Director-General QU Dongyu today welcomed farmers from around the globe to FAO headquarters for the 2024 Annual Meeting of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO). “You are the game changers of agrifood systems,” he said, noting that precisely those systems need to be urgently transformed to address hunger and other global challenges. Most of the worlds 608 million farms are run by an individual or a family and rely primarily on family labor, operating at a small scale yet producing the vast majority of the world’s food in value terms.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory used CRISPR to develop a high-oil variety of Camelina sativa. Their research may help achieve a net-zero carbon bioeconomy. Camelina (Camelina sativa) is a close relative of canola and it is being developed to serve as a source of plant oil for the production of biofuel feedstocks. However, a yellow seed phenotype of Camelina is necessary to acquire a high oil content from the plant but it is currently unknown.

A team from the University of California, Berkeley's (UCB) Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) has produced an increase in gene expression in a food crop by changing its upstream regulatory DNA. Other studies used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to knock out or decrease gene expression, this new research however, is the first unbiased gene editing approach to increase gene expression and downstream photosynthetic activity.

Biomedical engineers at Duke University developed an ultrathin silk membrane that can be used in an organ-on-a-chip (OOC) model to mimic the natural environment of cells and tissues within the body. Their findings, published in Science Advances, open new opportunities to improve organs like the brain, liver, and lungs, and contribute to the development of test therapeutics. OOC systems have helped researchers better understand human biology through dynamic modeling of tissue structures, studying organ functions, and modeling diseases.

Maize is a widely grown crop worldwide and is essential to global food security. However, like other plants, its growth and productivity are limited by the slow activity of Rubisco, the enzyme responsible for carbon assimilation during photosynthesis. Scientists from the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) have demonstrated a promising approach to enhancing Rubisco production to improve photosynthesis and overall plant growth.

Researchers from the University of Florida's Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) made genetic tweaks to sugarcane that led to improved yield. The results of this breakthrough are reported in the Plant Biotechnology Journal. Sugarcane is the largest crop by biomass yield globally, providing 80% of the world's sugar and 40% of the biofuel produced worldwide. The plant size and water use efficiency of sugarcane make it one of the best candidates for developing advanced, renewable, value-added bioproducts and biofuels

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is accelerating research and partnerships on low-emission technologies and enabling policy frameworks to help Southeast Asia harness the potential of a rice carbon market. “The pulling force of the climate-resilient rice market is its ability to incentivize and motivate farmers to change their practices. Realizing a vibrant carbon market for rice and agriculture in the region is a delicate dance and one that will rest on more coordinated and elaborate effort across the value chain

World fisheries and aquaculture production has hit a new high, with aquaculture production of aquatic animals surpassing capture fisheries for the first time, according to a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released today. The 2024 edition of The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) said global fisheries and aquaculture production in 2022 surged to 223.2 million tonnes, a 4.4 percent increase from the year 2020. Production comprised 185.4 million tonnes of aquatic animals and 37.8 million tonnes of algae.

In rural communities, women play a crucial, yet often overlooked, role in agricultural production and sustainable land management. Women's associations, if provided with equitable opportunities, are poised to drive significant economic development through traditional and innovative utilization of natural resources. Recognizing this, the SERVIR West Africa (SERVIR WA) program, supported by USAID and NASA, and implemented by ICRISAT and partners, is leveraging Earth Observation data and geospatial tools to identify and amplify economic opportunities for women in select municipalities.

By Rachel Kibui with special thanks to Dr. Carlo Fadda and Dr. Gloria Otieno, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. The villages in Nyando, Kenya, tell stories of communities where subsistence farming is based maize, sorghum, millet and other seasonal crops, which are generally planted on small monoculture plots. However, Evelyn Okoth’s farm stands out for its diversity, proving that farmers can manage their farms to grow more than one crop at a time.