E-Agriculture

farmers News and Events

  • The Global Emergence of Community Drones (2012-2017)

    A recently published paper overviews the use of drones in the past decade. Authors Nicolás Vargas-Ramírez * and Jaime Paneque-Gálvez *Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Antiguacarretera a Pátzcuaro No. 8701, Morelia CP 58190, Michoacán, México Abstract The use of drones with or by communities—what we call community drones—has emerged globally over the last decade to serve diverse purposes. Despite a growing academic interest in community drones, most experiences have been documented as gray literature and there are still no publications...

  • “Innovating together: connectivity that matters” – ITU Telecom World ‘19

    The International Telecommunication Union in conjunction with partners is holding the ITU Telecom World ’19 , in Budapest, Hungary from the 9th to the 12th of September 2019. The theme of this edition is ‘ Innovating together: connectivity that matters ’ and brings a cross spectrum of participants from governments, private sector, practitioner and academia. The 5 day events will see dynamic sessions, parallel sessions, interviews, ITU Telecom Awards and the exhibition . FAO is supporting three sessions during this week. These are Wednesday, 10 September 2019 Theme: Developing Digital...

  • Digital Agriculture Knowledge Sharing - AGRF Side Meeting

    The African Green Revolution Forum is underway in Accra, Ghana and the FAO E-Agriculture team is participating and facilitated a parallel session on Establishing the International Digital Council for Food and Agriculture, on the 3rd of September and the FAO CIO director also spoke on the Panel Discussion on Evidence-Based Leadership and Data Systems on Tuesday, 3 September from 14:30 – 16:30 On the 4th of September, FAO team is invited to attend and participate to the Digital Agriculture Knowledge Sharing side event, which will see practitioners such as CTA, Dalberg, GSMA, MaMo Panel and...

  • Developing Digital Agriculture Strategy in Europe and Central Asia / Fostering Digital Agriculture

    The joint ITU-FAO session will will take place on 11 September 2019 at 11.00h. This session will be held within the framework of the ITU Regional Initiative for Europe on ICT-centric innovation ecosystems that aims at establishing a sustainable culture of innovation through concrete strategic actions using information and communication technology (ICT) as an enabler.The main objective of this session is to bring together high-level stakeholders such as Ministries and Regulators from ICT sector as well as Agriculture’ Ministries to share best practices and case studies, highlight gaps and...

  • African Green Revolution Forum roars to life

    All roads this week lead to Accra, Ghana which hosts the African Green Revolution Forum 2019 under the theme, “ Grow digital: Leveraging digital transformation to drive sustainable food systems in Africa ” The Africa Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) is a platform for global and African leaders to develop actionable plans that will move African agriculture forward. Initially established as an annual “African Green Revolution Conference” by Yara International ASA in Norway in 2006, the conference moved to the African continent in 2010 with the championing of the late Kofi Annan to take an African...

  • The impact of ICT-enabled extension campaign on farmers’ knowledge and management of fall armyworm in Uganda

    A recent paper reports on a study where three complementary ICT-based extension methods – interactive radio, mobile SMS messages and village-based video screenings where used to enhance farmer’s knowledge and management of Fall Armyworm (FAW) in western Uganda. The findings show how complementary ICT-based extension campaigns hold a great potential to improve farmers knowledge and management of invasive species such as FAW. Citation: Tambo JA, Aliamo C, Davis T, Mugambi I, Romney D, Onyango DO, et al. (2019) T he impact of ICT-enabled extension campaign on farmers’ knowledge and management of...

  • The Digitalisation of the African Agriculture Report Executive Summary Released

    In June, CTA published The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report, 2018-2019 which explained the agricultural transformation in Africa. The executive summary of this report has been published. The summary provides a glance of the Digital Agriculture in Africa statistics, includes the market opportunities, the D4Ag Solutions and various models that work in Africa. D4Ag in Africa at a glance : CTA With the right policies, innovation and investment, Africa’s agriculture could be transformed into a powerhouse not only to feed a growing population but to create decent employment for millions...

  • Harnessing the power of AI to transform agriculture

    The world is facing an imminent challenge – the world population is expected to grow from 7.7 billion to 10 billion by 2050 ; today (with a population of 7.7) more than 820 million people are hungry globally. Does this mean that the world needs to produce more food to feed the hungry? Evidence seems to suggest that food production should increase. However, many of the farmers in the global south are aged and very few youths are replacing them. Can technology help in ensuring increased agricultural productivity? In a recent blog , Jean –Philippe Courtois , President at Microsoft Global Sales...

  • Article: AI-powered banana diseases and pest detection

    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...