Let them eat bugs!

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The global import food import bill is expected to increase by 2.2 percent from the previous year to more than $2 trillion in 2024, pushed up by higher prices for cocoa, coffee and tea and also buoyed by higher import costs for fruits and vegetables, according to Food Outlook, a report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

Import expenditures on cocoa, coffee and tea are anticipated to increase by 22.9 percent, accounting for more than half of the overall increase in value terms. That reflects soaring international prices for these commodities due mostly to weather conditions and logistics issues. Cocoa prices reached almost four times their ten-year average earlier this year, those for coffee nearly doubled, and those for tea rose 15 percent above their usual long-term levels.

Exports of these commodities play an important role in the economy of numerous countries, FAO economists noted. Coffee export earnings in Burundi and Ethiopia typically cover nearly 40 percent of their respective food import bills, tea does the same for more than half of Sri Lanka’s bill, and Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa exports more than offset all of the country’s food import costs.

Meanwhile, declining import bills for cereals and oilseeds offer relief to lower-income countries. High-income countries account for two-thirds of the global food import bill and will face a 4.4 percent increase in 2024, while the bills for upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income and low-income countries are likely to contract.

The FAO Food Outlook, a biannual publication, offers updated forecasts for the production, trade, utilization and stocks of major food staples as well as explores a series of topical themes. In particular, olive oil and fertilizers are featured in the latest issue.

FAO’s latest forecasts point to favourable output outlooks across most basic foodstuffs, although global production systems remain vulnerable to risks from extreme weather events and rising geopolitical tensions and policy changes which could tip delicate demand-supply balances and dampen prospects for international trade in food commodities and global food security.

Wheat and coarse grains output is expected to decline in 2024 from high levels but remain above utilization rates. Rice, meanwhile, is a bright spot, with the 2024/25 season poised to mark a record-breaking harvest, which could enable global rice utilization, reserves and international trade to increase. Per capita food intake of wheat and coarse grains is expected to decline somewhat in Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries while that for rice is expected to increase by 1.5%.

Global meat and dairy production is forecast to increase moderately while that for sugar declines. Worldwide fisheries output is set to expand by 2.2 percent driven by aquaculture. Soybean and palm oil outputs are on course to expand while those for rapeseed and sunflower seeds contract. Global vegetable oil consumption could exceed production and lead to stock drawdowns for the second consecutive season, while robust crushings are expected to result in expanding global inventories for oilmeals.

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Now that Israel has declared UNRWA a non-entity, there are other organizations that can fill the void and give humanitarian relief for the Gaza civilians. One of them is UNICEF, another is the FAO, which helps people around the world.

Amid the ongoing horror of the conflict and alongside the tens of thousands of human victims in Gaza, Hakmah El-Hamidi has lost at least half of her animals. She has been raising livestock since she was a child, waking up at 7 a.m. to feed and care for them, repeating this task in the afternoon and evening.

“There is no food, no barley, no fodder and also no water during the conflict; we had over forty heads of livestock, and now they’re twenty or even less,” says Hakmah, a resident of Al-Zuwayidah in central Gaza Strip.

These losses have dealt a heavy blow to her family’s livelihood. Nonetheless, Hakmah says, “The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has helped us a lot when they provided us with fodder. Thank God, our animals have gotten healthier and stopped dying.”

She says the veterinary kit provided by FAO also “helped me a lot; it has vitamins and anti-flea spray. The animals were getting bitten by fleas so I spray it, as you can see. It’s really good.”

Despite the challenges of security and access faced by all the humanitarian agencies bringing aid to Gaza, FAO has distributed fodder to over 4 400 livestock-keeping families in Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis and Rafah governorates of Gaza. Veterinary kits were additionally  given to about 2 400 families to improve animal health and preserve livelihoods across the Strip. The kits include much-needed inputs to safeguard animals’ health, such as multivitamins, disinfectants, salt blocks and iodine wound sprays.

Of course, the support Hakmah has received is far from enough. She says she still needs more fodder, more medicines and roofing material to protect her animals.

