By Thembani Malapela In brief AI and Machine Learning technologies could transform the agri-food systems and help ending hunger. UN-Wide System is adopting the Artificial Intelligence in its programmes. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is adopting and experimenting with AI and Machine Learning across the agriculture domain. FAO is also aware of the impact of AI and is now a signatory to the " Rome Call for AI Ethics " Introduction In 2017, l wrote a blog on whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) can improve agricultural productivit y and at that time, the...
The World Food Programme is scaling up operations in more than 80 countries with a little help from techies and creatives In a recent article , WFP has shared how the innovative use of technologies is helping the organization respond to the COVID19 pandemic. Technology and innovation have always been a key part of the WFP’s emergency response, but now, during a global pandemic, they are perhaps more critical than ever beforeWFP tapped its Innovation Accelerator to aid its response to coronavirus. Through the I nnovation Accelerator , WFP is supporting innovators and entrepreneurs around the...
23 September 2019, New York and Rome - Putting the world's eyes in the skies to work to improve human lives and combat climate change is now easier thanks to an overhaul of the Food and Agriculture Organization' innovative geospatial monitoring system. A new version of SEPAL - System for Earth Observation Data Access, Processing and Analysis for Land Monitoring - has been developed that enables advanced forest monitoring from mobile phones. It also provides access to high-resolution data updated daily by a fleet of more than 190 satellites run by Planet , an integrated aerospace and data...
A recent paper has been published and examines the use of Artificial Intelligence in 'just-in-time' crop disease detection in banana. The paper reviews research towards the development of an AI-based banana disease and pest detection system using a deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) to support banana farmers. Banana is a popular fruit grown all over the world and a staple food in many developing countries. In many of these areas, traditional pest and disease identification approached rely on agricultural extension specialists; however, application of technologies such as Artificial...
In sub-Saharan Africa and indeed in most of the developing world, women form a greater part of the agricultural labour force. There is potential of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to include women fully in the agricultural systems. The recent ICT Update 90 focuses on Women and Digitization in Agriculture and chronicles the work that The Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has done within the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP). The interventions deal with CTA’s contribution to rural economies, the growing advancements in digitization and lessening...
Land cover changes can impact many areas of life. These changes can affect deforestation, ecological communities, wildfire extent, and urban growth. This advanced series will focus on using satellite imagery to map changes in land cover. Attendees will learn change detection methods, including...
Location specific and timely advice to improve productivity and climate resilience among smallholder farmers Farmers in developing countries have a challenge of accessing localized weather data. Recently the e-Agriculture Team at FAO and aWhere published a Promising Practice that explains how aWhere can provide weather-based data and tips for smallholder farmers. aWhere delivers agricultural intelligence to farmers, crop consultants and researchers all over the world. How does aWhere achieve this? “The company aims at making agronomic and weather data available to farmers through...
FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia has just published a status report on the E-Agriculture implementation within selected FAO member countries in the region. This publication coincided with the FAO Regional Conference for the region and the report is a follow-up to the Regional Capacity Development Workshop on National e-Agriculture Strategies in Europe and Central Asia, organized by FAO and the GAK, non-profit organization of the Gödöllő Agricultural University and with the valuable participation of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). This effort follows FAO’s role...
On the 25th of April 2018 the e-Agriculture team organized a webinar in partnership with Grameen Foundation on the FarmerLink in the Philippines: Digital Innovation for Agriculture . The webinar presented the strategy used to develop and deploy FarmerLink, and review results of an 18-month pilot implementation.You can watch the presentation here Grameen Foundation, in collaboration with the Philippine Coconut Authority, Franklin Baker, and People’s Bank of Caraga launched FarmerLink to increase farming households’ incomes and resilience by improving their productivity, providing them access...
FAO is using drones to fight hunger, improve nutrition and counter the effects of climate change and extreme weather events. A documentary from Asia and the Pacific Office of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization shows collaboration with countries to leverage the used of ICTs using drones. Philippines is a country prone to typhoons, aerial drones are used to map out the risk areas of agricultural land to mitigate the risk. This ensures that once a disaster strikes farmers affected can get assistance quicker. Drones have an advantage of wider coverage and since they are remotely...
Land cover changes can impact many areas of life. These changes can affect deforestation, ecological communities, wildfire extent, and urban growth. This advanced series will focus on using satellite imagery to map changes in land cover. Attendees will learn change detection methods, including...
