political, demographic, and climatic change. As a collection compiled from a diverse group of economists, analysts, traders, institutions and policy formulators – comprising multiple methodologies and viewpoints - the book exposes the impact of volatility on global food security, with particular focus on the world’s most vulnerable. A provocative read.