The ongoing hostilities have caused the collapse of local food production and contributed to the rapid deterioration of food security in Gaza. Some 86 percent of the population or 1.84 million people in Gaza are facing high levels of acute food insecurity with the risk of famine persisting across the whole Gaza strip.

According to satellite data in a recent assessment carried out by FAO and the United Nations Satellite Centre,  over two-thirds of cropland has been destroyed.

FAO’s rapid assessments also indicate that almost 15 000 or 95 percent of Gaza’s cattle have died, and nearly all calves have been slaughtered. Fewer than 25 000 sheep (around 43 percent) and only about 3 000 goats (around 37 percent) remain alive. Dramatic losses are also reported in the poultry sector, with only 34 000 (or 1 percent) of the birds left living.

Ward Saeed, originally from El-Zetoun in Gaza’s old city and now displaced in Deir al-Balah, is another livestock keeper who has suffered overwhelming losses of her animals in the course of a traumatic year.

“We were displaced and moved south because of the war. We took our animals with us and lost half of them— most of them— along the way. These are the only animals left, and they are our only livelihood source,” she says. But for her and her family, trying to find food for the livestock means risking their lives amid falling missiles.

Ward also says, “We benefited from FAO’s support, the fodder and the veterinary kit, but this is not enough, we need more.”

She says the most important needs are livestock fodder, shelter and food. And fodder is next to impossible to find amid the enormous numbers of displaced people who are all desperately trying to feed themselves and their animals.

Given that agricultural aid is one of the key components of humanitarian assistance, helping farmers to strengthen their resilience and feed their communities and families, it comes as little surprise that fodder was the most important pre-war import in Gaza. Almost 650 trucks were entering the Strip with fodder every month, before 7 October.

FAO, supported by the Governments of Belgium, Italy, Malta and Norway, is working closely with the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture and local non-governmental organizations to distribute the fodder and veterinary kits to Gaza’s livestock keepers.

The operation has faced logistical and security-related obstacles, particularly the restrictions at crossings and the collapse of law in Gaza, which constrains the delivery of aid.

But FAO is ready to scale up efforts to deliver more inputs to Gazan farmers and herders, once access and security conditions are fully restored. New deliveries will include feed concentrate, greenhouse plastic sheets, plastic water tanks, vaccines, energy blocks, plastic sheds, animal shelters and more veterinary kits.

For Gaza’s livestock keepers, like Hakmah and Ward, this support from FAO and its partners to help sustain their battered livelihoods can’t come soon enough.

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The Berrechid plain has historically been known as Morocco’s granary for its vast production of cereals and fodder and more recently, it has been an important legume production hub. But farming in Morocco has become difficult over the last decade with climate change.

Over the past two decades, the plain has seen a disorderly intensification of irrigation. Between 2007 and 2017, carrot production, for instance, increased by about 500 percent. Despite the immediate economic gains, this process has been one of the causes of the over-exploitation of the Berrechid aquifer, whose more than 95 percent of pumped water goes to agriculture. The UN and partnering bodies determined in a recent study that by stopping illegal irrigation from farmers, they can slow the destruction of a life-giving aquifer. The answer: water meters.

Today, the Berrechid aquifer is one of the most depleted in Morocco. More water has been taken from the aquifer than its natural capacity to recharge. The reserve has recorded an annual deficit of 32 million cubic metres (the equivalent of 12 800 Olympic-size swimming pools) due to overuse and increasingly erratic rainfall patterns. The aquifer also suffers from increasing levels of pollution from agricultural activities. Drip irrigation, a modern method of farming developed by Israel, has increased in Morocco, making farming less of a back breaking job.

Drip irrigation, a marvel of agricultural technology, has its roots in the arid landscapes of Israel and the ancient ingenuity of desert farming. Simcha Blass, an Israeli engineer, drew inspiration from the ancient qanat system, a remarkable underground aqueduct system used by ancient civilizations, and introduced the concept of drip irrigation in the 1960s, with the pioneering support of companies like Netafim.

Rural communities and farmers in Berrechid rely on this essential aquifer to live and to grow the crops on which their household incomes and food security rely.

