GODAN recently published Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition Success stories. This is a compilation of 15 success stories within different aspects of Agriculture and Nutrition and each respective story is in-depth and enriching.

This blog will lay the scene by first reviewing the data revolution and GODAN’s mandate, and thereafter select a few cases from the success stories for review.

The Data Revolution.

The preamble to these success stories sets the tone by chronicling the data revolution and the underlining reasons to open up data. For example, reflect on these known truths:-

• Experts know that there’s more than enough food to feed everyone, but 795 million people still struggle with hunger every day.
• Soon the Earth’s population will have more than tripled in less than a century, requiring us to increase food production by more than 60% in the next few decades.
• Farmers, farmers’ organisations, governments and various other players in agriculture collect valuable data every time but currently the potential of this resource is not being fully realized.

Therefore, open data poises to be the next revolution and it builds on the gains of industrial and intellectual revolutions respectively.

GODAN’s mandate

The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative is committed to closing the hunger gap by making agriculture and nutrition data available, accessible and useable to everyone.

GODAN is a growing network with over 331 partners from government, international and private sector organisations all committed to making data relevant to agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable worldwide. Read more here

Success Stories: A review

The 15 success stories come from varied backgrounds with cases from Africa (Rwanda, Ethiopia, and South Africa), Asia (Thailand, Indonesia) and also from a Global focused initiatives and the private sector. The latter include SMART! Fertilizer Mixer and Copernicus Sentinel.

In Rwanda, open data has helped to deliver a nationwide digital based land registry system which is online and readable. This online systems automatically records a mortgage approval and helps with decisions about land tenure, land tax and faster land dispute resolution. Access to this data by farmers have helped them access small scale loans to support their farming activities. Learn more about this case

Another interesting story is one from Copernicus Sentinel – this is satellite data from the family of Sentinel satellites which make up the Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring network – which is used worldwide and with data that is free of charge for all users. Sentinel data is being accessed by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the US Geological Survey (USGS). Through these and other services, Supports Ocean forecasting services, helps emergency planning after earthquakes and promise to provide data for scientists, agricultural experts and environmentalists.

These are just 2 out of the 15 stories, why not download and review other interesting cases agricultural insurance, livestock support and water borne diseases.

Link to GODAN Success stories 1 http://www.godan.info/documents/godan-success-stories-issue-1