FAO Director-General Graziano da Silva hands over helm to Qu Dongyu with call to improve access to quality food for all

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.
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Food Systems for Children and Adolescents: Working Together to Secure Nutritious Diets

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:

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FAO Director-General calls for strong measures to combat global obesity pandemic

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".
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FAO warns of Desert Locust outbreaks in Yemen and the Horn of Africa

Desert Locust summer breeding, amplified by heavy rains, can pose a serious threat to agricultural production areas of Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea and parts of Ethiopia and northern Somalia during the next three months, FAO warned today.
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FAO Director-General meets Queen Letizia of Spain

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva met Queen Letizia of Spain to discuss joint collaboration in her role as FAO’s Special Ambassador for Nutrition.
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FAO Director-General inaugurates the World Sustainable Urban Food Centre (CEMAS)

FAO Director General, José Graziano da Silva, today urged cities around the world today to redouble their efforts to promote healthier and more sustainable urban diets and food systems to tackle the increasing levels of overweight and obesity.
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FAO and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries launch new Training Centre for Sustainable Family Farming

FAO and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) have joined forces to boost food and nutrition security in their territories through strengthened sustainable family farming and agroecology development.
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The world is off-track to meet most food and agriculture-related Sustainable Development Goals

The world is off track to meet most of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets linked to hunger, food security and nutrition, according to a FAO report released today.
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Enhancing the contribution of family farmers to sustainable development

Family farmers need enabling public policies and legal frameworks that will “allow them to adapt and flourish in today’s changing environment” and maximize their contribution to sustainable development, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said on Tuesday.
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Creating a Sustainable Food Future

By 2050, nearly 10 billion people will live on the planet. Can we produce enough food sustainably? World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future shows that it is possible – but there is no silver bullet. This report offers a five-course menu of solutions to ensure we can feed everyone without increasing emissions, fueling deforestation or exacerbating poverty. Intensive research and modeling examining the nexus of the food system, economic development, and the environment show why each of the 22 items on the menu is important and quantifies how far each solution can get us.

WRI produced the report in partnership with the World Bank, UN Environment, UN Development Programme, and the French agricultural research agencies CIRAD and INRA.

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