About

Hand-in-Hand Initiative

Hand-in-Hand is an evidence-based, country-led and country-owned initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to accelerate agricultural transformation and sustainable rural development to eradicate poverty (SDG1) and end hunger and all forms of malnutrition (SDG2).

Hand-in-Hand Geospatial Platform

Hand-in-Hand has brought together over 20 FAO units across multiple domains, from Animal Health to Trade and Markets, integrating data from across FAO on Soil, Land, Water, Climate, Fisheries, Livestock, Crops, Forestry, Trade, Social and Economics, etc.

Data has also been sourced from FAO partners and public data providers across the UN and NGOs, private sector and space agencies.

So far, we have assembled a million geospatial layers, thousands of statistics series with 4,000 metadata records.

Hand-in-Hand: Next Steps

The initiative aims to bring together the most sophisticated tools available, including advanced geo-spatial modeling and analytics, to identify the biggest opportunities to raise the incomes and reduce the inequities and vulnerabilities of rural populations, who constitute the vast majority of the world's poor.

The team is working to integrate new datasets and create country and domain specific evidence-based case studies to improve targeting and tailoring of policy interventions, innovation, finance and investment, and institutional reform.

FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative: a New Approach