FAO Director-General praises trend toward small-scale local food production

Italy - 03 Apr 13

Small-scale producers, local production and consumption circuits and recovering traditional crops have a major part to play in reducing hunger, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva told professors and students at the University of Gastronomic Sciences today, also noting the many possibilities of cooperation between FAO and the university to fulfil the vision of a hunger-free and sustainable world.

He said that the Green Revolution of the 1960s had increased per capita availability of food by over 40 percent, but at the cost of a loss of food diversity because of a focus on a few crops and significant impact on the environment from intensive use of chemical inputs.

But now there was a trend towards growing and marketing traditional foods, towards improving local infrastructure and markets and helping small-scale producers, all of which was good for the environment and the economy of rural areas, where hunger was worst, he said.


Click here to read the full article