Though the country had established legal and institutional systems to regulate groundwater use, for several years, most wells in the area were neither declared nor monitored. Water charges were unpaid and illegal drilling accelerated the aquifer’s depletion.

“Life becomes more difficult with water shortages,” says Said Fikri, a farmer in Berrechid. “We need sustainable agriculture that does not deplete water, so our children can continue our work.”

Mounting pressure

The case in Berrechid sheds light on some of the major concerns about water management in Morocco at large. The country faces “structural water stress” due to population growth combined with climate change and growing urban and industrial demand for water.

Like in Morocco, water is incredibly precious in all of the Near East and North Africa. Freshwater availability in the region is around one-tenth of the global average, having decreased by 78 percent between 1962 and 2018, compared with a global reduction of 59 percent over the same period.

While a few decades ago, wells would pump water from 50 metres beneath the surface, now it is nearly three times deeper, compounding the difficulties in accessing water resources.

A watershed deal in a watershed plain

In 2011, the Hydraulic Basin Agency of Bouregreg and Chaouia (ABH-BC) – a governmental division overseeing the use of water in the Bouregreg and Chaouia areas, which includes the Berrechid aquifer – began negotiating a water governance arrangement to stem the groundwater deficit in Berrechid and ensure the sustainable management of these resources.

In November 2021, this process, facilitated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), resulted in the signing of two contracts between ABH-BC and two associations of water users, as a first step towards a broader contract that will go beyond agriculture and engage all concerned actors in the Berrechid watershed.

The contracts grant authorization and regulate the annual use of groundwater per hectare. Farmers are required to install water metres, pay fees and communicate the volumes consumed on a quarterly basis.

Funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, FAO’s Water efficiency, productivity and sustainability in the NENA regions project supported the Moroccan government by providing scientific evidence on water availability and productivity and facilitating dialogue. FAO helped bring the different parties together to sensitize them about the gravity of the aquifer depletion, stress the importance of having a long-term agreement and facilitate their engagement.

The success of the agreement between the government and two private associations, represents a milestone for Morocco and the region at large.

“The governance process that took place over the past decade was a remarkable example of participatory process that culminated in a responsible way of looking at the aquifer, one that is conscious of future generations and reflects how different public and private actors can collaborate when they have the right motivation and conditions for it,” highlights Abdelhak Laiti, Assistant FAO Representative in Morocco.

Common ground

Throughout the years, the decreasing availability of the resource and increasing tensions and competition over groundwater have gradually given way to a spirit of cooperation between farmers and State regulators. The collection and dissemination of data on groundwater overexploitation has demonstrated that there is no time for disagreement.

This process also helped build understanding and trust between the government and the farmers. While previously farmers resisted signing an aquifer contract, today they are the ones who champion it.

To complement the governance process, FAO ran farmer field schools to support farmers in undertaking more sustainable management of natural resources.

“The project provided us with valuable information on irrigation issues and agricultural practices, allowing us to reduce quantities of water used, and therefore reduce production costs and improve our income,” says the owner of a carrot field in Jakma commune, Berrechid.

“Thanks to this, we have saved 50 percent of water compared to gravity irrigation,” exclaims Said.

Strengthening sustainable and inclusive water governance is a living process. Continued dialogue and transparency, as well as investment in accurate data, will be key to preventing any future conflicts that could arise due to lack of information or inequalities in access to water resources.

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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has welcomed the approval by UN member states of a landmark legally binding agreement, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in international waters, covering nearly two-thirds of world’s ocean. The world’s oceans are in trouble from over-fishing, pollution, plastic, climate change. 

The FAO is set to support its members in implementing the accord, often referred to as the “High Seas Treaty”, on safeguarding Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), which has been under discussion for nearly two decades and was approved at an intergovernmental conference in New York on 19 June after 5 negotiating sessions.  

Treaty marks new heights for marine protection

The BBNJ Agreement “is of great importance to our efforts to tackle environmental challenges and promote the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity on the high seas,” said Manuel Barange, director of FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Division.

The agreement “enables us to complete the legal and institutional framework for global ocean governance and as a result manage and conserve our precious marine living resources more effectively,” Barange said.

The FAO has consistently advocated for sustainable and effective fisheries management as the best way to replenish stocks, conserving biodiversity and ensuring people continue to benefit from the ocean’s resources, including the high seas. 

In tackling biodiversity challenges, including those in areas beyond national jurisdiction, the Organization argues that lasting progress can only be achieved through sustainable practices that enable humans to restore the health of marine ecosystems as part of effective management solutions. 

As the only intergovernmental organization mandated to undertake the collection, compilation, analysis and distribution of global fisheries and aquaculture data, the FAO has played a crucial role in informing the treaty process and will assist in the implementation of this new legally binding instrument.

Groundwork already laid

Working with its partners through the Common Oceans Program, FAO has already laid the groundwork for change in the ocean governance of shared marine waters.  Between 2014-2019, the program helped to establish 18 new areas to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems, contributed to the reduction of marine pollution and rebuilt tuna stocks to more sustainable levels. It has also helped to lower the bycatch, or discarding by fishers of such species as dolphins and porpoises in the Indian Ocean and the threat to marine turtles in the Pacific Ocean, as well as to build capacity on the BBNJ process and foster public-private partnerships. 

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Yemen’s already dire hunger crisis is teetering on the edge of outright catastrophe, with 17.4 million people now in need of food assistance and a growing portion of the population coping with emergency levels of hunger, UN agencies tell us.

The humanitarian situation in the country is poised to get even worse between June and December 2022, with the number of people who likely will be unable to meet their minimum food needs in Yemen possibly reaching a record 19 million people in that period, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the UN World Food Programme  and UNICEF alerted.

At the same time, an additional 1.6 million people in the country are expected to fall into emergency levels of hunger, taking the total to 7.3 million people by the end of the year, the agencies added.

A new report also shows a persistent high level of acute malnutrition among children under the age of five. Across Yemen, 2.2 million children are acutely malnourished, including nearly more than half a million children facing severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition. In addition, around 1.3 million pregnant or nursing mothers are acutely malnourished.

Hunger a product of Middle East conflict

“The resounding takeaway is that we need to act now. We need to sustain the integrated humanitarian response for millions of people, including food and nutrition support, clean water, basic health care, protection and other necessities,” said the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, David Gressly.

“Peace is required to end the decline, but we can make progress now. The parties to the conflict should lift all restrictions on trade and investment for non-sanctioned commodities. This will help lower food prices and unleash the economy, giving people the dignity of a job and a path to move away from reliance on aid,” he added.

Conflict remains the primary underlying driver of hunger in Yemen. The economic crisis – a by-product of conflict – and the depreciation of the currency have pushed food prices in 2021 to their highest levels since 2015. The Ukraine war is likely to lead to significant import shocks, further driving food prices. Yemen depends almost entirely on food imports with 30 percent of its wheat imports coming from Ukraine.

“Many households in Yemen are deprived of basic food needs due to an overlap of drivers,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu. “FAO is working directly with farmers on the ground to foster their self-reliance through a combination of emergency and longer-term livelihood support, to build up their resilience, support local agrifood production, and offset people’s reliance on imports.”

Meanwhile, acute malnutrition among young children and mothers in Yemen has been on the rise. Among the worst hit governorates are Hajjah, Hodeida and Taizz. Children with severe acute malnutrition are at risk of death if they don’t receive therapeutic feeding assistance. 

“More and more children are going to bed hungry in Yemen,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “This puts them at increased risk of physical and cognitive impairment, and even death. The plight of children in Yemen can no longer be overlooked. Lives are at stake.”

Yemen has been plagued by one of the world’s worst food crises. Parents are often unable to bring their children to treatment facilities because they cannot afford transportation or their own expenses while their children are being assisted.

Save the Children is one organisation you can help. 

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Mass migration of people suffering from conflict and climate change ––  from Syria to Iraq to Yemen, to all over countries in Africa –– worries Europe. Climate change messes up water resources, limits agriculture; it promotes famine and exacerbates pest infestations like the locust attack weighing down on Africa and the Middle East right now.

