Baku. 4 December. REPORT.AZ/ The Ministry of Agriculture of Republic of Azerbaijan and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have launched today the CountrySTAT platform in Azerbaijan, which is an innovative tool for sharing agriculture and food security information, using a cutting-edge technology called FENIX.
Report informs, CountrySTAT is a web-based information system on food and agriculture which provides easy access to statistical data of good quality that can aid decision-makers in better, evidence-based policy-making and greater efficiency in development politics. Nationally owned and maintained, it serves as a one-stop centre that enables the collection and harmonisation of timely and reliable official data from different sources and their integration in a common location. Data provided through CountrySTAT serves researchers, policymakers, development organisations, and the private sector to design and implement better policy and investments in agriculture.
The last report on State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI 2014), published annually by the FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) confirmed a positive trend which saw the number of hungry people decline globally by more than 100 million over the last decade and by 209 million since 1990-92.
With the number of undernourished people remaining "unacceptably high", the agency heads stressed the need to renew the political commitment to tackle hunger and to transform it into concrete actions.
Best practices of the CountrySTAT system include ownership and sustainability, increased data availability and accessibility through the national one-stop centre on food and agriculture statistics.
The system also aims to strengthen sustainable development of rural and agricultural statistical information targeting better integration of new scalable information technologies, to support food security and the relevant decision-making based on facts.