About World Food Day

On 16 October 2011, World Food Day enters its 31st year. The date also marks the 66th anniversary of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the Uniteds Nations.

World Food Day is marked each year on 16 October, the day on which the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations was founded in 1945.

The aim of the Day is to heighten public awareness of the problem of hunger in the world. Additional 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;
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.

More than 150 countries observe this day every year. First observed in 1981, each year World Food Day highlights a particular theme on which to focus activities. Themes highlighted in previous years have been: