Water, an essential component of life supporting systems, is at the forefront of discussions on global sustainability and food security. Water also has a major role in poverty alleviation and local food security. The technology for a more effective use of the resource is known but institutional reforms needed to lead the world in a positive direction are proving difficult to establish. This study was commissioned to suscitate constructive discussion around many sensitive aspects of water policy.

This Bulletin contains the papers and proceedings of the FAO/SIDA Workshop on Organic Materials and Soil Productivity in the Near East. In view of the important complementary effect of organic materials to mineral fertilizers and their role in improving the soil?s physical properties, the Workshop has dealt with a wide variety of items on techniques and uses of the organic materials and wastes including, composting, bio-fertilizers and biogas, the environmental and health aspects, and action guidelines for follow-up activities in the Near East countries.

This climate-smart agriculture scoping study for Ethiopia was produced by the FAO. The study is aimed at identifying and documenting existing climate-smart agriculture practices in Ethiopia that enable stakeholders to understand the opportunities and constraints to adopting particular climate-smart agriculture technologies or practices.

The AQUASTAT Programme was initiated with a view to presenting a comprehensive picture of water resources and irrigation in the countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and providing systematic, up-to-date and reliable information on water for agriculture and rural development. This report presents the results of the most recent survey carried out in the 18 countries of the Middle East region, and it analyses the changes that have occurred in the ten years since the first survey.

This report presents the results from a regional training workshop on MASSCOTE which was held at Aleppo, Syria in 2009. A total of twenty Irrigation and Agriculture engineers from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria participated in the training workshop focusing on MASSCOTE application in Mounshaat-Al-Asad scheme in Aleppo Governorate.

The global reproduction of food, notably cereal crops, appears to have been remarkably resilient to the vagaries of climate. The unsung hero in this production chain may well be groundwater. When rainfed agriculture fails, the fallback is usually groundwater. First it is accessed to smooth over the dry periods, and then it becomes a habit. Therefore, staying within strict resource limits would seem to be the obvious piece of management advice.

The case studies presented here have been developed through a set of training workshops in Nepal with engineers and managers from the Department of Irrigation (DOI) and the Department of Agriculture (DOA) in 2003 and 2006.

Ce document est un rapport de capitalisation des acquis du Projet pilote d’économie et de valorisation de l’eau d’irrigation dans le périmètre des Doukkala (GCP/MOR/033/SPA) qui s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une convention de partenariat entre le Ministère de l’agriculture et de la pêche maritime du Maroc, la FAO et le Ministère de l’environnement et du milieu rural et marin espagnol (MARM).

Water - Source of food security. World Food Day: 16 October 2002

Four fifths of the Afghan population live in rural areas, and most are farmers or farm labourers. The Winter Survey provides an account of the structure of the farming sector and the rural farming population in Afghanistan, with an emphasis on food security.

This module presents a Case Study of a Carbon-Balance Appraisal for an investment programme. It is useful for people who wish to improve their skills on how to estimate the climate change mitigation potential of agricultural programmes/projects and how to integrate it into the economic analysis of projects. This case is part of a set of documents which intend to provide support project developers in the process of learning and applying the EX-Ante Carbon balance Tool (EX-ACT).