Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is an agency that combats global hunger and promotes rural development. The FAO was born in 1945. In its first two decades, FAO played the leading role in the global food and agriculture issue areas, overseeing the establishment of important agreements and institutions, including the World Food Programme (WFP). The global food crisis of the 1970s, however, severely undermined the Organization's reputation. In response, FAO began its decades-long decentralization process, opening country offices and creating a new unit for in-country technical cooperation projects. Today the FAO is still the only global intergovernmental organization with a broad mandate in governing the world's food and agricultural system, although with the presence of numerous other players at the regional and global levels, its position is substantially different than in prior decades. The idea of an international organization for food and agriculture emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century advanced primarily by the US agriculturalist and activist David Lubin.