FAO Partners with Wikipedia to Expand Global Access to Agrifood Knowledge

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with Wikimedia Sverige and Wikimedia UK to broaden free public access to trusted information on food, agriculture and related subjects through Wikipedia and other Wikimedia platforms. The agreement marks a major step in making evidence-based agrifood knowledge more accessible to people worldwide.

Under the partnership, FAO will work with the two Wikimedia organisations to improve the visibility of its open-access research, publications, data and images across widely used digital platforms including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.

FAO says the initiative will help deliver reliable information to global audiences through multilingual content and volunteer editor communities.

The collaboration builds on earlier informal cooperation that was previously highlighted at Expo 2025 as a best-practice example. FAO publishes around 3,000 reports and knowledge products each year covering food security, agriculture, fisheries, forestry and nutrition. Since 2024, most of this material has been available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence, allowing broader public use with attribution.

According to FAO, the new agreement aims not only to share content but also to strengthen understanding of how open knowledge platforms function and to support information exchange across more than 300 languages represented on Wikipedia.

This is expected to increase access to high-quality agricultural information in regions where reliable technical resources may be limited.

The partnership also reflects the growing importance of open knowledge ecosystems in the digital era, particularly as search engines, educational tools and artificial intelligence systems increasingly rely on openly available and human-curated information sources.

FAO said the five-year agreement reinforces its long-standing mandate to collect, analyse and share knowledge that supports global food security and sustainable agriculture.

The role of Agriventures in supporting agrifood innovation

As the agritech startup ecosystem grows across Europe, initiatives such as Agriventures are helping connect entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, and policymakers working in agriculture and food innovation.

Agriventures focuses on supporting agrifood startups, biotechnology innovation, and access to European funding for agriculture, while also helping entrepreneurs navigate the complex landscape of startup financing, venture capital, and research commercialization.

By strengthening connections between startups, research institutions, investors, and farmers, Agriventures contributes to building a stronger agricultural innovation ecosystem that can accelerate the transition toward sustainable agriculture and resilient food systems.

Through knowledge sharing, events, and ecosystem building, Agriventures helps ensure that promising agritech innovations can scale and reach farmers, food producers, and global markets.