Question 1 (opens 25 Nov.) What are the main achievements in the area of ICT for agriculture and rural development...

"Though there have been significant gains in ICT capacity and physical infrastructure, further development is limited by a lack of an infrastructure backbone. This is compounded by a lack of literacy and numeracy skills, diminishing the accessibility and impact of many existing ICT systems." - from the ICT in Agriculture sourcebook's report 2 on ICTs in the Agriculture Sector (http://www.ictinagriculture.org/content/ict-agriculture-sourcebook)

Again, all you need is a 'smart' farmer. There has been projects done in rural India where applications were developed with pictures as inputs for items like seeds, fertilizers and other inputs and the farmers  were able to interact with that application and get the necessary advice/information through audio/video feedbacks.

Hi Gerard,

The assertion you are making on the need of 'smart' farmer is very interesting. It is imho a tough decision between targeting the low-hanging fruits, and supporting farmers who are smarter (more educated, more entrepreneurial etc.) and targeting the vast majority of not-that-smart farmers that are struggling. This discussion is key and has impact on many aspects of m-agri interventions from using old technology such as radio that are likely to reach those who are not even mobile connected. 
Targeting the smart farmers is easier and is very likely to be successfull and impactful (increased in opportunities for these farmers due to access to m-agri). On the other hand, it is likely to make the life of the poorest harder because they will be even more excluded.
This is where the discussion between private sector vs development organizations makes sense imho. I believe that all the m-agri startups are defacto targeting the smart farmers. So perhaps this is where the line should separate the two worlds?
any opinion on this?

steph 

Hi Stephane

With the mobile phone we have the "vehicule" that lets us to reach so many people. This is the only the first step.  What we need to know  is what is "important" to communicate to a grower in its "own" microclimate conditions to be more efficient to solve its problems. That´s the key question and to do it adapting the available tech to the add value of their problem.

Second we need is a "common objective lenguage" to talk about agriculture, about each  experience of failure or succed. Thats our bigger problem since i have been working in practical agriculture since more than 24 years ago. I haven´t find it...

This lenguage does not exit at all... only some indicators, but fails a lot. Thats the biggest disadvantage we have if we compare agriculture with other bussiness were you can measure the processes involved. New technologies are giving us the opportunity to create it and to use it.

As an example, if there is a General Accounting criteria, any enterprise can use it to learn about its profits if they invest on recovering its own data. Thats what we need for agriculture.

From my perspective, in Spain and in most in the advanced countries in the world the so-called precision agriculture in not having succed in a great scale because of this. In Spain and we are promoting this reflexion in different speaches during this year after working the last 14 years trying to implement new technologies in practical agriculture.

We have to move into SMART AGRICULTURE if i want to have smart growers: what does SMART means....??

¨S M A R T.

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timed

The definition of a goal in a project should be specific and measurable on what you want to achieve,  and must contain a time period in which it must reach and identify cost constraints or resources.

is it possible to achieve today in agriculture??  If we are not able to measure the factors that affects my plant i have a problem..if i want to be smart....

Hi Alvarez,

This is another very interesting discussion around the importance of what is communicate to farmers versus how it is communicate.
To be honnest, I meet quite often people that are looking for "content" (e.g. mobile phone operators) for their services. So their questions is about what should be sent to farmers to help them. 
On the opposite, my own experience, sometimes content is not an issue. What i mean here is that what is needed by someone is usually available from someone else. you have innovative farmers that have solved some of the local issues (in that regard i strongly recommend the movie "the man who stopped the desert http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvxk07_the-man-who-stopped-the-desert_news ), there are NGOs that have acquired lots of local knowledge, there are local experts at the cooperative or regional level. They are able to advise farmers. The key issue here is how to share this knowledge resource and how to leverage knowledge sharing, but not how to put new knowledge in the system.
I would be happy to hear from the audience about their own experience whether content/expertise is something available in the ecosystem, or if that should come from outside?

steph

Hi again
I think there are two kind of "knowledge" we could use:

1. basic knowledge of crop management in the area, that could be the case you are talking about with local NGOs.
2. Decision-making about the management of in-puts during cultivation. Complex alarms with the adecuate filtering could help in a small and big scale depending of the crop problem

In each project should both evaluated, and i think mobile phones and Apps could help in the first question, which is not my expertize.

I am talking about the second case, where i see the possibilities that we have to improve growers in-puts managements once the local knowledge is achieved based in practical results registered in their conditions. It is a question of mesurement and then solve the scale problem, which is the key question.

rafael

Hi Alvarez,

you make an interesting distinction between knowledge of crop management in the agro-ecological area, versus decision-making knowledge needed during actual cultivation.

