It is now working on a way for developing countries to share in profits made from organisms and genes that originate in their territories, and this could conceivably tidy up a messy area in which negotiators at the World Trade Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation are also active.
Last year the country had a bumper year because of good rains, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation expects another good season this year.
France is currently the president of both the forum and the AMIS system, which is based at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
China produced 18, 560, 000 tonnes of garlic in 2010, accounting for about 80% of the world's output, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation wants to see a worldwide standard for labelling and tracking, but that appears to be a long way off.
The WHO has praised Turkey's efforts but another UN agency, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, has given a warning that bird flu could become endemic in the country.
ECONOMIST: Turkey takes fright as bird flu heads towards Europe | The
For its part, in May the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will present the results of a two-year project to promote the farming-for-consumption of some 2.000 edible insect species.
Estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organisation that the number of hungry people soared from 875m in 2005 to 1 billion in 2009 turned out to be wrong, and were quietly dropped.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that if the rains fail later in the year, some 3.6m Somalis, or about a third of the country, will be in need of international assistance.
Some 40% of official British aid goes through the UN, the World Bank and 30-odd other multilateral organisations, with agencies such as UNESCO and the Food and Agriculture Organisation seen as particularly feeble.
The UN is refusing to discuss what advice it received before making the decision, but three weeks ago, a gunman opened fire at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation office in Baghdad, killing two people.
The authors offer a number of sensible remedies to such ills, including different ways of boosting investment in public agricultural research and possible reforms at multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
ECONOMIST: We grow enough food. So why do so many still go hungry?
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