In 2022, the Rural Development Administration(RDA) of the Republic of Korea through its Asian Food and Agriculture Cooperation Initiative (AFACI), launched a project “Improvement of Rural Agricultural Technology Extension System in Asia (RATES)” to strengthen extension systems in 12 Asian countries. The Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) is a partner in this initiative and its regional network in Asia, the Asia-Pacific Islands Rural Advisory Services (APIRAS) is supporting the implementation of the RATES project. One of its early activities was to make an assessment of the EAS system in these countries. This brief is based on the assessment of EAS, especially focussing on the role of public EAS in these countries, the challenges they face, and identifying some of the potential ways forward to enhance the contributions of EAS.

 Since 2012, GFRAS has engaged in the process of developing the New Extensionist concept and subsequently the development of the New Extensionist Learning Kit (widely known as NELK).  Between 2015 and 2021 GFRAS developed the New Extensionist Learning Kit (NELK) with 20 modules. This package is meant for self-learning as well as interactive group learning. The content of NELK modules is therefore designed to be general enough (with global perspective) to allow customization to the local or regional context. Based on the demand from various organisations, experts in the GFRAS community have delivered and supported the training of RAS stakeholders with the NELK package in several countries. Experience has shown that the use of NELK was most effective if the content was adapted to local specific conditions and realities. This customization has so far been carried out in a case-by-case basis in various countries and regions. This document draws on the experiences generated so far, consolidates and provides a set of customization guidelines that are useful for people interested in capacity strengthening through NELK to make it suitable for their specific working environment.

To increase agricultural productivity while ensuring sustainable natural resources management, advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in agriculture is essential. Gender gaps in agricultural productivity persist across the developing world. In order to support member countries and FAO technical units with the design and implementation of gender-responsive policies and programmes, FAO addresses the gender equality dimensions in country-level interventions and its normative work, including its major statistical databases and surveys. Amid a growing emphasis on natural resource governance within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the international agricultural development agenda and more specifically within its own Strategic Framework, FAO aims to further the understanding of gender-specific impacts of interventions on agriculture and the environment such as water and land resources, and ecosystems at large to inform evidence-based and gender responsive programming and implementation.

Timely, accurate and high-quality data and statistics are the cornerstone of solid policy design, where decisions are based on hard evidence, and monitoring and evaluation rely on strong statistical systems. This has become all the more critical as governments around the world commit to major sectoral and national development plans, as well as regional and global development agendas. Statistical work has been at the core of the activities and mandate of the Food and Agriculture Organization of theUnited Nations (FAO) since the Organization was founded in 1945, supporting its Members in eliminating hunger, improving nutrition, eradicating rural poverty, and promoting inclusive and efficient agrifood systems. FAO is aleading provider of internationally comparable data on food, nutrition and agriculture, which are gathered from national statistical offices and from FAO’s network of partner agencies and are harmonized to paint a global picture. All of these data are summarized in this Statistical Yearbook. The Statistical Yearbook is a primary tool and indispensable reference for policymakers, researchers and analysts, as well as laypersons interested in the past, present and future paths of food and agriculture.

Since 2015, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been implementing a global project titled Integrated Country Approach for Boosting Decent Jobs for Youth under the Agrifood System (ICA). The project has been implemented in Guatemala, Senegal, and Uganda (2015–2022), and Rwanda and Kenya (2019–2022). It aims to enhance decent jobs through the economic and social empowerment of rural youth by enhancing the enabling environment for youth agripreneurship. This is done through evidence generation and dissemination, policy and strategy support, and capacity building. Based on the success of Round one of the YIYA initiative, FAO, MAAIF, and partners embarked on a process to scale up the initiative into a national youth agripreneurs mentorship programme, to attract and inspire more young people to engage in the agriculture sector countrywide.

Despite significant previous progress, the world is off track to end hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Degraded ecosystems, an intensifying climate crisis, and increased biodiversity loss are threatening jobs, economies, the environment and food security around the globe, all aggravated by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, crises and other humanitarian emergencies. Today, 811 million people suffer from hunger and 3 billion cannot afford healthy diets. This has elevated the calls to urgently transform our agrifood systems to ensure food security, improve nutrition and secure affordable healthy diets for a growing population, while safeguarding livelihoods and our natural resources. Aquatic foods are increasingly recognized for their key role in food security and nutrition, not just as a source of protein, but also as aunique and extremely diverse provider of essential omega-3 fatty acids and bioavailable micronutrients. 

Unemployment rates for youth are three times higher than for adults in all world regions, and a vast majority of unemployed youth are young women. Among people who do have jobs, youth have a higher incidence of working poverty and vulnerable employment than adults. Youth also face serious barriers in accessing land, credit and other productive assets for establishing their own livelihoods, and many young people lack the right to representation in workers’ unions or producers’ organizations. At the same time, today’s young people are on the front lines of the transformation of agriculture and food systems. They are coping with the effects of environmental and climate change, which are likely to accelerate and intensify during their lifetimes. In October 2019, at its 46th session, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) requested the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) to prepare a report to review the opportunities for and constraints to youth engagement and employment in sustainable food systems. This report articulates a conceptual framework to understand the role of youth as agents of change in the transformation of agrifood systems.

Persistent rural-urban inequalities in conjunction with conflict, crisis (financial, food,Persistent rural-urban inequalities in conjunction with conflict, crisis (financial, food,pandemics) and climate change severely affect rural populations. The intersection of inequalities affects marginalized and vulnerable sections differentially. There has been a renewed interest in empowering youth across sectors mostly geared towards achieving sustainable development goals and there is an impetus towards recognizing youth as equal partners on the road to development. This evidence and gap map (EGM) plots studies on the effectiveness of interventions for youth employment in developing countries in the context of climate change, conflict, and crisis, demonstrating where evidence exists and where there is a lack of evidence.

Addressing women’s economic and social contributions to society is essential for sustainable growth. Conclusions from this policy brief underscore the importance of strategies enhancing rural women's education, training, and job access. Integrating rural women in decision-making and ensuring equal representation at all levels, along with governmental quotas, can ensure a balanced distribution of resources and opportunities for every member of the community.The Rural Clustering and Transformation Project highlights the imperative of integrating rural women into decision-making processes at all levels. Understanding women's workload and investing in gender-transformative programs can lessen domestic burdens, enabling wider social and economic benefits for the community.

The Advisory and Technical Assistance Activities carried out by the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil include activities of programme and policy design and implementation; support to countries in transitioning WFP-operated programmes to local management; support to smallholder farmers’ access to supply chains and markets; and project preparation for accessing funds. The Centre of Excellence has also expanded its role in supporting actions to promote food and nutrition security. Other priority areas include promotion of partnerships in various spheres, including the public and private sectors, civil society, and universities; support to advocacy initiatives; and knowledge building and management, with a robust production of publications in several areas.

The year 2020 marks a milestone in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. With just 10 more years to go, we need to accelerate in order to achieve the SDGs. Before COVID-19 outbreak, “protecting the Planet while ensuring Food Security” was priority number one in the international community. Meanwhile, we have realized that Food Systems are very complex and no matter the angle of intervention, the number of goals we have to achieve remains very high. From input management, to production patterns, food losses and waste, policy making at all levels has to guarantee enough food for an increasing world population, while coping with the effects of climate change, resource depletion and malnutrition, among others.

This note collects the experience of a virtual rural extension initiative that initiated at the beginning of 2021,from a virtual meeting of the network Extensión para Extensionistas about the challenges of agricultural family businesses. After the event, the Agricultural Plan Institute of Uruguay proposes a joint activity with INTA Argentina and Extensión para Extensionistas, and it is agreed to hold virtual meetings for producers and professionals around the same topic. This note describes the context of the experience, objectives, methodology, results, challenges, and learning, to encourage its adaptation and replication in other contexts. The problems of family businesses transcend borders, scales, environments, and areas. Within the agricultural sector, family businesses represent 80% of the productive units that contribute to the economic development of Argentina and Uruguay. This initiative forms a virtual community where the target audience is the owners, partners, founders, advisors, managers, potential successors, and anyone interested in issues related to the family business, without distinction of gender or age, in the agricultural sector of these countries.

Grasslands stretch across the planet, their apparent simplicity masking their ecological, climatic and social importance and complexity. These undervalued and overlooked landscapes are fundamental to planetary and human health. Protecting them is not merely an urgent mandate; it is central to numerous global challenges. Realizing the hidden value of grasslands provides an opportunity to bolster environmental stability and human development in the crucial decades ahead. 

This study examined the use of digital tools in extension services delivery amongst extension agents in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling was used to select 47 agricultural extension agents for the study. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire while analysis of the data was done using mean, percentages, and the Binary Logit regression analysis. Results showed that the majority (74%) of the agents indicated that they used digital tools in agricultural extension service delivery with WhatsApp (=3.60) and Video camera (=3.60) as the most used digital tools among them. The extension agents were highly knowledgeable in the use of WhatsApp (=3.68), and mobile phone calls (=3.66). Age, educational status, household size, working experience and sex were found to affect extension agents’ utilization of digital tools. The major constraints were epileptic power supply (=3.72) and loss of privacy over the internet (=3.66). The study concludes that agricultural extension agents in Akwa Ibom are aware of and utilize digital tools though constrained by some factors. It therefore stressed the need for training and retraining of extension agents on the use of digital tools by the Agricultural Development Programme.

Donors and national governments have seen approaches to agriculture and rural development shift and become increasingly complex over the past two decades, as crises have reshaped geopolitical relations. Between 690 million and 783 million people faced hunger in 2022.10 That was 122 million more than before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which accentuated fragility and weaknesses in agricultural sectoral planning and implementation. In 2022, these effects were compounded by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While world poverty has been substantially alleviated over the last several decades, and about 3.8 million fewer people suffered from hunger in 2022 than in 2021, recent crises are eroding progress, and many serious challenges must be overcome to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).