23 April is “World Book and Copyright Day”, promoting books and reading for all age groups and across all of society. To mark the occasion the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Wikimedia UK (WMUK), and Wikimedia Sverige (WMSE) have signed a memorandum of understanding to lay foundations for future collaborations, drawing on FAO publications as a resource.
The three organisations have been working together for several years, using their experience to enhance Wikimedia’s coverage of issues around food and agriculture that affect us all, including; the environment, hunger, deforestation, pollution and many others. These topics are globally significant: in 2025 more than a quarter of the world faced “moderate or severe food insecurity”. As the world changes around us, making reliable information available about agriculture and food is increasingly important.
FAO has been sharing content under an open licence since 2018, moving to Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) in 2024. This ranges from charts, maps and infographics conveying vital information to freely-licensed text that can be integrated into Wikipedia articles, offering a quick way to ensure articles are up-to-date. WMUK and WMSE have been working with the FAO, helping them learn about open licenses and sharing content on Commons and Wikipedia.
The MOU between the organisations reflects the commitment of all three to scale up their joint work to share information for the good of the global community. The MOU builds upon work between Wikimedia, FAO and several other UN organisations including UNESCO and WIPO over the past decade which was recognised as a Best practice by Expo Osaka 2025.
The publications team at FAO have been eager to share their work with colleagues and to encourage them to use Wikipedia to share FAO’s knowledge. The collaboration has already informed work with other UN agencies, and the Wikimedia movement’s Content Partnership Hub has a strand of work aiming to build connections with international organisations like the FAO.
Having the MOU in place means we can have a stronger collaboration between FAO, WMUK, and WMSE. We will be looking at where FAO content can enhance Wikimedia pages, and track the impact of this work.
Learn more about how we are working with FAO and other UN organisations to share knowledge on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_Nations
Explore and use the content that FAO and other UN organisations are sharing on Wikimedia projects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_Nations/FAO
Use FAO’s resources and browse through their Knowledge Repository: https://openknowledge.fao.org/home
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