World Food Day: "Agricultural cooperatives - key to feeding the world"

Interest in cooperatives and rural organizations is also reflected in the decision of the UN General Assembly to designate 2012 "International Year of Cooperatives."

About World Food Day

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations celebrates World Food Day each year on 16 October, the day on which the Organization was founded in 1945. The objectives of World Food Day are to: -encourage attention to agricultural food production and to stimulate national, bilateral, multilateral and non-governmental efforts to this end; -encourage economic and technical cooperation among developing countries; -encourage the participation of rural people, particularly women and the least privileged categories, in decisions and activities influencing their living conditions; -heighten public awareness of the problem of hunger in the world; -promote the transfer of technologies to the developing world; and -strengthen international and national solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty and draw attention to achievements in food and agricultural development.