The theme of this year’s World Food Day is Agricultural cooperatives: key to feeding the world. This theme was chosen to highlight the many, concrete ways in which agricultural cooperatives and producer organizations help to provide food security, generate employment, and lift people out of poverty.

For FAO and its partners, agricultural cooperatives are natural allies in the fi ght against hunger and extreme poverty. Their importance has also been acknowledged through the United Nations’ declaration of 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives.

Over the three decades of decline in national investments in agriculture and offi cial development assistance, millions of small producers have struggled to respond and to cope with variability and crises in climate, markets, and prices.

Since the food crisis of 2007-8 many countries have renewed their commitment to eradicating hunger in the world and improving livelihoods. But in some cases, concrete political, programme and fi nancial support are lagging behind verbal commitments.

The opportunity that the food price spikes of 2007- 2008 might have provided as a pathway out of poverty for small producers was not realized.

Every day, small producers around the world continue to face constraints that keep them from reaping the benefi ts of their labour and contributing to food security not only for themselves but for all through active participation in markets.

However, poor infrastructure and limited access to services and information, productive assets and markets, as well as poor representation in decision making processes, mean that this potential is not realized. Click for more