E-Agriculture

Do you have concrete examples of successful use of ICTs in resilience? (November 30th)

Rachel  Firestone
Rachel FirestoneWorld Bank GroupUnited States of America

Santosh: Thank you for responding to this call for comments, and the example you provide in Q4 of user-targeted ICT integration is very in-depth.  Thank you for providing such detail.

I completely agree with your point that in-person interactions between ICT developers and the (often rural) community members for whom ICT solutions are being developed is key. And if developers come out of these communities or are embedded within these communities, even better.

The exposure visits you describe between urban and rural project beneficiaries that you describe sounds very effective, both in terms of building rapport, and facilitating user centered design thinking about the new community context in individuals from both urban and rural environments. What you describe is exactly what we are planning on doing with NRENs in Somalia, Zambia, and Sudan, and which has already been taking place to some degree in Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda.

As you suggest might be the case, one challenge we find is centrally integrating this type of program implementation into the NREN's main work plan or business plan, since it ends up being an application of connectivity rather than part of deploying connectivity itself. If they are not a central feature of activities, interactions between (often urban-based) developers and rural community members can be few and far between, often in part due to difficult travel logistics. One area we are exploring is better linking community based organizations to the NREN network rather than relying on students and faculty to make these connections. Another area is strengthening partnerships between resident tech hubs/incubation centers (housed within the university or the main urban center/urban hub) to the NREN and university network since directly interacting with rural communities is increasingly becoming central to their mandates. 

Thank you again for your comments.

Santosh Ostwal
Santosh OstwalOssian Agro Automation Private LimitedIndia

I am going to share a thrilling journey of Nano Ganesh ICT and how it took an impactful shape in the time line of 25 years and made a drastic socio-economic change in the irrigation operations in rural sector in farming as well as drinking water supply management in the villages..

Nano Ganesh is an electronics hardware + software GSM device integrated with the existing switch gear of electric water pumps and can be accessed by a mobile phone from any place for the purpose of controlling and monitoring.

After installing Nano Ganesh device at the water pump end
-                   

  1. A farmer can switch on /off the water pump with the help of a mobile phone from any distance..
  2. He understands on his mobile phone the on-off status of the power and pump
  3. Farmers get alert messages on his mobile phone about different events about pump operations..
  4. In few latest models, Nano Ganesh can be connected to a server for cloud based services like analytics.

Hence, farmers are not needed to physically visit the hazardous distant pump sites in the remote locations for controlling and monitoring of the water pumps. .

Background - The whole story of Nano Ganesh ICT evolutions is basically to solve the problems of the farmers in controlling the water pumps.

The challenges faced by the farmers and ICT developer were almost the same.

  1. Distant locations of the water pumps in hazardous areas near river, wells, ponds, lakes etc.
  2. Difficult terrains through dense plantation or cultivation.
  3. Fear of animals on the way to water pumps.
  4. Erratic power due to heavy density of electricity distribution in the irrigation zones.
  5. Odd hours or night operation schedules due to availability of the power during night hours.
  6. Shock hazards due to wet area and electricity leakages near the water pump.
  7. Every season is the challenge for accessing the water pump - Rains, scorching heat, winter.
  8. Expenses on travelling - an operator, motor bike, and fuel etc.
  9. Fear of theft of water pumps and accessories like cable, panel and starters etc. and consequent incidences to replace the whole stuff.                                                                                                    

To address these challenges of the farmers in accessing the water pumps,we started with low cost electronics devices in 1991 to automatically control the water pumps.The Initial pioneering phase  of eight to ten years was filled with all odds for an entrepreneur to be sustainable. The real need of the farmers was identified and fine tuned in 1998 - Farmers preferred low cost remote controlling devices for the water pumps instead of complicated PLC based systems. 

With low range radio frequency based remote controllers in 1998, the technology took a revolutionary shape of unlimited range remote controller with the help of a mobile phone in 2004 and went on improving every year after that to the latest cloud based version in 2016.

PDF PRESENTATION

PPT PRESENTATION

Though the technology evolution was important, the field implementation and business model is quite a learning part which I would cater subsequently in the coming days.

Nano Ganesh ICT has been selected as the best mobile innovation for the emerging market by Nokia. GSMA has featured  it at different platforms. It has been validated under India Innovation Growth Programme hosted by FICCI and The Government of India. The State Government of Karnataka has considered Nano Ganesh as a part of m-Governance programme. The success story of Nano Ganesh has been published by FAO in 2015.

I feel that a real success is - More than 50000 farmers in India have accepted Nano Ganesh ICT as a life changing technology and many are on the way.

 

Julio Pinto
Julio PintoFood And Agriculture Organisation of the United NationsChile

Question 1: What is resilience and how can ICTs help resilience programmes or projects?