Good news from our hardworking neighbors in Germany – the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through the German Development Bank KfW, has just given $54 million USD in aid to help keep young Congo men out of the hands of warlords.

The aid will help the people in the Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also known as the DRC. The DRC is arguably the most mineral-rich country in the world – laden with gold, diamonds, copper, lithium, while conversely years of conflict and poor management has kept its people dirt poor. 

Strengthening Smallhold Farmers

The aid money sent by Germany will support over 180,000 people living in rural areas – most of them smallholder farmers – in Walikale territory in North Kivu and Mwenga and Walungu territories in South Kivu.

The farmers will receive assistance to strengthen their agricultural production and post-harvest management, diversify their income generating activities, and improve nutrition and basic social services, the FAO tells us. This, in turn, will contribute to peace and stability in the region.

We hope.

And for Germany and other European countries that means less trouble for them in terms of migrants and refugee absorption, and more economic stability globally. No one wants to see Africa suffer and it’s high time we help all the African nations out of the mess.

Stopping warlords through farming

Besides being mineral rich, the DRC is one of the most fertile countries on earth and has great agricultural potential with approximately 80 million hectares of arable land – the second-largest cultivable area in the world after Brazil. It is also home to approximately half of the continent’s water resources. Yet, its potential remains largely unexploited and it remains one of the poorest countries in the world.

In North and South Kivu, the socio-economic fabric has been destroyed by decades of conflict, displacement and recurring agricultural and climate shocks. Local warlords often take advantage of adolescents’ vulnerability and low levels of education to enroll them in armed groups.

“Without food security, there can be no peace,” said Aristide Ongone Obame, the FAO representative in the DRC. 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), UNICEF, and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in the east of the DRC will be distributing the aid: “This joint programme offers us the opportunity to break this cycle through building resilience – making households, communities and national systems better equipped to prevent and cope with similar shocks in the future in ways that support economic and social development, preserve integrity and protect children,” said Edouard Beigbeder from UNICEF.

The Government of Germany has been supporting resilience building activities in the Kivus since 2017 with a contribution of $40 million USD through a joint program now winding down. The new programme will build on the successes of this programme, which has reached more than 400,000 people.

Time to invest in renewables in Africa?

It’s time for some contributions from the Middle East and Arab world. Maybe some Arab loan incentives to get renewable energy into the mining industry?

A number of gold mining companies, including one of the world’s biggest – Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD) is actively mining in the DRC. Barrick has said over and over again that Environmental, Social and Governance (or CSR) is essential, not an option, in the mining industry. So they could be excellent partners to work with.

According to Catherine Raw, Chief Operating Officer, North America for Barrick Gold, it’s time for gold mining companies to wake up: that investors are aware of and actually want corporate social responsibility (CSR) or ESG criteria to be met when they invest: She tells the Northern Mining News: “ESG is not a new phrase, corporate governance, social responsibility, licence to operate, sustainability: these are all words that have been going on well at least since I came out of university.

“When you own a supermarket, or you own a retailer, or you own a tech company,” she explains, “you don’t have the same kind of exposures. However, this can be a driver or has the potential to drive M&A activity because investors are identifying management teams they trust, those management teams who are able to mitigate or manage the risks associated with ESG issues successfully and have a track record to do so.

“And those companies that slip up, are getting punished in a far greater way than they ever have done in previous cycles,” she cautions. 

If you look at Barrick investor reports, you will notice that more than half of it focuses on the contributions they give back to society. You can see their sustainability section on their website. So gold might be the boost: Gold is a finite resource and in times of trouble (like coronavirus) investors are looking to put their money into the stability of gold. 

A golden opportunity for national solar and wind power projects?

Barrick has JVs with a number of young gold companies and exploration companies out of Canada including Loncor in Toronto (TSE:LN). Canada, as a resource-rich country that knows how to operate mines, and the Arab world as an oil producer that clearly needs to diversify away from oil, could be great partners in turning the DRC –– and all of Africa at large ––  into a renewable energy hub that sends power to all of Africa and parts of Europe. Financing renewable energy projects is not charity. It’s a means of investing and doing good at the same time.

