Quick read Indigenous territories are facing threats of illegal activities, such as land grabbing and territorial boundary encroachments Technologies such as drones facilitates mapping and monitoring of indigenous land and other natural resources Review of 5 projects on the use of drones in Peru, Guyana and Panama by indigenous communities Indigenous lands are facing a lot of increasing pressures from numerous legal and illegal activities, causing severe environmental degradation and threatening indigenous territorial rights and livelihoods – proposes are recent article . The article reviews...
Drones are being used in various fields and agriculture is not an exception. Drones are also known as unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and in agriculture there have been used initially in pest control and land use monitoring. T he World Food Progamme (WFP) has been using drones and satellites within the context of food emergency situation. A recent publication on WFP VAM, a SoundCloud of audio recordings, discusses how drones and satellites help in WFP’s work. Two experts are on the interview Sarah Muir, VAM remote sensing analyst, Haidar Baqir, IT engineer, and Ariona Aubrey from WFP's legal...
WSIS has announced the opening of the WSIS Prizes 2018 and they are encouraging all the stakeholders to SUBMIT their project descriptions to the WSIS Prizes contest from 11 September 2017 – 2 January 2018. The e-Agriculture team encourages eligible projects in agriculture to submit their projects for this prestigious award. WSIS Prizes are a major highlight of the WSIS Forum every year and they recognize outstanding initiatives by governments, private sector, and civil society that leverage the contributions of ICT for the benefit our society. Projects related to ICTs in Agriculture fall...
Digital Technologies for Resilience was the theme of a workshop organized by FHI 360 in Bangkok with funding and support from Rockefeller Foundation and USAID . The workshop intended to create a space and exchange mat for professionals who are using digital technologies to enhance resilience. The other objective was to help participants to scale up the digital technology for resilience efforts. “The workshop enabled actual collaboration… several actual project collaborations took place –with exchanging of MoUs and project proposals” noted one participant. The programme in retrospect The two...
Technology has been applied in various fields and new concepts are emerging in some areas to accommodate this infusion. The concept of digital agriculture is a fairly new one; what does this mean? According to the Project Breakthrough , Digital Agriculture is defined as “the use of new and advanced technologies, integrated into one system, to enable farmers and other stakeholders within the agriculture value chain to improve food production” In their discussion of this concept, they noted that with a digital agriculture system is one that gathers data periodically and accurately which is...
The European Union avails 100 million euros funding for digital research and innovation that is made available under The Horizon 2020 work programme 2018-2020 which ( inter alia ) seeks to advance the development and uptake of digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas. Digital technologies in agriculture pitch very high on the European Union’s agenda, for example the European policy makers recently at the Digitising agriculture and food value chains conference outlined policy developments in agricultural research and innovation and stated how digital technologies can bring forward...
What has ICTs to do with climate change? Malcolm Johnson the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Deputy Secretary General, answers this question in the published news items coinciding with the COP23 that was discussing The Paris Agreement . He positions ICTs as a solution to the current world climate challenges. These include the (i) reported increase in the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, (ii) extreme weather induced events happening with increasing frequency. These disasters are estimated to have cost the global economy $520 billion a year and have pushed more...
The regional forum on e-agriculture for Central and South-East Europe began on the 13th of November 2017. The forum is themed, “ Precise and integrated response for sustainable farming and inclusive food systems ” is being held in Novi Sad, Serbia. The agenda of the event is available here , and is comprised of an opening ceremony, high-level roundtable discussions and parallel sessions. Some of the themes to be discussed, Sustainable intensification of agricultural production ICTs assisted Food Systems ICT assisted Climate Smart Agriculture Empowerment of smallholders and family farmers...
The CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas team won US$100,000 grant to refine a mobile application that uses artificial intelligence to diagnose crop diseases . This new app will attempt to solve the problem of pests and diseases that be face farmers with small holder farmers hardly hit. Its estimated that every year pests and diseases costs billions of dollars to potential agricultural economy as they damage agricultural outputs such as crops, livestock and fish harvests. Technology plays a big role in warning the communities of possible outbreaks and also as a monitoring tool...
Kaleidoscope 2017: Challenges for a data-driven society is the ninth in a series of peer-reviewed academic conferences organized by ITU to bring together a wide range of views from universities, industry and research institutions. The aim of the Kaleidoscope conferences is to identify emerging...
Kaleidoscope 2017: Challenges for a data-driven society is the ninth in a series of peer-reviewed academic conferences organized by ITU to bring together a wide range of views from universities, industry and research institutions. The aim of the Kaleidoscope conferences is to identify emerging...