Food and Agriculture Organization

FAO, which is an arm of the UN, has as its mandate raising levels of nutrition, improving agricultural productivity, improving the lives of rural populations, and contributing to the growth of the world economy.  Its activities can be divided into four major areas—serving as a knowledge network, sharing policy expertise, providing a meeting place for policy makers, and bringing knowledge to the field.  Thus, information sharing is an important component of its work, and FAO considers itself a “knowledge organization.”  FAO’s funding to implement projects comes primarily from member governments, although private foundations also play a role.  FAO is a wealth of research information, including statistics and data.  Visitors might want to explore and browse the entire site or go directly to the FAO repository.  For targeted searches, it would also be a good idea to use Google or Google Scholar and search for FAO plus a search term.