FAO Newsroom

FAO-WMO Report: Extreme Heat Threatens 1B+ People, Crops, Livestock

FAO and WMO jointly published a report titled "Extreme heat and agriculture" documenting that extreme heat currently threatens the livelihoods and health of over one billion people, causing approximately 500 billion work hours lost annually. The report details compound climate effects — including flash droughts, wildfires, and pest outbreaks — that amplify damage to livestock, crops, fisheries, and forests. It offers adaptation strategies such as early warning systems, adjusted planting windows, selective breeding, and improved access to financial services, while noting that socioeconomic barriers in low- and middle-income countries limit implementation.

FAO APRC38 Conference: Asia-Pacific Food Security Discussion

FAO Director-General QU Dongyu opened the APRC38 conference in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam on April 23, 2026, convening ministers from across Asia and the Pacific to negotiate collaboration pathways with FAO. The conference aims to harness the region's increasingly prosperous and dynamic agricultural capacities to bolster food security while ensuring smallholders—constituting 80 percent of all agricultural producers in the region—benefit from technology and trade. Agenda priorities include affordable and nutritious diets, low-emission agricultural practices, trade facilitation, and mobilizing finance directed to smallholder producers.

FAO, Wikimedia Partner to Expand Public Food Knowledge

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Wikimedia Sverige and Wikimedia UK to expand public access to food, agriculture, and related knowledge through Wikipedia and associated Wikimedia platforms. The five-year agreement formalises an existing informal collaboration, integrating FAO's open-access publications—which include content on food security, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and nutrition—under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licensing into one of the world's most widely used information sources. FAO becomes one of the first United Nations agencies to formalise collaboration with Wikimedia chapters, supporting multilingual content across Wikipedia's 300+ language communities.