The Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has published a policy brief that emphasize the importance of weather data, and its derived services for agriculture and nutrition and challenges in dealing with weather data value chain. Farmers need access to accurate and localized weather information to make evidence based farm management decisions which includes when to plant or to apply fertilizer. The Policy brief outlines the benefits of open data and specifically offer example where open data is useful within the farming practices. However, for weather data to be of...
The International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) headquarters was a busy location with more than 2,500 ICT experts from around the world arriving for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The theme of WSIS Forum 2018 is ‘Leveraging ICTs to Build Information and Knowledge Societies for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ’ and seeks to explore ways and possibilities that can help meet the sustainable development challenge. The UN Secretary General Mr. António Guterre set the meeting tone when he said, ‘in today’s digital world Internet access is imperative,...
The Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Telecommunication Union invite interested persons to join remotely the WSIS session 278 - Building a Framework for Digital Innovation in Agriculture . Details Date and Time 11:00–13:00, Thursday, 22 March 2018 Link to the meeting Webcast link Moderator James Azevedo Görgen - Digital Innovation and Development at FAO About this meeting The food and agricultural sector is going to face enormous challenges to feed the 9.6 billion people who will inhabit the planet by 2050, and food production must increase by 70% by 2050. Digital...
Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization and partners are organizing the East African Digital Farmers Conference. The conference will run from the 25 -27th of April 2018, at the Kenya Agriculture & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) grounds in Nairobi, Kenya . Image credit...
The Asia-Pacific Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture (AFITA) announces the upcoming conference which will focus on precision agriculture. This year in October 2018, AFITA/WCCA2018 is going to be co-located with World Congress on Computers in Agriculture (WCCA). As stated on our...
This announcement is shared for informational purpose to the e-Agriculture Community as announced by CTA in dgroups . CTA is looking for articles for the forthcoming issue of ICT Update , which will deal with blockchain in agricultur e Blockchain can be defined as a digital ledger that allows storage and exchange of information in a decentralized, immutable, autonomous and trustworthy manner. It allows actors engaged in a transaction to quickly share information, which can include financial data, without a central authority. No single actor can damage the records. Blockchain technology is...
Forests are part of our ecosystem and they cover 30% of the earth’s surface. Forests provides lumber, provides fuel to cook and boil water, provide nutritious food, offer medicines, animal fodder and homes for animals and are a source of income for many. Due to climate change and unstainable human practices forests are fast disappearing. In the SDG framework, deforestation is regarded as a major challenge and the Sustainable Development Goal 15 . Here are some facts and figures Forests Around 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihood. This includes some 70 million indigenous...
The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has published a Call for Expression of Interest . This call supports the usage of drones to ensure that smallholder farming needs to become more productive, more sustainable and more profitable are supported. In the recent past, CTA has supported the use of drones in agriculture in their member countries. For example,in 2017 CTA partnered with leading private sector operators, and assisted ICT start-ups in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Jamaica, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and...
The FAO Technical Network on Sustainable Crop Production and Agroecology will hold a Seminar on FAO’s Farmer Field Schools programme and Global Platform on Wednesday in FAO HQ with remote participation online at http://www.fao.org/webcast/en/ . All interested e-Agriculture CoP members can participate remotely The Farmer Field Schools (FFS) was pioneered by FAO in 1989 as an approach to integrated pest management in rice production in Asia. The advantage of the FFS is that they offer a hands-on learning that allows agricultural knowledge to be applied to promote sustainable agriculture...
Does your agricultural ministry still use paper for filing documents and submissions? How can technology help? The e-service support to farmers in Latvia is a good example of how technology can help in these situations. The Electronic Application System (EAS) of the Rural Support Service of the Republic of Latvia was created to electronically submit different types of applications for EU and Latvia’s state support for agriculture, fisheries, forestry, rural areas development, fishermen and rural entrepreneurs. The EAS system held in administration of the ministry and the implementation of...