FAO Representation
South Africa
News
The 3rd FAO SFS MDT Meeting to be held in South Africa
The FAO Representation Office in South Africa is to host the 3rd FAO Sub-regional Office Multi-Disciplinary Team (SFS MDT) meeting from the 23rd to the 26th of March 2009. In attendance will be the Sub-regional Office in Harare and the Representatives from FAO Offices throughout the SADC region.
A wild and woolly 2009
International Year of Natural Fibres begins
Rome, 22 January 2009– FAO wishes you a wild and woolly new year.
The UN Organization today officially launched International Year of Natural Fibres (IYNF) 2009 to celebrate the virtues of cotton, flax, sisal and hemp, but also of wool, alpaca, camel hair and angora. And, why not, cashmere too.
IYNF – quickly dubbed Wild and Woolly 2009 – follows on IYP (International Year of the Potato), while 2004 was International Year of Rice and 2002 International Year of Mountains. All were coordinated by FAO at the request of the UN General Assembly to help promote and raise public awareness of the importance of familiar natural resources that are often taken for granted.
At a ceremony launching Natural Fibres Year, Hafez Ghanem, FAO Assistant Director-General for Social and Economic Development, said production of animal and vegetable fibres was a major agricultural sector, worth some $40 billion annually to the world’s farmers.
Fibres, he noted, could in some cases account for up to 50 percent of a developing country’s exports. “Farmers and processors in these countries depend on proceeds from the sales and exports of these natural fibres for their income and food security.”
Events
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