To Further Increase Access and Sharing Course Now Available Online Here

In 2019, FAO successfully developed and delivered the Massive open Online Course (MOOC) "Farm Data Management, Sharing and Services for Agriculture Development” to more than 5,000 participants from 153 different countries. In a world where the need to understand and utilize open data has become increasingly more important, the course aimed to strengthen the skills of professionals who use and manage data for the benefit of farmers and farming organizations. 

In order to complete this highly successful course, FAO created a dedicated task force to develop and deliver the course for the 8-month period. The dedicated task force was instrumental in developing the concepts and delivering the content to the more than 5,000 participants. 

This Massive open Online Course (MOOC) on Farm Data Management, Sharing and Services for Agriculture Development resulted from work undertaken as part of the Data4Ag project of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) with the Pan African Farmers’ Organisation (PAFO), the content was then developed and delivered as a course with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 2019.

To strengthen the skills of professionals who use and manage data for the benefit of farmers and farming organizations, the course exposed participants to the topics of importance of data in the agriculture value chain and how new and existing technologies, products and services can help to leverage farm level and global data to improve yield, reduce loss, add value and increase profitability and resilience. 

On top of that, the course was able to create awareness of the products and services that have become a growth area, driving expectations and investments in ICT4ag including e-extension, precision agriculture and digital financial services. Furthermore, the course highlighted shared data principles, including FAIR and open data conceptual frameworks, while also emphasizing the legal and responsible ethical considerations for data rights and protections.

This course was built on the content and experience of the GODAN Action online course - “Open Data Management in Agriculture and Nutrition”, which has been offered in 2017 and 2018 and included outputs and experience produced from the CTA Data4Ag project since 2018.

The need to raise awareness and utilize open data has become increasingly more important to provide opportunity to increase analysis of agricultural performance and, consequently, help inform agriculture investment, innovation and policy to drive changes toward increasing sustainability in the agriculture sector. The collaboration between CTA, PAFO and FAO to develop and deliver the "Farm Data Management, Sharing and Services for Agriculture Development” online course displays the ability to convert open data from insight into action. 

The project team recently published the course materials to further increase the access and sharing of this successful course. All of the learning materials and content are now available online here. The work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and citable at doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3663553. 

For more information visit aims.fao.org or email [email protected].