On the sunbelt, mineral rich with gold and diamonds, all parties involved could reap the rewards, as well as local communities near the mines.This article here points out how microgrids, led by mining companies, can be the future and increase corporate dividends.

But meanwhile, aid is still needed to fend off immediate hunger and troubles and build resilience until this bold plan will take root – pulling sun and wind from Africa and turning it into renewable energy across continents.

NASA dreamt it up, then the US Department of Energy, and most recently the Desertec project that never got off the ground. A new mix of dreamers, financing partners from the western east, and the mining industry to believe in it, will help this bold plan hold. What do you think?

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The United Nations launched today a three-year Global Action for Fall Armyworm Control to scale up efforts to curb the growing spread of the invasive pest which is causing serious damage to food production and affecting millions of farmers across the world. 

Fall Armyworm (FAW), a crop pest native to the Americas, has rapidly spread through Africa, and to the Near East and Asia in the past four years.

The Fall Armyworm (FAW) is an insect pest, which causes considerable yield losses in cultivated maize, rice, sorghum, millet, and other crops as it is capable of attacking over 80 species of crops, if not under good management and control.

Based on 2018 estimates, every year up to 17.7 million tonnes of maize (corn) are lost to this pest in Africa alone. This amount of maize could feed tens of millions of people; and represents an economic loss of up to $4.6 billion.

“It  threatens food security of hundreds of millions of people and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers,” said FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu. He made the remarks at the launch of the Global Action on the sidelines of the FAO’s Council, the Organization’s executive body.

In his address, Qu said that the FAO needs $500 million over the next three years to control Fall Armyworm. Solutions like biological control can stop the Fall Armyworm, if applied correctly. To this end, he proposed the establishment of a Global Action Fund – the first ever multi-partner trust fund aimed at addressing the Fall Armyworm threats, – and encouraged countries to contribute to this funding mechanism. 

Countries in the Middle East should consider investing in an insect radar. The idea was proposed more than 20 years and Israel installed its first insect radar in the Hula Valley in 2022.

The initiative also calls for increased partnerships to complement current FAO mechanisms such as Farmer Field Schools and South-South and Triangular Cooperation as well as to create new cooperation channels, Qu noted. In particular, he added, it will feed into FAO’s new data-driven Hand-in-Hand initiative to target interventions where most needed. 

“We must all work together, FAO, international organizations, governments, the private sectors, research centres, academia, and civil society. With the proposed Global Action, FAO commits to putting the knowledge, experience and lessons learned from stakeholders and partners at the service of farmers throughout the world to stem the global threat of this pest,” the FAO Director-General concluded.

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It was made to track pirates, but a new UN navigation system can catch illegal fishing boats.

A new global atlas – the first-ever of its kind – analyses the opportunities and challenges of using Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) to monitor fishing activity around the globe. 

AIS is a tracking technology designed for navigation safety that transmits a ship’s location, identity, course and speed. By using machine-learning algorithms, AIS information allows us to identify vessel’s activity at sea.

The number of fishing vessels with AIS is increasing by 10 to 30 percent each year, making this technology more and more informative with time.

Related: fishing with a drone dropping the hook!

AIS provides detailed tracks of tens of thousands of industrial fishing vessels, and this detailed tracking data has the potential to provide estimates of fishing activity and effort in near real time. This Atlas assesses this potential and shows that AIS can start to be considered a valid technology for estimating fishing indicators.

Global Fishing Watch (GFW) published in 2018 a first global database of fishing operations based on AIS data. This dataset tracked the activity of over 60,000 fishing vessels, and was used to understand fishing around the world. 

But the use of this new technology for monitoring fishing activity needed verifying and reviewing so fisheries managers and policy makers can fully understand its strengths and limitations. 

The 400-page Global Atlas on AIS-based Fishing Activity provides this detailed review, and can prove a useful tool for improving sustainable fisheries management in line with SDG14. 

It is the result of a two-year analysis of the GFW data, region by region, drawing on the knowledge of 80 fisheries experts, FAO fisheries data, and other scientific databases. The atlas also includes two local comprehensive analyses – on all fisheries in the Bay of Biscay and Seychelles’ tuna fisheries.