ICTs is an asset in Agriculture to help resilience programmes or projects and particularly for data collection, management and dissemination and particularly to support Early Warning Systems at national, regional and global level in various areas such as Animal Health, Plant Health and Food Safety to ensure health protection e.g. Mobile technologies such as real-time disease reporting to support animal health systems.

Important to highlight that ICTs can help significantly resilience programmes or projects if strong technical expertise is overseeing this process and making sure that strategies for sustainability of those technology are well designed to include technical advice, policy guidance and advocacy.

Question 2: Do you have concrete examples of successful use of ICTs for Resilience

In response to the challenges that face animal health systems in developing countries in particular collecting and analysing disease data from the field,  FAO has been exploring ways of offering innovative approaches and tools to expand the use of personal electronic devices to report key data from disease threats in the field. Some FAO field projects have started to use mobile apps, Small Message Service (SMS) and digital pen technologies to facilitate field disease reporting.

FAO AGAH/Global Early Warning System (GLEWS) Unit developed the EMA-i tool to facilitate real-time disease data collection and reporting to support official veterinary services capacities in epidemiology, reporting, early warning and surveillance.

FAO is implementing some activities in African countries by offering a full package of technical services and tools to veterinary services and stakeholders which include the development and customisation of EMA-i according to national needs, the provision of a secured platform in FAO to host the data for governments and the technical support for the functionalities and flow of communication of the data reported through EMA-i and all the setting up and validation procedures. All this knowledge and technology is developed using open sources and Android technology under the overall development of the FAO’s Global Animal Disease Information System (EMPRES-i).

EMA-i is being successfully implemented in Uganda and with a plan for expansion. Other countries have just started such as Tanzania (Zanzibar) and Mali.

Uganda:

So far EMA-i app has been implemented in Uganda since 2013 and so far in 18 districts, which include all the seven Karamoja districts. Currently there are 169 EMA-i users/reporters in Uganda and a total of 1,158 disease reports have been received during the period of implementation in 18 districts which has increased the sensitivity of the overall surveillance systems and allowing authorities to take measures to mitigate the potential spread of this diseases within the country. The potential expansion of EMA-i has been discussed with the government to expand its development to collect additional information on livestock production and associated parameters.

Mali:

EMA-i is currently implemented under a first phase from November 2016 to April 2017 in eight communal areas of four Cercle in the regions of Koulikoro, Kayes, Sikasso. Criteria to select the areas included safety, accessibility, presence of certain diseases and internet availability.

United Republic of Tanzania (Zanzibar):

EMA-i is currently implemented since June 2016 in Zanzibar and with a plan to expand to the mainland during 2017.

Some useful links:

Information sheet on EMA-i:
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4853e.pdf

EMA-i: a Mobile App for Timely Animal Disease Field Reporting to Enhance Surveillance:
http://www.e-agriculture.org/news/ema-i-mobile-app-timely-animal-disease-field-reporting-enhance-surveillance

EMA-i Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLh9dCWne0o

EMA-i Uganda:
http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/programmes/en/empres/news_020813.html

EMPRES 360 Bulletin – page 12:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3470e/i3470e.pdf

EMA-i Plan in Mali:
http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/programmes/en/empres/news_241214c.html

Thanks for allowing us to contribute to this forum,

Julio Pinto (AGAH/GLEWS)

Fairouz Larfaoui (FCC EMPRES)

Martina Escher (AGAH/GLEWS)

Pietro Aldobrandini
Pietro AldobrandiniFood and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)Italy

Dear all, to answer the second question of the forum on ICTs for Resilience, "Do you have concrete examples of successful use of ICTs in resilience?" I am going to present the SWALIM SMS-based warning system based in Somalia. I think this is a good example of how ICTs can help overcome challenges such as civil insecurity and help build resilience against natural hazards.

Somalia is located in the Horn of Africa, has a land area of 62 734 000 Ha (hectares); the country has been in conflict for over 25 years, experiences ongoing civil insecurity and faces recurrent localized drought and flood conditions. Due to decades of civil strife, many parts of Somalia are not easily accessible and the natural resources of the country have largely been unmanaged and unprotected - and are thus being diminished and degraded.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) initiated the Somalia Water and Land Information Management (SWALIM) programme that serves Somali government institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), development agencies and UN bodies engaged in assisting Somali communities whose lives and livelihoods depend directly on water and land resources. The programme aims to provide high-quality water and land information, crucial to relief, rehabilitation and development initiatives in Somalia. The use of ICTs to accelerate, improve and multiply the effects of this work has been a hallmark of the programme since the beginning in the early years of this century and remains a key component.

