FAO

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Name	Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)
Logo
Geographic Scope	Global (Mozambique | USA | ...)
Subject Focus Expertise	Food, Nutrition, Agriculture, Land Use, Forestry, Fisheries
Contact	E-mail: FAO-HQ@fao.org
URL	http://www.fao.org/

Mission/Mandate

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and debate policy. FAO is also a source of knowledge and information and helps developing countries and countries in transition modernize and improve agriculture, forestry and fisheries practices and ensure good nutrition for all. Since its founding in 1945, FAO has focused special attention on developing rural areas, home to 70 percent of the world's poor and hungry people

At the heart of FAO's efforts is the desire to achieve food security for all - to make sure people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. Essentially, HELPING TO BUILD A WORLD WITHOUT HUNGER'.

FAO's mandate is to raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy. FAO provides the kind of behind-the-scenes assistance that helps people and nations help themselves, namely technical skills, legal advice and knowledge.

FAO's activities comprise four main areas:

• Putting information within reach.
• Sharing policy expertise.
• Providing a meeting place for nations.
• Bringing knowledge to the field.

Water-specific: In the face of increasing water scarcity, and the dominance of agricultural water use, FAO is in the forefront to enhance global agricultural performance while promoting the sustainability of water use for food production. See FAO Water

Key Resources

FAO Gateway to Land and Water Information

Knowledge Forum

Knowledge Forum provides a direct gateway to the Organization's vast expertise and wealth of knowledge through a series of interactive services:

• Ask FAO enables users to interact directly with technical experts in particular fields of interest, and obtain answers to their questions.
• Best Practices provides a series of summaries that introduce some best practices in FAO's areas of expertise. It also provides links to further resources with supporting technical information.
• Thematic Knowledge Networks are virtual communities of professional staff and collaborating centres with common interests and objectives related to sustainable agriculture and food security.

Statistics

• AgroMaps - a global spatial database of subnational agricultural land-use statistics.
• Aquastat - FAO's global information system of water and agriculture developed by the Land and Water Development Division of FAO. AQUASTAT provides users with comprehensive statistics on the state of agricultural water management across the world, with emphasis on developing countries and countries in transition.
• CountrySTAT - a national statistical information system for food and agriculture, which groups data across thematic areas (production, trade and consumption etc), to facilitate study of relationships and processes.
• FAOSTAT - an on-line multilingual database currently containing over 1 million time-series records from over 210 countries and territories covering statistics on agriculture, nutrition, fisheries, forestry, food aid, land use and population.
• FISHERS - this database contains the number of people engaged in fishing according to the working time devoted to the occupation, as national annual averages, from 1961 onwards. Starting with data for 1990, the database includes employment in aquaculture and separates inland and marine fisheries, on a gender disaggregated basis.
• FISHSTAT - provides users with access to Fishery Statistics of various sorts.
• FORIS - contains statistics on forest and forestry issues on a country by country basis including forest cover, plantations, volume and biomass and fires.
• GLIPHA - a user-friendly, highly interactive electronic atlas, which provides a scaleable overview of spatial and temporal variation of quantitative information related to animal production and health through the combination of maps, tables and charts.
• TERRASTAT - Land resource potential and constraints statistics at country and regional level. However, statistics are based on various small scale maps and inventories that were not always up to date, reliable or both.

Water Law and Standards Database

Publications

Publications are integral to FAO's work as a knowledge organisation. FAO produces 300+ titles annually, in an array of languages. FAO's flagship publications are the organisation's most important. They present comprehensive and objective information and analysis on the current global state of food and agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, forests, agricultural commodity markets and hunger. The following titles are issued regularly, to inform public debate and policy-making at national and international levels:

• The State of Food and Agriculture
• The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture
• State of the World's Forests
• The State of Food Insecurity in the World
• The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets

See the most recent publications

• Groundwater in international law Compilation of treaties and other legal instruments

Work on the Ground

See also FAO Water

Country Presence

INTERACTIVE MAP

Image:FAO country presence.jpg

AUTOMATIC LISTING OF ALL COUNTRIES (WE'RE INVESTIGATING A SUITABLE EXTENSION) IN ADDITION/INSTEAD OF INTERACTIVE MAP

• where would the links lead to? FAO/Afghanistan OR Afghanistan/FAO OR Afghanistan/UN-presence OR..?

Projects

• Integration of Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Measures in the Management of Natural Resources in Four Priority Watersheds of Panama
• Environmental protection and sustainable management of the Okavango River Basin
• Economic Governance of Water and Sanitation, Honduras

References

See also

External Resources

Attachments

 FAO country presence.pdf