FAO guide Optimization and Minimization sets out how to grow more crops with fewer resources

10 November 2026

The Food and Agriculture Organization has published a guide titled Optimization and Minimization: Towards sustainable plant production, whose argument is that crop farming has to yield more while drawing on fewer resources. It asks countries to lift productivity and resilience at the same time, and to hold down both crop losses and pollution while doing so. Rather than treat each problem on its own, the guide wants five things handled as one system: the way seed is supplied, the way crops are grown in sequence, integrated plant pest management, farm machinery, and the advice services that reach the farmer. Smallholders who farm with few purchased inputs get particular attention, which the guide ties to the FAO Strategic Framework for 2022 to 2031. FAO records that plant pests wipe out as much as 40 per cent of the world's crop production in a year, a loss that better pest management could cut into. The guide also notes that more than 80 per cent of the calories people eat already come from plant production, and that about 80 per cent of the extra food the world needs by 2050 will have to come from the same place. Government officials, farmers, researchers, extension agents and development partners are the readers it is written for.