In anticipation of the effects of heavy El Niño rains in late 2015, predicted to be one of the strongest and most destructive in history, SWALIM developed an SMS-based mobile phone application to capture information about impending flood situations and to warn vulnerable communities along the Juba and Shabelle rivers. This system, known as FRISC/Digniin, was also used to alert fishing vessels and coastal communities when two cyclones swept across the northern coast of Puntland in December 2015, saving lives and averting severe property damage.

The first climate data sent to FRISC was on Wednesday, October 14th 2015. SWALIM collects data sent by SMS on a daily basis to collect climate data from weather stations in Somalia. The system will be in use for as long as the data collected from those manual stations is needed. It will eventually be transferred to the Somalia government, together with other SWALIM systems.

The FRISC/Digniin system is a good example of how development projects can overcome constraints brought on through war and insecurity by leveraging technology. The complex security situation in Somalia led the SWALIM team to think of a way to monitor rainfall and river levels and inform the population on El Niño threats remotely. Through a technology as simple as SMS (combined with a web-based server and a team of experts), a project like this can contribute to saving thousands of lives, as well as water and land resources.

The FRISC/Digniin system is now being adapted and expanded to gather rainfall data throughout Somaliland and Puntland, as well as in the central and southern areas of the country where it is already established.

SWALIM website: www.faoswalim.org

Pradip Dey
Pradip DeyIndian Institute of Soil ScienceIndia

The USDA Forest Service and Environmental Protection Agency have cooperatively developed a knowledge base for assessment and monitoring of ecological states and processes in sixth-code watersheds. The knowledge base provides a formal logical specification for evaluating watershed processes, patterns, general effects of human influence, and specific effects on salmon habitat. The system integrates geographic information system and knowledge base system technologies to provide an analytical tool for environmental assessment and monitoring. The basic objective is to improve the quality and completeness of environmental assessments and the efficiency with which they are performed [Reynolds et al. 2000].

FarmNet is a network of rural people and supporting intermediary organizations, such as extension services, using ICTs and conventional communication media to facilitate the generating, gathering and exchanging of knowledge and information. Operated by farmers and their organizations, FarmNet (http://ftp.fao.org/sd/farmnet.pdf) links farmers to each other and to the resources and services that they need to improve their livelihoods through agricultural productivity, profitability and food security.

aAQUA is an online multilingual, multimedia Agricultural portal for disseminating information from and to the grassroots of the Indian agricultural community. aAQUA simultaneously addresses two major challenges in farmer outreach programs - geographic reach and customized delivery. It answers farmers queries based on the location, season, crop and other information provided by farmers. Agricultural content repositories (Digital Library), Agri-price information (Bhav Puchiye), farmer schemes and various operations support databases (aAQUA-QoS) have also emerged from the experience of aAQUA deployments. aAQUA's large scale deployment provides avenues for researchers to contribute in the areas of knowledge management, cross-lingual information retrieval, and providing accessible content for rural populations [Ramamritham, 2006].

Wen [2007] presents a knowledge-based intelligent e-commerce system for selling agricultural products. The KIES system not only provides agricultural products sales, financial analysis and sales forecasting, but also provides feasible solutions or actions based on the results of rule-based reasoning. The intelligent system integrates a database, a rule base and a model base to create a tool of which managers can use to deal with decision-making problems via the Internet. For offering convenient delivery and user-friendly services to customers, an e-map combined with a GPS is used.

LPCUBE Wise Agri KM™ is an innovative knowledge management solution designed for the agriculture industry. It enriches research and helps researchers to share knowledge and reuse the lessons learned. The collective knowledge base built using this platform can be used to disseminate right knowledge to the farmers at the right time. It enriches farming and ultimately improves agriculture productivity.

Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS), website http://www.fao.org/aims/index.jsp, is a portal whose main objectives are: to facilitate collaboration, partnership and networking among partners by promoting information exchange and knowledge sharing; and to harmonize the decentralized efforts currently taking place in the development of methodologies, standards and applications for management of agricultural information systems; consequently, providing a 'one-stop' access to system designers and implementers.

As annouced in the prestnation of the forum, FAO promotes the use of ICTs to reinforce the resilience capacity of states, communities and individuals. Here are some greart examples of successful experiences on the use of ICTs for Resilience documented such as : 

eLocust (a detection and early warning tool for Desert Locusts). see good practice fact sheet  on http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6058e.pdf

SWALIM (FAO Somalia project on Water and Land Information Management – SWALIM – a breakthrough in mobile data gathering, remote monitoring and dynamic mapping). See the 2016 award as champion in the use of ICTs http://www.fao.org/resilience/news-events/detail/en/c/418025/

OpenForis (a free open-source solutions for environmental monitoring). a video to learn more: https://youtu.be/iIzvMzs1qy0

EMA-i (a moble App for timely animal disease reporting to enhance surveillance) http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4853e.pdf

EMPRES-i (a global animal disease information system): http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/home/en/news_archive/aga_in_action/empres-...