Food and Agriculture Organization

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations system established on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Canada, at the conclusion of the First Session of the FAO Conference. Its headquarters moved from Washington, D.C. to Rome, Italy in 1951, where it occupies the former seat of the Italian Ministry of Italian Africa near the Circus Maximus.

FAO's mandate, set out in its Constitution, is to raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations, and contribute to the growth of the world economy. It works across crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries, and natural resource management, serving as both a normative body and a technical cooperation agency.

Governance rests with the FAO Conference, where all member states meet biennially to set policy and approve the budget, and the FAO Council, a 49-member executive organ that oversees operations between Conferences. The agency is led by a Director-General elected to a four-year term; QU Dongyu of China was elected in June 2019 and re-elected in July 2023.

Key normative outputs include the Codex Alimentarius (jointly with WHO), which sets international food standards; the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, produced annually with IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO; and the State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report. FAO also hosts the Secretariat of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and convenes the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC).

Operationally, FAO administers emergency and resilience programmes, manages FAOSTAT (the principal global database for agricultural statistics), and partners with WFP on food security assessments such as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

FAO shared the Nobel Peace Prize attention indirectly through its partner WFP in 2020. It remains the principal multilateral forum for negotiating responses to hunger, malnutrition, and agrifood-system transformation, including under Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger).