Yangon - Funded through a generous donation from PriceWaterhouseCoopers Charitable Foundation, 353 farm families received buffalos to restock animals lost when cyclone Nargis struck the delta last June. This donation will help hard hit families recover their livelihoods and resume household food production, an FAO statement said today.

Each of the 353 families received a pair of buffalos. The project beneficiaries will use the draught animals to prepare their lands for planting, and neighbouring families will also get their lands cultivated by either hiring or borrowing the animals.

Today, Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn presented FAO awards to four Asian farmers from Afghanistan, China, Viet Nam and Thailand.

Rong Wenxi from China was honoured as a model farmer for rural biogas development.

Despite the rapidly increasing energy consumption of China, if one travels to the countryside one will find rural areas where power is still in short supply. But if one travels to the right areas, one will also find people who are doing something about it.

10 October 2008 - Climate change and bioenergy are the focus of this year’s World Food Day activities, expected to involve over 150 countries. FAO celebrates World Food Day each year on 16 October, the day on which the Organization was founded in 1945.

10 October 2008 – The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR) today signed an agreement to enhance their cooperation to promote and support education, research and technical and institutional capacities in developing countries.

27 October 2008 - Communities in Haiti suffering severe food insecurity are to be assisted by a USD 10.2 million package which will quickly boost Haiti’s battered agriculture sector.

It is an uphill task, but in the highlands and the lowlands, Rwanda is slowly but surely restoring the slopes of its thousand hills. Many of them are green once more, but still in poor condition due to environmental degradation, mainly caused by human activity and the ravages of the war and genocide of 1994.

28 October 2008- Carbon financing could provide a major boost to agricultural development and food security while at the same time helping mitigate and adapt to climate change.

24 October 2008 - Former US President Bill Clinton urged the international community to stop using the global financial crisis “as an excuse” to avoid dealing with escalating hunger, adding that over the long term, only agricultural self-sufficiency could take a significant bite out of world hunger and stave off future financial woes.

22 October 2008 – Ministers and officials from over 120 governments will meet in Rome next week to decide whether to add two pesticides – endosulfan and tributyl tin compounds – and the industrial chemical chrysotile asbestos to a trade watch list that already contains 39 hazardous substances.

17 October 2008- Europe’s forests are growing at the rate of about 360 million cubic metres annually, yet only two-thirds of this growth is being exploited. Given that forests are essential to the global energy balance, the vital role of forests in combatting climate change are among the major issues to be debated at the first-ever European Forest Week, taking place at FAO Headquarters from 20 to 24 October 2008.