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Urban and peri-urban gardening promotes urban and soil biodiversity

Scientific poster for Global Symposium on Soil Biodiversity












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    Project
    Factsheet
    Support for Increased Access and Availability of Fresh Local Food Through Development of Urban, Peri-Urban and Backyard Gardening - TCP/STK/3601 2020
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    Saint Kitts and Nevis is a net importer of food, although a significant portion of the fresh produce currently importedby the country can be grown locally. The critical food and nutrition situation faced by the country relates to the four pillars of food and nutrition security: availability, access,consumption/utilization and stability. The developmentof sustainable food production systems and theelimination of all forms of malnutrition are the long-termgoal of the Government in this priority area. Government policy is focused on the expansion of urban and peri-urbanagriculture in order to support national social protection programmes aimed at vulnerable pockets of the population. In this context, FAO assistance was requested to increase food access and availability via urban,peri-urban and backyard garden development. The project aimed to strengthen the capacity of DOA inthe training of backyard gardeners, school teachers and students to sustainably produce short-term vegetable crops, and the capacity of backyard gardeners, school teachers and students in both sustainable crop production and the development of good eating habits. These wouldbe achieved through the establishment of two backyard demonstration gardens (BDGs) and two school demonstration gardens (SDGs), one of each in selected communities of Saint Kitts and of Nevis, respectively. In addition, backyard and school gardeners would be trainedin best practices for crop production and their awareness raised of concepts of nutrition and better eating habits.
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    Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet
    Brochure
    Innovating to enable integrated services for innovation to promote urban and peri-urban agriculture 2024
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    The United Nations envisions that, by 2050, almost 70 percent of the global growing population will be living in urban areas, especially in small cities and towns within Africa and Asia. This will mean more people to feed in these cities, as well as the risk of nutrition problems and increased levels of obesity associated with changes in diet and lifestyle. In this context, agriculture will need to produce more nutritious food while competing for ever scarcer natural resources and struggling with the effects of climate change. Furthermore, the world is facing recent critical events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the fuel crisis, both of which highlight the need for resilient agrifood systems in both urban and rural areas. As a result, urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA), practices that are centuries-old, are growing in importance as a means of helping to ensure the food security and livelihoods of urban dwellers. UPA can yield numerous benefits, but comes with challenges, as it is practised within the context of a high competition for natural resources, especially land. Furthermore, its practitioners – urban dwellers or migrants – often lack the necessary knowledge and skills to succeed. Given the growing importance of UPA, the integrated services for innovation (ISI) must adapt and be enabled to serve urban and peri-urban producers and other agrifood actors.

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    Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet
    Brochure
    The 10 elements of agroecology
    Guiding the transition to sustainable food and agricultural systems
    2018
    Today’s food and agricultural systems have succeeded in supplying large volumes of food to global markets. However, high-external input, resource-intensive agricultural systems have caused massive deforestation, water scarcities, biodiversity loss, soil depletion and high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Despite significant progress in recent times, hunger and extreme poverty persist as critical global challenges. Even where poverty has been reduced, pervasive inequalities remain, hindering poverty eradication. Integral to FAO’s Common Vision for Sustainable Food and Agriculture, agroecology is a key part of the global response to this climate of instability, offering a unique approach to meeting significant increases in our food needs of the future while ensuring no one is left behind. Agroecology is an integrated approach that simultaneously applies ecological and social concepts and principles to the design and management of food and agricultural systems. It seeks to optimize the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment while taking into consideration the social aspects that need to be addressed for a sustainable and fair food system. Agroecology is not a new invention. It can be identified in scientific literature since the 1920s, and has found expression in family farmers’ practices, in grassroots social movements for sustainability and the public policies of various countries around the world. More recently, agroecology has entered the discourse of international and UN institutions.
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    Book (series)
    Flagship
    The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) 2014
    Strengthening the enabling environment for food security and nutrition
    2014
    The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014 presents updated estimates of undernourishment and progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and World Food Summit (WFS) hunger targets. A stock-taking of where we stand on reducing hunger and malnutrition shows that progress in hunger reduction at the global level and in many countries has continued but that substantial additional effort is needed in others. The 2014 report also presents further insights into the suite of food security indicators introduced in 2013 and analyses in greater depth the dimensions of food security – availability, access, stability and utilization. By measuring food security across these dimensions, the suite of indicators can provide a detailed picture of the food security and nutrition challenges in a country, thus assisting in the design of targeted food security and nutrition interventions. Sustained political commitment at the highest level is a prerequisite for hunger eradication. It entails placing food security and nutrition at the top of the political agenda and creating an enabling environment for improving food security and nutrition. This year’s report examines the diverse experiences of seven countries, with a specific focus on the enabling environment for food security and nutrition that reflects commitment and capacities across four dimensions: policies, programmes and legal frameworks; mobilization of human and financial resources; coordination mechanisms and partnerships; and evidence-based decision-making.
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    Book (stand-alone)
    Corporate general interest
    Ultra-processed foods, diet quality and human health 2019
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    The significance of industrial processing for the nature of food and the state of human health - and in particular the techniques and ingredients developed by modern food science and technology - is generally underestimated. This is evident in both national and international policies and strategies designed to improve populations' nutrition and health. Until recently it has also been neglected in epidemiological and experimental studies concerning diet, nutrition and health. This report seeks to assess the impact of ultra-processed food on diet quality and health, based on NOVA, a food classification system developed by researchers at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.