©FAO/Alessia Pierdomenico/FAO

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in partnership with the Global Data on Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN); Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR); the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the World Bank are inviting interested individuals to participate on the upcoming Forum discussion to be held on e-agriculture platform. The information about the Forum is summarised below.

Details of the forum

The purpose 

Most abject poverty in the world is concentrated in rural communities in developing countries and within them in small, family farmers, women and youth engaged in agricultural livelihoods. Technology is now opening up many new opportunities to improve the livelihoods of these farmers. 

Use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been demonstrated to effectively connect many family farmers to the much needed extension and advisory support as also access to market related information. ICTs also holds promise to improve farm level decision making, bring economy to use of farm resources, improve quality and safety of farm produce and improve financial, and logistical services for these farmers to market their produce.

Increasing the availability and accessibility of data through ICTs and enabling their effective use could also offer even more benefits for smallholder farmers and rural communities in developing countries through more precise agriculture and market chain management of their produce. This has been shown through successful use of openly available weather data in agriculture, which provide farmers with early warnings against adverse farming conditions and precautions.

This includes advice and warning for crop protection including emergence and spread of diseases and harmful pests from the extreme weather, by monitoring irrigation and in planning for adapting to adverse effects of climate change.Making data more open, easily available and accessible overall accelerates innovation and generates economic and social capital. However, more open data can also harm and bring losses to some within a community, especially those who are economically, politically, socially and technologically weak and less powerful.

The proposed online debate on the e-Agriculture platform seeks to explore the interaction between use of ICTs in agriculture and issues around open data in agriculture and nutrition and its effective use, with a focus on establishing what benefits and possible losses, can accrue to farmers, especially small holder family farmers in developing countries, if technology and open data are used conjunctively. 

The purpose of this discussion is to explore how ICTs can be used in facilitating the fair use of open data in agriculture and nutrition by farmers in general and especially by the more vulnerable among them such family farmers, rural women and the youth engaged in farming as a livelihood. The discussion will bring to the fore the issues related to the publication, management and use of Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition.

For more information contact e-Agriculture Team

Source: e-Agriculture