The Atlas finds that in some regions, AIS data can provide a near comprehensive view of fishing activity, this is for example the case in the northern Atlantic for vessels above 15 metres in length, whilst in other regions, this data provides only a small fraction of the fisheries activity, as is the case of the Indian Ocean. This is partly due to the large proportion of artisanal or small size vessel sizes in many central and southern regions, but also because of lower use of AIS by larger vessels in regions such as Southeast Asia.

The Atlas confirms that the Northwest Pacific (FAO Fishing Area 61) and Northeast Atlantic (Area 27) are the areas with more industrialized fisheries and where AIS technology is more adopted. . The largest discrepancy between AIS-based information and other fishing data occur for fishing activity in the Eastern Indian Ocean (Area 57).

Key findings:

• AIS can track the majority of the world’s large fishing vessels (above 24 metres), especially from upper and middle-income countries and territories, distant water fleets and vessels on the high seas.
• For monitoring fishing activity, AIS data has its limitations. AIS is carried by a small number of the world’s 2.8 million fishing vessels, and compared to the Vessels Monitoring System (VMS), vessels can more easily turn off their AIS or broadcast incorrect identity information.
• AIS use varies significantly by fishing areas. In Europe, almost all vessels over 15 meters have AIS. In Southeast Asia, very few have AIS and reception quality is poor.
• AIS data is limited for multi-gear vessels as highlighted in the analysis on the Bay of Biscay.
• AIS is still limited in terms of its capacity to discriminate types of fishing activities for smaller scale fisheries using multiple combinations of fishing gears.
• AIS can provide information on fishing activity much more rapidly than logbooks or official assessments via VMS. However, AIS’s level of detail (e.g. number of fishing gear or species captured) could be insufficient for many other uses.
• Longliners with wide presence in high seas worldwide are the type of vessels better captured by AIS-based algorithms. AIS also captures well other main fishing gears such as purse seiners and trawlers, but tend to underrepresent their importance compared to longliners. This is confirmed by worldwide catch data showing that the order of prevalence of fishing gears is trawls, purse seines, longlines and other gears with variations across FAO areas.
• AIS could start to be considered as a viable technology for near real time estimates of fishing effort and marine spatial planning provided it is supported by human verification given its variable accuracy.

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Following an international trend pressuring large food chains to think local and source local food, Autogrill, the multinational company known for its motorway and airport restaurants in 30 countries, is partnering with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (or the FAO) to do just that. The chain of restaurants will cut down food waste and losses and support the introduction of products of small-scale and smallholder farmers in developing countries, the UN agency announced today.

Under the three-year agreement, FAO will provide Autogrill with tools to track and reduce food losses and waste across its more than 4000 stores and design information materials and campaigns to raise awareness among Autogrill customers worldwide about waste reduction.

“We’re excited to collaborate with a major multinational restaurant chain like Autogrill on making its market chain more inclusive,” said Eugenia Serova, Director of the Rural Infrastructure and Agro-Industries Division at FAO.

“This is a new type of public-private partnership for FAO which could become a model for collaborations with other retailers in future” she said.

It is estimated that roughly one third of the food produced globally for human consumption – approximately 1.3 billion tonnes every year – is lost or wasted.

In recent years, restaurants and food and beverage stores worldwide have become increasingly aware of their role in making food chains more sustainable. Supporting local food producers and farmers makes economies resilient and in some cases encourages positive practices such as organic farming, permaculture farming and hydroponic farming.

“The public-private partnership belongs to the tradition of Autogrill. From today onward the leading global restaurants chain for the people on the move will continue that tradition jointly with FAO. Our social responsibility awareness will certainly be improved by the relationship we are beginning today,” said Luigi Troiani, European Public Affairs Manager of Autogrill Group.

Autogrill is the latest to sign on to the Save Food Global Initiative spearheaded by FAO to involve a wide range of actors along the food chain in common strategies to cut food loss and waste.

Locally grown hydroponic food in Thailand via Shutterstock

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