The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and debate policy. FAO is also a source of knowledge and information. It helps developing countries and countries in transition modernize and improve agriculture, forestry and fisheries practices and ensure good nutrition for all. Since its founding in 1945, FAO has focused special attention on developing country rural areas, home to 70 percent of the world’s poor and hungry people. In 2006, FAO embarked on a major strengthening of its decentralization process, aimed at bringing FAO expertise closer to its member nations and improve effectiveness of FAO’s work at country, subregional and regional levels. FAO works through five decentralized regional offices – Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Near Ea st, and Europe and Central Asia. The Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (REU), based in Budapest, covers a range of disciplines that support FAO’s mandate to defeat hunger, raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity in a sustainable manner that accounts for the need to conserve and protect natural resources, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy.