The Yield is an Internet of Things (IoT) Australian product company that aims to use technology to improve yields in agriculture and aquaculture. The Yield combines wireless sensor networks and localised data to inform farmers and growers on the best decisions to make regarding their yelds. The Yield uses Sensing+, a microclimate sensing system for agriculture which measures data from different points around the farm and provides hyper local predictions based on the farm's growing conditions by using data analytics and artificial intelligence. Watch The Yield's presentation video: Credits:...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the e-Agriculture Community of Practice (COP) are launching a call for good and promising practices on the use of ICTs for Agriculture .The call aims at...
AQUASTAT is FAO's global information system on water and agriculture. It collects, analyses and disseminates data and information by country and by region. Its aim is to provide users interested in global, regional and national analyses with comprehensive information related to water resources and agricultural water management across the world, with emphasis on countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. AQUASTAT offers the user standardized data and tools to generate its own analysis. Ultimately, it aims to improve the user's understanding and monitoring of water resources,...
In a recent article on Harvard Business Review, Ndubuisi Ekekwe explores how digital technology is poised at providing a solution to increase farm productivity in Africa. In this article he reviews the food challenges affecting Africa such as weather changes, rural-urban migration that deprives farming communities of young people and deforestation amongst many challenges. While African governments have employed many policy instruments to improve farm productivity, yields are still marginally improving. The article notes that African entrepreneurs are interested in how farmers work and how...
This announcement is published as it was shared on AIMS We are pleased to announce three upcoming webinars in English, French and Spanish about how to search AGORA with Summon . Summon facilitates literature research on the AGORA portal enabling the user to search resources by keyword, filter search results, save search items and to export citations. AGORA’s main purpose is to improve the quality and effectiveness of agricultural research, education and training in low- and middle-income countries. AGORA/Research4Life provides free or low cost access to peer-reviewed journals (to date, 6,500...
Ericsson and The Earth Institute, Columbria University have published this report entitled, " ICT and SDGs: How Information and Communications Technology Can Accelerate Action on the Sustainable Development Goal s". The authors of this report acknowledge that the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals will call for a transformation of societies and solicitation of technological solutions. ICT, especially mobile broadband, will be the essential infrastructure platform for the SDGs. The reports summarises five ways that ICTs can help in the achievement of the SDGs:- Accelerated...
The first beta release of the FAO Water Productivity through Open access of Remotely sensed derived data (WaPOR) portal is available as of 14 April 2017. The FAO portal monitors and reports on agriculture water productivity over Africa and the Near East. The portal provides open access to the water productivity database and allows for direct data queries, time series analyses, area statistics and data download of key variables associated to water and land productivity. The portal provides information on variables such as water productivity, land productivity, above ground biomass production,...
Agricultural work in mountainous areas such as grass cutting is done manually. Because of the many slopes it is difficult to introduce a robot. At the same time, there is a huge labour shortage in japanese agriculture as the rural population is aging and the young are not attracted by the agricultural sector. The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will work on the development of an unmanned mowing robot. The new unmanned vehicle is based on a passenger type mowing machine, but obviously much smaller. It has been miniaturized essentially by changing the power from engine...
Global Forest Watch (GFW) is an interactive online forest monitoring and alert system designed for users to access the information they need to better manage and conserve forest landscapes. The mission of the Global Forest Watch is to provide the most precise information about the status of forest landscapes worldwide. GFW works in collaboration with NASA , Google and the University of Maryland to collect data on forest change which is displayed on an interactive map. Watch this introductory video by the Global Forest Watch: GFW is free and enables users to work with a wide variety of tools,...
Today 17th of May 2017 marks the World Information Society Day, a day that was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly resolution, following the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. The main objective of the day is to raise awareness of societal changes brought about by the Internet and new technologies.It also aims to help reduce the digital divide.The theme for WTISD-17, "Big Data for Big Impact," focuses on the power of Big Data for development and aims to explore how to turn imperfect, complex, often unstructured data into actionable information in a development...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the e-Agriculture Community of Practice (COP) are launching a call for good and promising practices on the use of ICTs for Agriculture .The call aims at...