The former is essentially a planning exercise, and mobile technology can certainly play a role in e.g. mapping farm plots and collecting crop history data.  Other forms of ICT can also be used effectively - farmer-to-farmer videos on crop planning and intercropping, for example (such as by Digital Green http://www.digitalgreen.org/; or the farmer-to-farmer low cost video techniques promoted by USAID's FACET program via great training work by FHI360 http://www.e-agriculture.org/blog/free-toolkit-demystifies-video-agricul...); community radio shows on Ag topics with farmer listening groups and using SMS feedback channels (e.g. Farmer Voice Radio http://www.farmervoice.org/content/consortium; IVR for farmer connection to public resources such as planting material depots; etc. 

The latter type of knowledge - for improving grower input management - is more 'in the moment': it is local, contextualised, dynamic and involves actual investment of scarce resources.   Again, we have a rich portfolio of potential ICT tools - mobile apps that help with decision-making by querying a database or contacting an expert; various ways to share local knowledge via video, radio, drawing and sharing pictures.

But you make the key point that Measurement is very important. 

Grameen Foundation has been enabling farmers in Uganda to offer up local solutions - such as alternative ways to use byproducts as compost in cultivation, or ways to tackle a pest on the crop - via the mobile phone. The information is captured by the community, sent to a central expert hub in the form of text, image, voice and/orvideo over the phone, and then validated by independent agronomic experts. Approaches that are empirically validated are then 'published' in the menu of knowledge available instantly to all the Community Knowledge Workers on their handsets.

This is an area that we all need to develop much further; as Megan noted: utilise the skills and experience that people already have, as far as possible; to which I'd add, and use the tools to help identify what is effective.

-- John
   

 Hi John
Sorry, i did not read your post untill today...

My focus and interest is how we can manage the new ICT tools for what you describe as The  "knowledge for improving grower input management (is more 'in the moment').

Look, i am working in one of the most advanced agricultures areas (I think Spain is the first agriculture fresh fruit and vegetables exporter fo the world) and we are still using inputs and take decitions almost by guess... and this is a huge "hidden cost" for the growers in water, nutrition, pesticides in-puts waste.

The main reason is because we don´t have a lenguage, we don´t have common indicators and the discusions among experts is "your word against mine".. which affects and makes it difficult teamwork which is the key point to improve the science.

Once i finished my 12 years working in the south of Spain( in the citrus and stone fruits farms were i was teached by the best consultants which could be problably the best  in the world in those days in the "concept of learning how to control a plant using in-puts by guess") i realized that all my knowledge was "in my head" based in cases of succed and failure, but i was not able to leave it "written" for the next technitian that was going to do the same work as i did before. In few sheets of paper i could write the "principals of how to manege the crop" but not more. This happens in every farm in Spain and i think in the world and this reduce the chance of progress. A few years later in my new company i start to travel around the world and i realized that "the guess control knowledge using inputs" that we were using in Spain was the most advance... but we had a problem on that: if i feel that my orange needed to be bigger i irrigate 8 hours instead of 4... and thats the way the agriculture world works today in most part of the world and the reason i start to work using sensors to agriculture. The big problem to solve this problem is that we have to impact in each "growers mind" in terms of trust and consultancy. Mobile technology with new technologies we are using could  help to improve the solution.

 
Since then we have been working to change it using ICT (14 years)  and in the "human chain" for this we have found:

• ICT experts
• private tech people, extension agents from goverment
• farmers

If we have the "lenguage" to promote the change then we have to teach the leaders how they can use it. The big advantage from the past is that with new technologies we could promote it faster than in the past because we are only talking about diagnosis and data that will need an expert to use it to improve crop profits in each area. But we need experts that understand this knowledge.

The first point to promote the improvement comes to be aware that you can try to control your crop processes (vegetative flush, maduration etc) using inputs in a sustainable way . Most of ours farmers in Spain could pass  the first point called by you as "the knowledge of crop management in the agro-ecological area", but i agree with you that the potencial of new technologies like video etc to promote information exchange from experts to growers. Even for us.

(to be continued)

(continuation from the other post)..

The unique way to improve the way we take decisions is with data and information from our crops. Then we will start to create knowledge if we solve problems.

Using the new concept of crop characterization points (weather stations with soil moisture, plant and nutrition sensors with remote sensig and data from field)  with extension agents from the goverment as leaders of change in areas of big importance for agriculture could be an opportunity, but this have to be designed carefully and should be intregrated with the other ICT technologies that you are talking about which are being used with succed in the developing countries. It is very easy to fail in this attemps because of design, tech problems on field, bussines model etc. I feel confortable with the crop assurance projects etc.

I could have some opportunities to promote this new concept of projects in Africa or South America with goverments and thats the reason I am here, trying to meet people focus using ICT to improve growers profits, and this is very complex from my experience in Spain but there could be a window to do so.

but is agriculture just a project?

I mean that we have to adapt the technologies to each case and each crops, farmers situation etc.  each case will be a "project" .....
There are necesities and tech available... but the first step to solve problems is to "understand the tech possibilities".
Problems in advance agriculture like in Spain are different from problems in development countries but there is an opportinity to help them to grow in their crops´s knowledge faster than we have done in the past.