Dear friends,
At 80 years of age, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was born the same year as the United Nations itself, but eight days earlier on 16 October 1945.
The founders saw that FAO would be essential to the United Nations family and the world. This speaks to good institutional design: a visionary 1940s pragmatism that combined moral purpose with inclusive multilateralism.
Our current circumstances are not like those of 1945, but the aspiration to create a world free from hunger and poverty lives on. At FAO we know, however, that the world is off track to achieving our collective ambition. We also know that victories are won in the face of setbacks. And we know that enough food is being produced to feed every person on this planet. How do we make this theoretical potential a reality? FAO’s response over the years has varied and continues to vary. As it should, because the longest-lived institutions are those readiest to transform as contexts evolve.
Over the past six years, since I took office as FAO Director-General, the Organization has undergone its biggest transformative change in its long history. We have digitized; strategized our work in line with the four betters – better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life; and consolidated our role as a truly global knowledge hub and scientific powerhouse. Current challenges have forced us to devise new analytical models and policy recommendations. We have changed the business model of how we do deliverables. Partnerships and transparency are at our core.
We are partnering with countries and players, hand in hand, to offer professional solutions that will allow them to fight malnutrition in the most locally efficient way. Biotechnology as well as big data and artificial intelligence technologies are opening a myriad of new avenues in pursuit of our mandate.
The Food and Agriculture Museum opens this year on 16 October – World Food Day – on FAO premises, and it frames historically these two defining aspects of human civilization.
FAO's new elearning Academy offers hundreds of multilingual certified courses, free to all, and has already reached over one million learners. At FAO we know that professional education is at the heart of capacity building, instilling the knowledge and skills needed by young farmers, students and professionals to build a food-secure world. And the more we know, the more we share: open access has become the norm for our research, publications and services.
As the pursuit of our mandate becomes even more complex, we know that with you, our partners, on board, we are better equipped than ever before in history to face the next 80 years.
Whether you fund us, team up with us or form part of our knowledge network, we thank you. We need you. The world needs us to be better, together. The world continues to need a new dynamic FAO.
Qu Dongyu
FAO Director-General
Rome, 16 October 2025
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FAO. FAO at 80 – The pursuit of better food for all. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd7132en
This publication is an updated and augmented version of FAO at 75 – Grow, nourish, sustain. Together (FAO, 2020), issued on the occasion of FAO’s 80th anniversary.
Cover illustration and all other illustrations by DelHambre.
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ISBN 978-92-5-140167-5
© FAO, 2025
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