On International Women's Day this year, the global community is focusing on how to eliminate and prevent all forms of violence against women and girls. In spite of the major role played by women in producing food and feeding their families, little attention has been paid to the connection between gender, violence and food security.

Gender discrimination fuels female malnutrition and disempowerment. Very often, discriminatory practices in rural communities generate biases in intra-household food distribution, whereby women and girls usually have access to limited and less nutritious food.

Read more: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/171299/icode/

Recognition and understanding of the closely-bound interaction between water, energy and food production and use – the 'nexus' – is established in these sectors, but perhaps for many, ‘this nexus’ is still not entirely understood.

So the IUCN Global Water Programme decided to better communicate what this nexus on water-energy-food is all about through infographics. As IUCN recently launched the new Nexus Dialogue on Water Infrastructure, the nexus concept needs to be clearly understood.

Read more: http://portals.iucn.org/blog/2013/02/21/understanding-the-relationship-b...

The growing role of quinoa on the world stage has prompted the United Nations, in collaboration with native producers Peru and Bolivia, to declare February 20th as the beginning of the International Year of the Quinoa, a move meant to raise awareness about the nutritional might of the so-called Golden Grain.

Read more: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2013/02/19/quinoa-day-from-the-...

This is not about how to start the Lunar New Year right with proper weight management. Well, not exactly, as this is about thin trade and why thin is not good especially during excessive upswings and downswings of prices for Asia’s main food staple—rice.

The average export–output ratio, a measure of tradability or the extent of exchange of output between and among countries, is the thinnest for rice relative to two other important food staples, maize and wheat. From 1961 to 2009, the average export-to-output ratio of rice was only 5% while wheat was, 19%, and maize, 14%.

Read more: http://blogs.adb.org/blog/feeding-millions-southeast-asia-how-thin-thin

Climate change could cause the production of irrigated and rainfed staple crops to drop by 25 percent compared to a no-climate change scenario in 2050 in the Asia Pacific region. IFPRI Senior Research Fellow Mark Rosegrant shared this and other findings at a conference in Sydney this week.

Read more: http://www.ifpri.org/blog/coping-climate-change-asia-pacific-region-0?ut...

The rise in global food prices and the ever-growing food import bill have prompted sharp attention on agricultural policies in Africa. African policy makers are grappling with what unstable food prices mean for their countries; how these price movements will affect their food security situation; how the private sector is likely to respond; and what governments themselves can do. In addition, they fear that global warming may significantly change the location of food production within Africa. This report discusses how opening up cross-border trade will boost the potential for greater food production in Africa and contribute to food security by improving poor people’s access to food and by increasing returns to poor farmers for the food they produce.

Africa Can Help Feed Africa by World Bank Publications

By 2050, the Earth will need to feed 9 billion people with the same amount of land and water used today. In practice, this means agricultural production must increase by 70 percent.

The urgency of meeting that challenge is becoming increasingly clear as global food prices remain high and volatile. So is the need for better solutions. Agriculture already accounts for more than two-thirds of the world’s freshwater use, and it is contributing to deforestation. A 70 percent expansion in agriculture production cannot follow the practices of the past and still be sustainable.

The answer lies in pursuing a landscape approach – recognizing that agriculture, water, forests, and food security are all connected.

Read more: http://go.worldbank.org/HEDGG3JSA0

Continuing food price volatility requires improved global governance of food security FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva told a ministerial meeting on food price volatility today attended by some 20 ministers.

"Food prices and volatility have increased in recent years. This is expected to continue in the medium-term," he said.

"In this context, it is important to improve governance of food security. In the globalized world we live in, it's not possible to have food security in one country alone,"he added.

Read more: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/162391/icode/

Farmers in the small community of Tuol Sdey, in the Svay Rieng province of southeastern Cambodia, have reason to be happy. For the first time in decades they can rejoice in having two harvests in one season.

This is largely due to the construction of a new water dam which stores rain in a nearby reservoir, providing farmers with the necessary water supply to irrigate their farmland and produce greater rice yields.

The new dam is one of 45 projects in Cambodia—implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility—aiming at improving the lives of people adversely affected by droughts and other climate change-related phenomena.

Read more: http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourwork/environmentandenergy/su...