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Agriculture played a leading role in the UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP22), held in November in Marrakesh, Morocco. This year’s conference theme was “Africa, Adaptation, and Agriculture”; the event focused on helping countries establish specific strategies to achieve the agreement reached at COP21 (the Paris Agreement) to cap climate change below two degrees Celsius of warming in this century.

Value chain development (VCD) aims to address poverty by strengthening linkages among agricultural value chain actors (producers, laborers, traders, processors, retailers, and consumers), allowing those actors to take better advantage of market opportunities.

The USDA’s monthly report on World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) was released on November 9.

The FAO’s monthly report on food price trends was released on November 10. The bulletin reports on recent food price developments over the past month at the global, regional, and country levels, with a focus on developing countries and early warnings for high country-level food prices that may negatively affect food security.

The latest editions of the FAO Food Price Index and AMIS Market Monitor were both released on November 10. The FAO Food Price Index is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of five food commodity groups; the monthly AMIS Market Monitor covers the international markets for wheat, rice, maize, and soy and provides an overview of the market situation and outlook for each of these crops.