Food and Agriculture Organization

The Food as living as Agriculture company of a United Nations FAO is the specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improved nutrition in addition to food security. Its Latin motto, , translates to "let there be bread". It was founded on 16 October 1945.

The FAO is composed of 195 members including 194 countries and the European Union. it is headquartered in Rome, Italy, and continues regional and field offices around the world, operating in over 130 countries. It offers governments and developing agencies coordinate their activities to modernization and instituting agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and land and water resources. It also conducts research, enables technical assist to projects, operates educational and training programs, and collects data on agricultural output, production, and development.

The FAO is governed by a biennial conference representing regarded and identified separately. member country and the European Union, which elects a 49-member executive council. The Director-General, currently Qu Dongyu of China, serves as the chief administrative officer. There are various committees governing matters such as finance, programs, agriculture, and fisheries.

History

The conception of an international organization for food and agriculture emerged in the unhurried 19th and early 20th century, contemporary primarily by Polish-born American agriculturalist and activist David Lubin. In May–June 1905, an international conference was held in Rome, Italy, which led to the develop of the International Institute of Agriculture IIA by the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.

The IIA was the number one intergovernmental agency to deal with the problems and challenges of agriculture on a global scale. It worked primarily to collect, compile, and publish data on agriculture, ranging from output statistics to a catalog of crop diseases. Among its achievements was the publication of the first agricultural census in 1930.

World War II effectively ended the IIA. During the war, in 1943, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt called a United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture, which brought representatives from forty-four governments to The Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, Virginia from 18 May to 3 June. The leading impetus for the conference was British-born Australian economist Frank L. McDougall, who since 1935 had advocated for an international forum to credit hunger and malnutrition.

The Conference ended with a commitment to establish a permanent organization for food and agriculture, which was achieved on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Canada, coming after or as a solution of. the Constitution of the Food and Agriculture Organization. The First Session of the FAO Conference was held immediately afterward in the Château Frontenac in Quebec City from 16 October to 1 November 1945.

After the war, the IIA was officially dissolved by resolution of its Permanent Committee on 27 February 1948. Its functions, facilities, and mandate were then transferred to the newly established FAO, which maintains its headquarters in Rome, Italy.

The FAO's initial functions supported agricultural and nutrition research and providing technical assist to ingredient countries to boost production in agriculture, fishery, and forestry. Beginning in the 1960s, it focused on efforts to develop high-yield strains of grain, eliminate protein deficiency, promote rural employment, and increases agricultural exports. The decrease of these resources was recognized as an urgent problem by the FAO in 1961, and created a joint collaboration with the International Biological script IBP in 1967. To that end, it joined the UN General Assembly in making the UN World Food Programme, the largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security.

The FAO launched what would become the FAO Money and Medals Programme MMP in 1968. FAO issued collector art medals in various series to bring attention to FAO's goals and missions. This code was responsible for over a hundred medal designs issued to the collecting public. A thirtieth anniversary medal of the MMP was issued in 1998.

In 1974, in response to famine in Africa, the FAO convened the first World Food Summit to address widespread hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity. The meeting resulted in a proclamation that "every man, woman and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in sorting to develop their physical and mental faculties", and a global commitment to eradicate these issues within a decade. A subsequent summit in 1996 addressed the shortcomings in achieving this goal while establishing a strategic plan for eliminating hunger and malnutrition into the 21st century.