Livestock are critical to building sustainability in food and agriculture. Current and future livestock sector development needs to produce more, from less, and in ways that benefit all. Solving the sector’s challenges requires stakeholders to find common ground and to join forces towards continuous practice change. The Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock is one example of these new ways of working.

Policy-makers often lack information and analytical capacity to effectively monitor how policies impact on different stakeholders. The MAFAP initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization seeks to bridge this gap.

In the early 1980s, Germany’s KfW Development Bank financed the first irrigation project around Mount Kenya. A reliable supply of water was expected to enable farmers to achieve stable yields. In this way, they could not only safeguard their own food supply but also supply new markets and earn themselves an income. The following article takes stock of progress and benefits.

Tropical forage grasses and legumes as key components of sustainable crop-livestock systems in Latin America and the Caribbean have major implications for improving food security, alleviating poverty, restoring degraded lands and mitigating climate change. Climate-smart tropical forage crops can improve the livestock productivity of smallholder farming systems and break the cycle of poverty and resource degradation.

Despite good potential for food production, South Sudan’s agriculture is not feeding its population. The impacts of decades of armed conflict are posing enormous challenges for the sector. Farmer Field Schools seem to be a promising instrument to improve food security and livelihoods of small-scale farmers in the country.

Supporting smallholder farmers is one of the best ways to fight poverty and ensure food security. Such support involving the active participation of smallholder farmers in Zambia has demonstrated a significant increase in farmers’ engagement in general and an improvement in milk production, resulting in nutritional food security both at household and national level and income for the poor farmers.

Soils around the world are degrading rapidly, reducing ecosystem diversity and some important functions, threatening food and other human securities, and increasing vulnerability to climate change. This is a vicious cycle created by and leading to further unsustainable land-use practices. Integrated (‘nexus’) soil, land, water and ecosystem management can help to turn it into a virtuous cycle.

Protecting land is vital to achieving food security and reducing poverty. This is the insight on which the global WOCAT network was built two decades ago. WOCAT’s early focus on soil and water conservation has expanded into a tried and tested facility for decision support in all aspects of sustainable land management for every kind of land manager. There is a special focus on providing sustainable benefits for the rural poor, both efficiently and cost-effectively.

At the High-Level Meeting on Food Security for All hosted in early January 2009 by the Spanish government in Madrid, stakeholders from more than 126 countries deliberated how to assure food security for all in developed and developing countries alike. The high level meeting carried forward the process launched by the June 2008 Rome food summit. Its purpose was to accelerate progress in meeting MDG 1 and address the effects of price fluctuations in vulnerable populations. The final report established the following outcomes:

The outcome of the Madrid High-Level Meeting on Food Security can be considered a victory for those who want to see the multilateral governance of the global food and agriculture system improved and strengthened, and conducted within the Right to Adequate Food framework.

On November 18th 2010, the European Union Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Dacian Ciolo?, o? cially submitted a communiqué proposing a reorientation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to the EU Parliament, the EU Council and the public. What does the proposal imply for global agricultural markets and international food matters? Some re? ections.

Carbon labels for food are a new strategy of industrialised countries to reduce climate change-relevant gas emissions in agriculture. However, not every label includes the measurement of all emissions and may disadvantage and even exclude exporting farmers from developing countries. Policy-makers should reconsider this approach or at least focus on fair and non-discriminatory labels.