News & stories

Tobacco growing not only harms human health, but the health of our land as well, undermining the future of our food. While today a record 349 million people are facing acute food insecurity, tobacco is grown in over 124 countries, taking up 3.2 million hectares of fertile land that could be used to grow food. The World No Tobacco Day on 31 May under the slogan “Grow food, not tobacco” encourages governments to end tobacco-growing subsidies and use the savings to support farmers who make a switch to more sustainable crops that improve food security and nutrition.    While we are aware of the health impact of tobacco, which kills more than 8 million people annually around the globe, we tend to think less about the destructive effect of tobacco cultivation for the environment. To meet the demand for land needed for tobacco cultivation, 200,000 hectares of forests are destroyed each year. For every 15 boxes of cigarettes sold, a tree is chopped down.  Tobacco causes other forms of land degradation, such as soil erosion, because it is usually planted as a monocrop, leaving topsoil poorly protected from wind and water, reducing soil fertility and disrupting water cycles. Tobacco crops also require large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that pollute the soil and pose a serious hazard for farmers and their families.  Recognizing that there is no sustainable future in tobacco, farmers in Kenya and Zambia are making a shift to growing high-yield and nutritious food crops such as high-iron beans with the support of the Tobacco-Free Farms Initiative launched by World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Capital Development Fund and the UNCCD, supported by the Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and in collaboration with the national ministries of health and agriculture.  Creating a supportive crop production and marketing ecosystem means mapping value chain options for nutrient-dense alternative food crops and supporting sourcing of inputs, training in good agricultural practices, enabling access to microfinance opportunities and credit, and improving post-harvest processing systems. Tobacco-Free Farms Initiative has been active in Migori County, Kenya for the last four growing seasons, successfully supporting over 1,400 farmers switching from tobacco to food crops and is currently being scaled to three new tobacco growing counties in Kenya (Meru, Busia, Bungoma) and one tobacco growing province in Zambia (Eastern Province).  By the end of 2024, the project expects:  At least 4000 farmers in Kenya (across four counties) and 1000 farmers in Zambia (across one province) will have converted from tobacco growing to alternative crops   At least 25 per cent increase in acres of land attributed to alternative crops in target counties/provinces  At least 200 per cent increase in annual income of 80 per cent of farmers who switch from tobacco growing to alternative crops  One of the key outcomes of the project is increased return-on-investment for farmers who shift from tobacco to alternative crops. Farmers supported by the initiative to grow high-iron beans are earning at least three times as much as they were growing tobacco in one season. What is good for the farmers is also good for the land. The Tobacco-Free Farms Initiative supports the 2030 agenda on poverty reduction, human health, reduced inequality and economic growth while tackling climate change and combating environmental degradation to secure land resources that feed the growing world population. 

Disruptive financial innovations and technologies can play a key role in advancing global efforts to address desertification, land degradation and drought while delivering greater opportunities for agricultural producers and national economies. Many financial solutions already exist, but they are often unevenly implemented or not widely available. Close to one-third of adults – 1.7 billion about half of whom were women – still did not have access to financial services in 2017, according to the latest Findex data.  Financial inclusion is also instrumental to the secure disbursement of funds by donors as well as to the operation of civil society organizations, especially in remote rural areas. It is an enabler of eight of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals and is a key tool for achieving gender equality and empowering women financially. A new report "Financial and digital inclusion for last mile payments: Trends, sustainable land use and disruptive financial service options," published by the Global Mechanism of UNCCD, explores the range of elements that make up financial inclusion and last-mile payments, and can significantly contribute to addressing the challenges of land degradation and drought while empowering the most vulnerable and underserved populations, specifically women and youth. Mobile banking and payments provide affordable and convenient access to financial services, especially in rural areas, while carbon credits can create incentives for landholders and farmers adopting sustainable land management practices to combat land degradation and desertification. The report provides successful examples of innovative financial solutions and technologies that can be scaled up to support new business models and generate economic benefits while restoring soil health, reducing land degradation, preventing forced migration, improving food security, protecting biodiversity and supporting climate resilience.

