Women play a key role in agriculture and food security, making up around 48 percent of the agricultural labour force in low-income countries. Despite this, their important contribution is hardly visible and largely unrecognized. Gender equality regards human rights but gender-based constraints in the sector cause also major inefficiencies in value chains, and are a key impediment for rural development, food security, and social and environmental sustainability. Moreover, the severe and multidimensional constraints faced by women hamper their productive potential and livelihoods.

Human nutrition is vital for agriculture. Many smallholder farmers are food-insecure and suffer chronic or acute forms of malnutrition. This can permanently harm the physical and cognitive growth of children, while reducing productivity as household members are less able to carry out agricultural work.

Agriculture is vital for human nutrition. Nutrition has long been considered mostly a health issue. However, agriculture plays an essential role in ensuring nutritional wellbeing not only for rural populations, but also for society as a whole.

The publication is a part of the FAO work to assist the member countries in reforming their national Extension and Advisory Services (EAS). It highlights the main elements and provides concrete guidelines for the policy makers to make EAS demand-driven, i.e. responsive to diverse needs and demands of rural producers, including the most vulnerable groups, women and youth etc.

This report summarizes studies conducted in a framework of TAP-AIS project implemented by FAO’s Research and Extension Unit, and funded by the European Union as a component of the European Union initiative on “Development Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture” (DeSIRA). 

Over the years, Kenya has continued to experience high levels of food and nutrition insecurity. At the same time, the country is experiencing a rapid rate of urbanization, which is double the population growth rate. The growth of cities and urban areas has a direct impact on food security due to diminishing land for agriculture productivity and decreasing labour force, as a result of rural urban migration. In addition to reducing land for agriculture production, rapid urbanization contributes to climate change because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions from cities.

“Business as usual” is no longer an option for a food-secure future. Pastoralism can be an innovative system: a time-tested, undervalued alternative to high-input and resource-intensive farming, and a valuable lesson for the much needed evolution towards ‘farming with nature’, with largely-untapped potential for income growth and employment in marginal areas.

Countries around the world, including Kenya, are improving their national forest monitoring systems (NFMS) in response to the growing global demand for high integrity carbon credits. This demand is demonstrated by initiatives like the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance (LEAF) Coalition, which commits to purchasing emission reductions. In order to sell carbon credits to LEAF, countries need to have reliable forest data that meets new carbon standards.

This brochure on Global Knowledge Product provides an update of work carried out in 2020 on the development of some selected strategies, guidelines for the assessment of innovation systems, strategies for promoting agricultural innovation, and knowledge portals for sharing of technologies and good practices that integrate sustainable agricultural production and food security. The development of knowledge products contributes to FAO’s strategic objective of making agriculture, forestry, and fisheries more productive and sustainable.

Every year around the world, 10 million hectares of forest are lost to deforestation and 70 million hectares are burnt by fire. In response, world leaders have committed to halt deforestation and restore 1 billion hectares of degraded land by 2030. To achieve this, countries need the right forest data to measure progress and enable action on the ground. To bridge this gap, FAO launched Open Foris over a decade ago.