A commemorative postage stamp on the 50 years of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (1945-95) :

Issued by India

Issued on Oct 16, 1995

Issued for : The Department of Post is happy to mark the occasion with the release of a special postage stamp on FAO.

Stamp Design : Calcutta Security Press, Kanpur
FDC Design : Shri Suresh Kumar
Cancellation : Smt. Alka Sharma

Type : Stamp, Postal Used

Colour : Multi Colour

Denomination : 500 Paise

Overall size : 2.90 x 3.91 cms.

Printing size : 2.54 x 3.55 cms.

Perforation : 13.5 x 13.5

Paper : Matt Chromo (Indigenous)

Number of Stamps Printed : 0.6 Million

Number per issue sheet : 40

Printing Process : Photo Offset

Printer : Calcutta Security Printers, Kanpur

About : 

• The Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nation‘s system is the apex International Organisation in the field of food and agriculture, founded on 16^th October, 1945 at the Chateau Frontenac at Quebec (Canada) with a mandate to raise levels of nutrition and standards of living, to improve agricultural productivity, and to better the conditions of rural populations.
• The idea of an United Nations Organisation for food and agriculture was floated and started to gain currency around 1942. In this context under a decision of United Nation’s conference on food and agriculture in June, 1943 an Interim Commission prepared FAO’s Constitution and scheduled its signing for 16^th October, 1945. The first FAO Conference in Quebec on that day gave FAO 42 Member Nations and its first Director General Sir John Boyd Orr, a well known scientist in the field of human and animal nutrition. The membership of the FAO is 171 nations today.
• Since 1981, 16^th October, the anniversary of the founding day of the FAO, is celebrated throughout the world by the Member Nations as World Food Day. It reminds Governments, institutions, Non-governmental agencies and individuals to act together to achieve long-term solutions to inter-related problems of hunger, malnutrition and poverty. This year 16^th October marks the 15^th anniversary of World Food Day, and the 50^th anniversary of the creation of Food and Agricultural Organisation.
• FAO has worked to alleviate poverty and hunger by promoting agricultural development, improved nutrition and the pursuit of food security and access of all people at all time to the food they need for an active and healthy life. It offers direct development assistance, collects, analyses and disseminates information, provides policy and planning advice to Governments and acts as an international forum for relevant debate. FAO is active in land and water development, plant and animal production, forestry, fisheries, economic and social policies, investment, nutrition, food standards and commodities and trade. It also plays a major role in dealing with food and agricultural emergencies. A specific priority of the organisation is to encourage sustainable agriculture and rural development, a long-term strategy for the conservation and management of natural resources, and technical know how. On an average FAO has some 2500 field projects operating at any one time. These range from Integrated Land Management Projects to policy and planning advice for Governments in areas as diverse as forestry programmes and marketing strategies.
• India is a founding Member of the FAO and is also a Member of the FAO Council, which is its Executive Body. In India FAO assistance has been in support of development of sustainable production systems and expansion of the natural resource base covering agriculture, forestry, dairy development and fisheries.
• Today FAO is working towards diversification of agriculture with focus on rainfed agriculture which covers 70 percent of the cultivated land beset by various ecological problems, severe resource degradation and poverty.
• Future plans also aim at technical assistance to the State Governments for the reforestation activities, development of the oil-seeds sub-sector, crop diversification, reduction in post-harvest losses, food processing and marketing, tuna fisheries development, and application of modern biotechnological approaches in increasing and sustaining yields in major field crops.
• Courtesy : Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture.

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