One year into the project, the collaboration between UNCCD, FAO, Aduna, Orgiis and GLOBHE already bears fruit: individual baobab trees can be now recognized from space and a computer system has been trained to plot them on a map. In the Sahel region, where trees play an important role in fixating soils, providing a barrier to land degradation and supporting food security, the baobab is particularly valued, as its fruit not only has a variety of local uses, but can also be a viable commercial export and a source of sustainable income. An icon of the African landscape revered as the tree of life, baobabs cannot be grown on plantations. Proudly standing big and wild, each one is unique and cherished by local communities, as it provides nourishment for people and their animals. Faced with the advance of the climate change, growing energy needs, rapid urbanization and a depleting stock of seedlings that grow to maturity, these green giants need to be carefully monitored and protected. Recent advances in the spatial resolution and availability of satellite imagery have enabled the detection of individual trees from space. Using FAO’s cloud computing platform SEPAL and dense time-series approaches helps identify individual tree species through phenology, or the seasonal foliage pattern, often unique to individual species. The next challenge was pinning down the actual locations of baobab trees and “training” a classification system to extrapolate and predict the tree species associated with each tree canopy. Drone data provided by GLOBHE at a very high spatial resolution allows identification of baobabs, and the  tree locations are then combined with the phenology data to map individual baobabs over vast geographic regions. The resulting maps can be used to inform local communities of the location, number and condition of the baobabs, and enable them “to visualize and analyze high resolution satellite imagery from their mobile phones, allowing to actively monitor and protect this natural resource,” says Yelena Finegold, FAO Forestry Officer. This collaboration between global satellite data providers, drone operators, the private enterprise, the UN and local communities, including women and youth, is a major step toward improving monitoring, conservation and restoration methods in the Sahel. As the project advances toward mapping the baobabs over larger geographical areas, it can also support the implementation of the Great Green Wall Initiative. Better understanding of where to conserve and invest in long-term sustainable use of baobabs can promote value chain development and enable better land management decisions to monitor and safeguard these green powerhouses that provide sustenance, store water and enrich the land. image (c) MakeWaves Media

Healthy food, healthy climate, healthy planet: they are all impossible without healthy soil. Soil is literally the foundation of human wellbeing on this planet. That’s why on World Soil Day we celebrate this precious and precarious layer of life-giving substance. Almost 99% of our calories come from land. So we can say soil is where our food begins. It can take up to a thousand years to produce just one inch of soil. But it only takes moments to destroy it – through flash floods or sand and dust storms that strip our fertile topsoil. Every five seconds, the equivalent of one soccer field is eroded. We must urgently change the way we care for our land and the way we feed our world of eight billion people. Diversifying cropping system, no-till farming, replacing chemical fertilizers and pesticides with organic alternatives are just some solutions that can lead to healthier soils and more nutritious foods. Beyond food, soil is a mighty ally in mitigating and adapting to climate change. More organic carbon can be stored in the soil than in vegetation and atmosphere combined. Restoring degraded land makes it a powerful carbon sink. Finally, the world’s soils are teeming with biodiversity: they are home to one trillion times more bacteria than there are stars in the universe! Fungi is an essential part of healthy soil. It breaks down organic matter so that nutrients become available for plants. And then there are over 2,700 species of earthworms. These vital but under-appreciated creatures keep our soil alive and fertile. This World Soil Day and every day, let’s celebrate our soil, let’s cherish our soil, let’s save our soil. Thank you.

Fertile soil is a vital resource of livelihoods, prosperity and human well-being for millions across the Central Asia region. At the same time, desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD), spurred on by climate change, pose a growing threat to soil health across the region. Around 1/3 of the region's land area is degraded, one of the highest rates in the world, according to UNCCD data. In his World Soil Day message  Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw remarked that “soil is literally the foundation of human wellbeing on this planet. That’s why on World Soil Day we celebrate this precious and precarious layer of life-giving substance.” To highlight the urgency of preserving and restoring soil for a food-secure future, Kazakhstan, with the support of the FAO country office, marked this year’s World Soil Day by holding a yearly scientific conference with government representatives, scientists, journalists and industry on key issues of sustainable soil management. In his opening remarks, Baglhan Bekbauov, Vice Minister of Agriculture of the Republic of Kazakhstan, reflected that “Land resources are of exceptional importance for the livelihood, prosperity, well-being (…) and the way of life of both our contemporaries and our future generations.” In her presentation, the UNCCD RLO for CEE Nadezda Dementieva underscored the urgent need to combat land degradation, raising political momentum to activate the land restoration agenda at global, regional and national levels. She also presented the UNCCD´s flagship publication, the 2nd edition of the Global Land Outlook, which focuses on diverse pathways that countries and communities can adopt to reverse land degradation through fit-to-purpose land restoration agendas. Kazakhstan´s active engagement in the World Soil Day activities reflects the importance UNCCD places on combatting desertification across the entire region. Recognizing the key role of achieving a neutral balance of land degradation to slow down DLDD, five Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – have already joined the UNCCD Land Degradation Neutrality Programme, striving to reach no net loss of healthy and productive land. Uzbekistan also holds the distinction of being the first Central Asian country to host an official UNCCD conference, the 21st session of the UNCCD Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC21) in Samarkand from 9 to 13 October 2023.

For most of us, food goes beyond simple nutrition and sustenance: it shapes our traditions, brings us together and creates lasting memories. World Food Day is an occasion to celebrate the diversity of our foods and to ponder the future: which foods will feature on our communal table as the world population continues to grow and the planet’s climate continues to change? With 99 per cent of all the calories we consume coming from land, protecting its lasting productivity equals safeguarding our future food supply. World Food Day 2022 is taking place amidst multiple global challenges that put the world off track to secure good food for all by 2030. One of the obstacles is the growing number of droughts that affect countries in all parts of the world – up 29 per cent since 2000, with more frequent and more severe droughts on the horizon. Securing the future of our food and those who produce it against drought is a key priority for UNCCD. No country or region is immune to drought, but all countries can work together to better prepare and respond to this urgent and global challenge. When speaking of drought resilience, it is important to recognize that drought is not just the absence of rain: it is often the result of poor land management. We cannot hope to have enough resources to feed the world’s population that’s set to reach 10 billion by 2050 without changing the way we produce, distribute and consume our food. The current food systems have already taken up 40 per cent of the world’s land surface — an area the size of Asia — and caused 80 per cent of all deforestation. The future of our food depends on reshaping our food systems toward sustainable agricultural practices – such as agroforestry, agro-pastoralism and use of drought-tolerant crops. For example, maize is a staple food for more than 300 million people in Africa, but by the 2030s drought and rising temperatures could render 40 per cent of the continent’s maize-growing area unsuitable for current varieties. In response, researchers have developed more than 160 maize varieties for sub-Saharan Africa that yield 25-30 per cent more than farmers’ standard varieties under drought. More than two million smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are now growing drought-tolerant maize varieties that build resilience and increase yields and productivity. Many successful approaches proven to keep land fertile and protected from drought are also centered on empowering rural women, who produce 60–80 per cent of our food, to emoloy the ancestral knowledge of nurturing their land with secure tenure and modern technology. This World Food Day is an opportunity to remind ourselves that no matter where we are along the food production and supply chain, we all depend on the secure future of our food. As we sit down to dinner, let’s commit to improving our relationship with food by making smart consumer choices, supporting sustainable agricultural producers and choosing plant-based diets focused on resource-efficient crops. We invite you to explore the Dry Delights content featured in our Droughland campaign: (re)discover some drought-resilient foodstuffs and pick your favorite! Making smart choices starts on our plates and supports better production, better nutrition, better drought resilience and a better life on land.