On the occasion of its 75th Anniversary and the 3rd World Statistics Day, FAO is publishing today its revamped Statistical Yearbook, which weighs in at 366 pages this year and also offers digital interactivity and downloadable data sets for the first time.

In 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The Summit will launch bold new actions to deliver progress on all 17 SDGs, each of which relies to some degree on healthier, more sustainable and equitable food systems.

The Summit will awaken the world to the fact that we all must work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes and thinks about food. It is a summit for everyone everywhere – a people’s summit. It is also a solutions summit that will require everyone to take action to transform the world’s food systems.

Guided by five Action Tracks, the Summit will bring together key players from the worlds of science, business, policy, healthcare and academia, as well as farmers, indigenous people, youth organizations, consumer groups, environmental activists, and other key stakeholders. Before, during and after the Summit, these actors will come together to bring about tangible, positive changes to the world’s food systems. 

Each track, with support from its corresponding chair and vice-chairs, is designed to address synergies as well as possible trade-offs with other tracks, and to identify bold new actions, innovative solutions, and strategies that can deliver wide-reaching benefits across all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They are to create solutions at local, national, regional, and global levels and to scale up and to accelerate existing initiatives that align to the Summit vision and principles.

UN agencies will provide technical assistance as well as a link into the broader experience and expertise of the entire UN system, and oversee support for Summit follow-up activities. In addition, members of the Scientific Group will engage in each area to ensure the tracks are underpinned by robust evidence and science.

The following UN agencies have been selected as anchoring agencies for each action track:

  • FAO - Action track 1: Ensuring access to safe and nutritious food for all
  • WHO - Action track 2: Shifting to sustainable consumption patterns
  • UNCCD - Action track 3: Boosting nature-positive production at scale
  • IFAD - Action track 4: Advancing equitable livelihoods
  • WFP - Action track 5: Building resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stresses

 

The Summit process aims to deliver the following outcomes:

  1. Generate significant action and measurable progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Summit will succeed in identifying solutions and leaders, and issuing a call for action at all levels of the food system, including national and local governments, companies and citizens.
  2. Raise awareness and elevate public discussion about how reforming our food systems can help us all to achieve the SDGs by implementing reforms that are good for people and planet.
  3. Develop principles to guide governments and other stakeholders looking to leverage their food systems to support the SDGs. These principles will set an optimistic and encouraging vision in which food systems play a central role in building a fairer, more sustainable world. Principles of engagement
  4. Create a system of follow-up and review to ensure that the Summit’s outcomes continue to drive new actions and progress. This system will allow for the sharing of experiences, lessons and knowledge; it will also measure and analyse the Summit’s impact.

More information is available here

The Director-General praised the efficient response of the region so far to keep food supply chains working amid the impacts of the pandemic."I have seen that your countries adopted a slogan in this pandemic: Agriculture will not stop!"
The global World Food Day ceremony in Rome introduced by FAO Director-General QU Dongyu and featuring high-level participants from around the world was followed by a lecture from Joachim von Braun from Germany.
India has minted a commemorative coin to celebrate World Food Day and the 75th anniversary of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
The package will also help to strengthen the longer-term resilience of the food system, including production, processing and transport. It includes immediate technical and policy assistance as well as strategic inputs to support the transformation of food systems after the crisis. The initiative will look at investment options for urban food, low or zero carbon value chains and more efficient distribution systems, including e-marketing.
Today, World Food Day marks the 75th anniversary of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

16 October 2020

Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together. Our Actions are our Future.

As countries around the world suffer the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, #WorldFoodDay is launching a call for global solidarity to help the most vulnerable people to recover and make food systems more sustainable, stronger and resilient to shocks.

Our actions are our future.
But the responsibility doesn’t only lie with governments. We all have a role to play, from making food choices that improve both our health and that of our food system, to not letting sustainable habits fall by the wayside.

More information available here

The Director-General QU Dongyu today was joined by Italian authorities for the presentation of two video mapping shows in Rome (one at FAO's headquarters and the other at the Colosseum) to celebrate FAO's 75th anniversary on World Food Day.

UNICEF has released its revised Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action (CCCs). Grounded in global humanitarian norms and standards, the CCCs set organizational, programmatic, and operational commitments and benchmarks for UNICEF.  

The CCCs have been revised to equip UNICEF and its partners to deliver principled, timely, quality and child‑centred humanitarian response and advocacy in any crises with humanitarian consequences.

For Nutrition, the revised CCCs describe eight commitments to ensure children, adolescents, and women have access to diets, services and practices that improve their nutritional status in humanitarian crisis: 

  1. Leadership and coordination 
  2. Information systems and nutrition assessments 
  3. Prevention of stunting, wasting, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight in children aged under five years 
  4. Prevention of undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and anaemia in middle childhood and adolescence 
  5. Prevention of undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and anaemia in pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers 
  6. Nutrition care for wasted children 
  7. System strengthening for maternal and child nutrition 
  8. Community engagement for behaviour and social change 

To fulfil these commitments, UNICEF draws upon multiple resources including those in UNICEF's Nutrition in Emergencies Training and those developed by the Global Nutrition Cluster and the Infant Feeding in Emergencies Core Group.

Mobile technologies and digital agriculture hold great promise for the world’s farmers, making it all the more important to foster appropriate institutions able to generate innovation whose benefits reach smallholders and disadvantaged groups, Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Kremer said today.
As extreme weather and climate events have increased in frequency, intensity and severity, particularly due to climate change, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and its partners have warned that early warning systems, followed by early action, are critical to prevent disasters and save lives.