World Food Day 2012: Agricultural cooperatives – Key to feeding the world

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) celebrates World Food Day each year on 16 October, the day on which the Organization was founded in 1945.

The objectives of World Food Day are to:

• encourage attention to agricultural food production and to stimulate national, bilateral, multilateral and non-governmental efforts to this end;
• encourage economic and technical cooperation among developing countries;
• encourage the participation of rural people, particularly women and the least privileged categories, in decisions and activities influencing their living conditions;
• heighten public awareness of the problem of hunger in the world;
• promote the transfer of technologies to the developing world; and
• strengthen international and national solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty and draw attention to achievements in food and agricultural development. >>> more

UN meet in Rome to debate easing global food prices

ROME (AFP) - The international community is gathering in Italy for World Food Day on Tuesday with a round of UN-hosted talks on how to keep global food prices in check and help prevent future commodity market crises.

"Food prices are too volatile and are dangerously high," Olivier De Schutter, the UN's rapporteur on the right to food, said ahead of the meeting.

De Schutter called for "immediate" action to help stabilise prices.

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations is holding a week-long meeting of the Committee on World Food Security, which is made up of UN officials, farming experts and civil society representatives.

The latest UN data from earlier this month shows some 870 million people -- around one in eight people in the world -- are starving or under-nourished. >>>more