FAO welcomes the IPCC special report released today, which gives a comprehensive and stark account on the damages being done to our planet, highlighting how unsustainable agricultural practices can turn land from an ally into a foe when it comes to climate change, and putting forward workable solutions to reduce or reverse these negative trends.

An IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems

Kuwait and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have strengthened their partnership to help Syrian farmers and herders recover and boost their food security and nutrition - all thanks to a $3 million contribution from Kuwait to benefit some 20,000 highly vulnerable people and their extended families.
Resilience must be boosted in Africa in response to climate change, according to participants at the high-level Africa Food Security Leadership Dialogue hosted by the Government of Rwanda in Kigali (5-6 August), in partnership with FAO.
Qu, who took office as the UN agency's chief just last week (1 August), met Conte at the Italian Prime Minister's office, Palazzo Chigi. Conte reaffirmed Italy's partnership with FAO and agreed to visit the agency's headquarters soon.
Qu began by greeting staff at the agency's Rome headquarters and visiting them in their individual offices. "Let's work together, learn together and contribute together for the benefit of our (FAO's) member countries," he told FAO staff.
The FAO’s Food Price Index (FPI) averaged 170.9 points in July 2019, slipping 1.1 percent below its level in June but up 2.3 percent from a year earlier.
Social protection programmes and public policies are fundamental to reducing hunger and the quality of our food – both produced and consumed – must be improved, FAO’s Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today at a handover ceremony marking his last day at the UN agency’s helm.

Food systems are essential to delivering healthy, affordable and sustainable diets, but the nutritional needs of children and adolescents (both of present and future generations) are often not prioritized. Actors across the food system, including food producers and suppliers, typically do not account for the nutritional needs of children and adolescents when determining what foods to grow, produce, distribute, and sell. Processed, less nutritious foods are skillfully marketed and widely available and affordable, while nutritious foods are often more expensive and unaffordable to many. The food environment often does not lend itself to nutritious diets for children and adolescents, nor is it incentivized to do so. Actors across local, national and global food systems need to be held accountable for providing healthy, affordable and sustainable diets to children and adolescents today and in the future.

To this end, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, co-hosted a global consultation on children, adolescents and food systems at the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti on 5-7 November 2018. The consultation brought together 60 participants from government, development partners, business, and academia from low-, middle- and high-income settings. The consultation aimed to:

The consultation aimed to:

(1)     Develop a common narrative around the need for food systems to produce nutritious, safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable diets for children and adolescents,

(2)     Validate a common approach to elucidate priority actions within the food system to improve diets of children and adolescents, and

(3)     Develop an action plan to improve children and adolescents’ diets using a food systems approach.    

Documents and presentations for download:

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva today made his strongest appeal yet for tougher measures to combat the global obesity pandemic, urging a "legally-binding instrument as a global convention to promote healthy diets in remarks given while receiving the Nutrition Inspiration Award".