For those who are not familiar with SWALIM. I would like to give more information: FAO Somalia project on Water and Land Information Management – SWALIM – is a breakthrough in mobile data gathering, remote monitoring and dynamic mapping.
The ICT tools developed by FAO Somalia Water and Land Information Management System (SWALIM) have helped vulnerable Somali communities along the Juba and Shabelle rivers to prepare for and respond to floods in a timely manner. Despite the destruction of infrastructure, the private sector led communication companies supported the initiative and provided continuous information supply to vulnerable farmers. The cost of sharing information was very minimal and this makes the technology affordable and transferable to other parts of the world with similar context.” Hussein Gadain
Among the new features on the SWALIM web site are the updated Flood Risk and Response Management Information System (FRRMIS), and the dynamic “Live Map” platform, which presents complex data sets on an easy-to-understand map interface. The Live Map system is currently being expanded to include data on soils and land degradation, infrastructure interventions and other important information for decision makers.
In anticipation of the effects of heavy El Niño rains in late 2015, 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 (from the Somali word for “warning”), was also used to alert fishing vessels and coastal communities about two cyclones that swept across thenorthern coast of Puntland in December, saving lives and averting severe property damage.
The FRISK/Digniin system is now being adapted and expanded to gather rainfall data throughout Somaliland and Puntland, as well as the central and southern areas of the country. The rainfall data, like the river level information, is being fed directly into the on-line FRRMIS system to provide near-real-time updates on potential floods and inundations.
Farmers, wholesalers, retailers, agro-processors, inputs suppliers, and traders are challenged severally by limited access to reliable and timely information. Providing access to modern ICT facilities can help farmers and value chain actors overcome information isolation and improve their access to markets and essential public services, such as timely and high-quality information on weather, crop conditions, and market prices as well as technical advice on, say, improved technologies and techniques. Building or creating techno hubs in community centers in rural villages can be extremely helpful to farmers getting familiair with ICTs capabilities. I have been instrumental building a 'knowledge village center' in Hansapur, Nepal and I have seen that exposing farmers to low cost technologies helps them to discuss options and experiment with new forms of communications, capturing data, use of satelite data helping them to make informed decisions.
I do conquer with daanboom on both the definition and how ICT can better be used to assist farmers.
In addition most smallholders in Tanzania lack secure tenure for their farms which is one most important asset to them. This is due to expenses in obtaining CCRO- certificate of customary rights of occupancy , contributed to by professional human resource and technology used. Mobile technology can be used instead and since the mobiles applications are easy to use by even secondary school students , participatory mapping will reduce the cost and fasten the process.
Mobile , drones and satellite imagery can be used in collecting data and analysis of their of be used to provide virtual markets , farm monitoring and fertilization advice. Successful cases such as Mobile Application for secute tenure and AIRINOV can be made available through social entrepreneurs working with farmers associations to ensure sustainability of service.
I founded Agrinfo social enterprise to solely focus on ICTs for agriculture that solves smallholders challenges. We see data as a way of making linkages within players in agriculture value chain.
"ICT" for most people equates to the transfer of information. To further inform and frame our continued discussions we should also equate ICT as the transfer of value such as e-vouchers and digital payments/finance. Digital payments/finance have saturated the urban areas and mobile financial service providers (MFSPs) are looking for strategies and partners for rolling out in rural areas. As digital payments/finance & e-voucher channels are created in rural areas those same channels can be used for the transfer of value to help farmers and others withstand and recover from shocks.
Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; and any such capacity, necessitates the need to have information, the need to communicate the information to those who need that information and lastly available technologies to make that happen. In my work with the farmers in Asia and Africa, the common thread that I have found everywhere is, if there is anything farmers are always worried about is the shock of climate change and inadequate market access. Although these are the symptoms, and there are many causative factors lying underneath these symptoms, but it is undoubtedly the most omnipresent pain-point of any farming community, be it commercial growers such as coffee farmers in Vietnam or smallholder subsistence farmers in Africa.
However, it is also important to consider the human side of ICT. Technology in itself neither creates nor solves any human problem; it is how we use the technology that matters. This why it has been widely observed that technology solutions often fails to get traction and scale up, after initial success with a small group of users. So in my opinion, technology should be designed for the human not otherwise. Interestingly Human Centric Design approach can help much in this area and increasingly technology solutions providers are adopting this.
Hence, according to me, in order to build resilience in programs, projects and most importantly in communities, one need to work backwards, taking the pain-point as beginning and reverse-engineer the solution in a step by step iterative and collaborative process rather than create a solution first (with own perception or just because it was a brilliant idea) and then seeks out whether the solution can help solving a particular problem. Hence, having an immersive experience of the use cases and life processes of the particular project, program or community is very important for the ICT solution architects.
Secondly, the robustness and resilience of the technology itself (contextually) has also to be kept in mind. For example, if a mobile technology based solution for natural disaster information and management depends heavily on network capacity (data speed) it may not work at all when natural disaster happens, since many of the mobile towers would be dysfunctional, resulting in inadequate data or no data at all. However, if basic telephony such as voice or SMS is used, it might still work with less functional infrastructure support. Similarly many market information system looks only at price discovery (market price alert) by farmers without considering the information need of other actors such as aggregators, wholesalers and logistic service providers. In my personal experience with CABI’s Direct2Farm project (www.direct2farm.org), I realized that although we made it possible for the farmers to know about the various price points of agriculture commodities in the market, this itself did not guarantee that the farmers produce will be sold at that price because of various other factors in the value chain. Hence, at the end, farmers would know the market price, but are not able to derive any economic benefit from this knowledge.
In summary, its not ICT/s alone, but smart and contextual use of ICT/s that helps in building resilience.
ICTs can be a support to resilience, but need to be robust and resilient themselves. This is why it is crucial that proper infrastructure are put in place to be able to resist in case of disaster and crises as ICTs will enable to be in contact, send information, have an overview of the situation. Government should prepare the enabling environment to enable resilience.
Thank you all for your contributions so far. Tomorrow we will open a second question in the discussion - but this question remains opened and you can still contribute to this question during the whole period of the forum. We remain available for any question you might have.
what kind of assistance provided to the farmers by fao, financially or technologically or else. The discussion in this forum will leads to any kind of assistance to farmers. In india particularly in south india the farmers are only in small scale and many of them not in a position to use the latest machinary due to their finance constraints.Will they able to have the fao ict.in such case will the fao will be helpful to them.
Definitions of "resilience" tend to focus on the ability to recover after a negative experience. For example, Wikipedia states:
"Resilience is generally thought of as a "positive adaptation" after a stressful or adverse situation online".
However what such defininitions don't incorporate in their interpretation is the background to the "positive adaptation" - the measures, inputs, decisions, preparations etc that created the ability to have the "positive adaptation", and I think this is where the matter of "resilience" and its relevance to ICT, generally and in the context of e-agriculture, comes into play.
A number of the contributions here touch on this, eg:
1. Mr Ahmed's "When we talk about resilience, we are referring to the ability of people and communities to prevent the impacts disasters and crises as well as to anticipate, absorb, and recover from them in a timely, efficient and sustainable manner."
2. Joel Le Turioner - AfricAgriConsult / Pietro's translation "in accessibility and subsidy programs for inputs using ICTs such as electronic vouchers and computerized traceability platforms, farmers were able to significantly improve their incomes through the use of quality inputs, at the right price, available at the right time while having access to agricultural advice (state or private) in order to make the best use of them."
So it is essentially the specific types of preparation in various ways that enabled the ""positive adaptation after a stressful or adverse situation" that should be included in the answer to this question.
Especially if we consider the truth "Prevention is better than Cure", avoidance of the "stressful or adverse situation", clearly a better option than experience of and positive recovery from the "stressful or adverse situation" - can also be included in the understanding and application of the concept of Resilience vis-a-vis application of ICT for resilience programmes.
One of the greatest examples of Resilience in Nature is of course Metamorphosis, defined in Wikipedia as "a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation."
A number of Futurists and Evolution Biologists, for example Elisabet Sahtouris, touch on the process of Metamorphosis to explain how Humanity can progress past pain points into transformed and evolved positions. http://www.sahtouris.com/#5_3,0,,1
In as much as the increasing interconnectivity, leading to the improvement of access to necessary resources, between and among the imaginal cells in the caterpillar enables it to withstand the transition challenges and pain points to become the butterfly, so too will the interconnectivity between the relevant elements, inputs and interventions in all areas including agri-relevant informations (weather etc), agri-resource access and transparent pricing and marketplace access, contribute to ICT enabling Resilience.
I think the next big phase of ICT enabling resilience will thus emerge with the wider adoption and greater application of P2P (Peer 2 Peer) solutions, clearly the most effective maximiser of interconnectivity points, in the areas of Finance and Digital Inclusion, and this is what we're focusing on.
There are two aspects to understanding resilience that we need to resolve before ICT-based intervention.
First, and picking up from Theo’s point, is how we define resilience. In the contributions and wider definitions we can see a tension between short-term stability and longer-term change.
Which resilience do we want for farmers. Is it the stability of continuity and recovery in the face of short-term shocks? Or is it the change of adaptation and even transformation in the face of longer-term trends?
If we don’t include the latter, there’s a danger that resilience means business-as-usual e.g. poor agricultural communities staying in a resiliently poor state – of using ICTs to making farmer lives just stay the same.
Second, we haven’t really talked yet about how we conceive resilience. This has been a big gap in putting resilience into practice. Unless we have some framework or model of resilience, then we can’t understand how to target, design or evaluate ICT interventions in agriculture.
For those who are not familiar with SWALIM. I would like to give more information: FAO Somalia project on Water and Land Information Management – SWALIM – is a breakthrough in mobile data gathering, remote monitoring and dynamic mapping.
The ICT tools developed by FAO Somalia Water and Land Information Management System (SWALIM) have helped vulnerable Somali communities along the Juba and Shabelle rivers to prepare for and respond to floods in a timely manner. Despite the destruction of infrastructure, the private sector led communication companies supported the initiative and provided continuous information supply to vulnerable farmers. The cost of sharing information was very minimal and this makes the technology affordable and transferable to other parts of the world with similar context.” Hussein Gadain
Among the new features on the SWALIM web site are the updated Flood Risk and Response Management Information System (FRRMIS), and the dynamic “Live Map” platform, which presents complex data sets on an easy-to-understand map interface. The Live Map system is currently being expanded to include data on soils and land degradation, infrastructure interventions and other important information for decision makers.
In anticipation of the effects of heavy El Niño rains in late 2015, 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 (from the Somali word for “warning”), was also used to alert fishing vessels and coastal communities about two cyclones that swept across thenorthern coast of Puntland in December, saving lives and averting severe property damage.
The FRISK/Digniin system is now being adapted and expanded to gather rainfall data throughout Somaliland and Puntland, as well as the central and southern areas of the country. The rainfall data, like the river level information, is being fed directly into the on-line FRRMIS system to provide near-real-time updates on potential floods and inundations.
Farmers, wholesalers, retailers, agro-processors, inputs suppliers, and traders are challenged severally by limited access to reliable and timely information. Providing access to modern ICT facilities can help farmers and value chain actors overcome information isolation and improve their access to markets and essential public services, such as timely and high-quality information on weather, crop conditions, and market prices as well as technical advice on, say, improved technologies and techniques. Building or creating techno hubs in community centers in rural villages can be extremely helpful to farmers getting familiair with ICTs capabilities. I have been instrumental building a 'knowledge village center' in Hansapur, Nepal and I have seen that exposing farmers to low cost technologies helps them to discuss options and experiment with new forms of communications, capturing data, use of satelite data helping them to make informed decisions.
