UN

At the UN climate conference, Secretary General Antonio Guterres unveiled details of his plan to create an early warning system that would cover the globe and sound the alarm ahead of climate disasters. The project would cost $3.1 billion to implement over five years.

The world needs a comprehensive and binding treaty to phase out the use of highly dangerous pesticides and to promote agroecology, which replaces chemicals with biology, as the sustainable method of food production, two UN experts recommended in a report to the UN Human Rights Council. "The assertion promoted by the agrochemical industry that pesticides are necessary to achieve food security is not only inaccurate but dangerously misleading," says the report.

News of Donald Trump’s election shocked the international climate-change proceedings taking place this week in Marrakech, Morocco. During his campaign, Trump vowed to revoke America’s participation in the Paris Agreement, a global plan to keep temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial averages. More than 190 countries have signed the agreement, and many consider it a last hope for fighting climate change. Trump has also vowed to dismantle President Obama’s clean power plan.

Without concerted action, millions of people "could fall into poverty and hunger," said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a message marking World Food Day. "To bolster food security in a changing climate, countries must address food and agriculture in their climate action plans and invest more in rural development."

Two days before the EU is set to vote on whether to relicense the pesticide glyphosate, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization have decided that the chemical is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet,” reports The Guardian.

The world population will grow by one-third, to 9.7 billion people, by mid-century, the United Nations estimates. And with the population surging in poor countries, it will be harder to assure enough food for everyone.

Chinese agricultural leaders are to meet members of the UN-backed Agricultural Market Information System, created after food prices surged worldwide in 2008, to discuss access to data on Chinese grain stockpiles, says AgriMoney.

The leaders of the Group of Seven major advanced nations, meeting in Germany, said, "As part of a broad effort involving our partner countries, and international actors, and as a significant contribution to the post-2015 development agenda, we aim to lift 500 million people in developing countries out of hunger and malnutrition by 2030."

Prices for the major food commodities fell by 1.4 percent during May, to their lowest levels since September 2009, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Its Food Price Index, at a reading of 166.8, was down by 20.7 percent in one year.

Global fertilizer usage is on track to top 200 million tonnes in 2018, up 25 percent in a decade, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. In a report, FAO says fertilizer consumption is forecast to rise by 1.8 percent a year through 2018.

Up to 1 million people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone could be "food insecure" by March because of disruptions to farming and marketing due to the Ebola virus, say two UN agencies, the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus resulted in a decline "on the order of 20 percent" of rice production in parts of Liberia, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

New and more sustainable varieties of the three major food crops of the world, corn, rice and wheat, are needed to supply world food needs while conserving natural resources and withstanding climate change, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

At the International Conference on Nutrition meeting in Rome, senior officials from 170 nations "made a number of concrete commitments and adopted a series of recommendations on policies and investments aimed at ensuring that all people have access to healthier and more sustainable diets," says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

In the State of the Union address in January, President Barack Obama "should announce an executive order establishing a national policy for food, health and well-being," write Mark Bittman, Michael Pollan, Richardo Salvador and Olivier De Schutter in an essay in the Washington Post.

Production from fish farms will grow by as much as 4.14 percent annually through 2022 - faster than a forecast made earlier this year - and offering a chance of better nutrition for millions of people, especially in Africa and Asia, said a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.