Special Representative of the Director-General at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Daniel Gustafson serves as the Special Representative of the Director-General at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). From 2012 until his retirement in 2020 he served as Deputy Director-General of the Organization. Gustafson has over 40 years of international experience working on approaches linking science and policy for food and nutrition security, sustainable agricultural transformation and capacity development.

Gustafson joined FAO in 1994, in Mozambique, and subsequently served as FAO Representative in Kenya and Somalia, India and Bhutan, and as head of FAO’s Washington DC Office, before moving to FAO’s headquarters in Rome. Gustafson also worked in Brazil for the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and served as Program Manager of the International Development Management Center at the University of Maryland.

Gustafson holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Extension from the University of Maryland, a Master of Sciences in Agricultural Economics, and a Bachelor of Science in Economics and International Relations from the University of Wisconsin. In 2015. he was conferred a Ph.D. Honoris Causa by the Acharya N G Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU) in India.