I do conquer with daanboom on both the definition and how ICT can better be used to assist farmers.
In addition most smallholders in Tanzania lack secure tenure for their farms which is one most important asset to them. This is due to expenses in obtaining CCRO- certificate of customary rights of occupancy , contributed to by professional human resource and technology used. Mobile technology can be used instead and since the mobiles applications are easy to use by even secondary school students , participatory mapping will reduce the cost and fasten the process.
Mobile , drones and satellite imagery can be used in collecting data and analysis of their of be used to provide virtual markets , farm monitoring and fertilization advice. Successful cases such as Mobile Application for secute tenure and AIRINOV can be made available through social entrepreneurs working with farmers associations to ensure sustainability of service.
I founded Agrinfo social enterprise to solely focus on ICTs for agriculture that solves smallholders challenges. We see data as a way of making linkages within players in agriculture value chain.
"ICT" for most people equates to the transfer of information. To further inform and frame our continued discussions we should also equate ICT as the transfer of value such as e-vouchers and digital payments/finance. Digital payments/finance have saturated the urban areas and mobile financial service providers (MFSPs) are looking for strategies and partners for rolling out in rural areas. As digital payments/finance & e-voucher channels are created in rural areas those same channels can be used for the transfer of value to help farmers and others withstand and recover from shocks.
Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; and any such capacity, necessitates the need to have information, the need to communicate the information to those who need that information and lastly available technologies to make that happen. In my work with the farmers in Asia and Africa, the common thread that I have found everywhere is, if there is anything farmers are always worried about is the shock of climate change and inadequate market access. Although these are the symptoms, and there are many causative factors lying underneath these symptoms, but it is undoubtedly the most omnipresent pain-point of any farming community, be it commercial growers such as coffee farmers in Vietnam or smallholder subsistence farmers in Africa.
However, it is also important to consider the human side of ICT. Technology in itself neither creates nor solves any human problem; it is how we use the technology that matters. This why it has been widely observed that technology solutions often fails to get traction and scale up, after initial success with a small group of users. So in my opinion, technology should be designed for the human not otherwise. Interestingly Human Centric Design approach can help much in this area and increasingly technology solutions providers are adopting this.
Hence, according to me, in order to build resilience in programs, projects and most importantly in communities, one need to work backwards, taking the pain-point as beginning and reverse-engineer the solution in a step by step iterative and collaborative process rather than create a solution first (with own perception or just because it was a brilliant idea) and then seeks out whether the solution can help solving a particular problem. Hence, having an immersive experience of the use cases and life processes of the particular project, program or community is very important for the ICT solution architects.
Secondly, the robustness and resilience of the technology itself (contextually) has also to be kept in mind. For example, if a mobile technology based solution for natural disaster information and management depends heavily on network capacity (data speed) it may not work at all when natural disaster happens, since many of the mobile towers would be dysfunctional, resulting in inadequate data or no data at all. However, if basic telephony such as voice or SMS is used, it might still work with less functional infrastructure support. Similarly many market information system looks only at price discovery (market price alert) by farmers without considering the information need of other actors such as aggregators, wholesalers and logistic service providers. In my personal experience with CABI’s Direct2Farm project (www.direct2farm.org), I realized that although we made it possible for the farmers to know about the various price points of agriculture commodities in the market, this itself did not guarantee that the farmers produce will be sold at that price because of various other factors in the value chain. Hence, at the end, farmers would know the market price, but are not able to derive any economic benefit from this knowledge.
In summary, its not ICT/s alone, but smart and contextual use of ICT/s that helps in building resilience.
ICTs can be a support to resilience, but need to be robust and resilient themselves. This is why it is crucial that proper infrastructure are put in place to be able to resist in case of disaster and crises as ICTs will enable to be in contact, send information, have an overview of the situation. Government should prepare the enabling environment to enable resilience.
Thank you all for your contributions so far. Tomorrow we will open a second question in the discussion - but this question remains opened and you can still contribute to this question during the whole period of the forum. We remain available for any question you might have.
what kind of assistance provided to the farmers by fao, financially or technologically or else. The discussion in this forum will leads to any kind of assistance to farmers. In india particularly in south india the farmers are only in small scale and many of them not in a position to use the latest machinary due to their finance constraints.Will they able to have the fao ict.in such case will the fao will be helpful to them.
Definitions of "resilience" tend to focus on the ability to recover after a negative experience. For example, Wikipedia states:
"Resilience is generally thought of as a "positive adaptation" after a stressful or adverse situation online".
However what such defininitions don't incorporate in their interpretation is the background to the "positive adaptation" - the measures, inputs, decisions, preparations etc that created the ability to have the "positive adaptation", and I think this is where the matter of "resilience" and its relevance to ICT, generally and in the context of e-agriculture, comes into play.
A number of the contributions here touch on this, eg:
1. Mr Ahmed's "When we talk about resilience, we are referring to the ability of people and communities to prevent the impacts disasters and crises as well as to anticipate, absorb, and recover from them in a timely, efficient and sustainable manner."
2. Joel Le Turioner - AfricAgriConsult / Pietro's translation "in accessibility and subsidy programs for inputs using ICTs such as electronic vouchers and computerized traceability platforms, farmers were able to significantly improve their incomes through the use of quality inputs, at the right price, available at the right time while having access to agricultural advice (state or private) in order to make the best use of them."
So it is essentially the specific types of preparation in various ways that enabled the ""positive adaptation after a stressful or adverse situation" that should be included in the answer to this question.
Especially if we consider the truth "Prevention is better than Cure", avoidance of the "stressful or adverse situation", clearly a better option than experience of and positive recovery from the "stressful or adverse situation" - can also be included in the understanding and application of the concept of Resilience vis-a-vis application of ICT for resilience programmes.
One of the greatest examples of Resilience in Nature is of course Metamorphosis, defined in Wikipedia as "a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation."
A number of Futurists and Evolution Biologists, for example Elisabet Sahtouris, touch on the process of Metamorphosis to explain how Humanity can progress past pain points into transformed and evolved positions. http://www.sahtouris.com/#5_3,0,,1
In as much as the increasing interconnectivity, leading to the improvement of access to necessary resources, between and among the imaginal cells in the caterpillar enables it to withstand the transition challenges and pain points to become the butterfly, so too will the interconnectivity between the relevant elements, inputs and interventions in all areas including agri-relevant informations (weather etc), agri-resource access and transparent pricing and marketplace access, contribute to ICT enabling Resilience.
I think the next big phase of ICT enabling resilience will thus emerge with the wider adoption and greater application of P2P (Peer 2 Peer) solutions, clearly the most effective maximiser of interconnectivity points, in the areas of Finance and Digital Inclusion, and this is what we're focusing on.
There are two aspects to understanding resilience that we need to resolve before ICT-based intervention.
First, and picking up from Theo’s point, is how we define resilience. In the contributions and wider definitions we can see a tension between short-term stability and longer-term change.
Which resilience do we want for farmers. Is it the stability of continuity and recovery in the face of short-term shocks? Or is it the change of adaptation and even transformation in the face of longer-term trends?
If we don’t include the latter, there’s a danger that resilience means business-as-usual e.g. poor agricultural communities staying in a resiliently poor state – of using ICTs to making farmer lives just stay the same.
Second, we haven’t really talked yet about how we conceive resilience. This has been a big gap in putting resilience into practice. Unless we have some framework or model of resilience, then we can’t understand how to target, design or evaluate ICT interventions in agriculture.