Question 2: How can the establishment of the Digital Council address the numerous barriers to adoption of these technologies?
Proposed information for the concept note – In realizing its roles and in running every activity, the Digital Council will respect some principles in order to address the numerous barriers to adoption of these technologies:
Be Inclusive: Membership shall be inclusive, diverse and balance representation from the various stakeholders active in the food and agriculture global value chain. It is particularly important that this also includes adequate representation of minorities and small agricultural and rural communities. In doing so, the council shall be transparent and work to ensure all stakeholder perspectives are voiced and heard.
Be Neutral: The Digital Council should be impartial to geography and technological solution areas when setting its agenda, instead prioritizing those efforts that can offer the greatest potential value to accelerating digital agriculture.
Be Accessible: The initiatives undertaken by the Digital Council should try to have a role in making digital agriculture solutions available and affordable, especially for farmers and people in rural areas, women and youth.
Be Autonomous: The council’s leadership body should have the autonomy to make strategic decisions free from political or donor pressures.
Be Accretive: The Digital Council should ensure that its work is mindful of and consistent with broader normative commitments such as the UN SDGs and the principles for digital development, and additive in its contributions to digital agriculture growth.
Be Efficient: The action of the Digital Council shall be as practical as possible and always aimed at achieving the best results within the shortest time and with the lowest effort.
Be Ethical: The council should ensure that technology is used in a fair and ethical way, considering the rights of the most vulnerable.
Be Scalable: the actions of the council should work toward solutions that have the greatest potential for scale and the broadest reach and applicability to target beneficiaries. Moreover, additionally, activities will be rooted in market principles and based on end user needs and to the extent possible those needs shall be reflected in deliberations.
Further guiding questions related to Q2 for your consideration:
Do you think the principles highlighted are conclusive and address the needs for overcoming the barriers?
According to you, what should be added or removed?
1. The Digital Council will certainly help in pushing that Government are uphold their committment to various agreeement especially with regard to digital agriculture. The Digital Council is well placed to speak to the Government at a much higher policy level than the average citizen.
2. The Digital Council will certainly be a voice for the many small holder farmers, youth, private sector and many development partners who want to transform Food and Agricultural across the globe.
3. The Digital Council will help draft policies that have the interest of government and all other stockholders, especially since many governments especially those from the developing countries lack the necessary skills, expertise, and technologies to address the various issue the Digital Council can.
The digital council shall liaise with Governments in multiple ways to encourage them to embrace technology. Without doubt, the council's influence can create a bigger impact in terms of policy and agenda setting.
The establishment of the Digital Council can address the numerous barriers to adoption of these technologies by using:
1.People of interest. My experience so far in agricultural sector thought me that agriculture is all about interest. The council have to include participated individual in the consultancy process in the council.
2.Uniform technologies within member countries for effective delivery.
3.Result-oriented ideology; result encourages technological adoption.
Arrange to transfer upgraded technologies from the developed countries.
Support & fecilitate the strong bi-lateral relationships between the countries whre technologies are available to suit the local conditions.
Assist and Provide required Funds/Financial assistance to the reasearch institutes,universities, Progressive farmers who are involved in adopting prcision agriculture to scale up the digital Agriculture.
Assit in setting up agricultural advanced technological parks to train progressive farmers and early adopters.
Boosting up research and development activities in universities & farm Mechanise industries along with popularisation of inexpensive technical tools among small scale farmers to increase the profit.
Adopt low, medium and High technology in digital agriculture in steo wise.
Dele RaheemArctic Centre, University of LaplandFinland
Perhaps an opportunity for cross-fertilisation of ideas through trainings and workshops on a regular basis (in both virtual and real platforms). It will be ideal to have branches of the Digital Council in strategic locations that are close to the people geographically.
I believe that under the principle of inclusivity, mention should be made of important actors such as financial institutions, information technology companies and experts and international donors. Perhaps it is a given, but it would be better to state it outright as these actors will have important roles to play in rolling out technology solutions that benefit the agricultural sector.
Digital needs of players in food and agriculture value chain vary depending on the farm activity and geography. Optimizing agriculture digitalization at last mile level will yeild the most smallholder uplift.
For instance, how can a corn farmer holding smartphone differentiate between a caterpillar and a fall armyworm? And what preventive action can they take immediately? All this is possible digitally.
I believe the Digital Council itself need to Be Informed: members of the Digital Council should have training in a wide range of issues to ensure that the deliberation of the Digital Council are well informed. There are many complex issues arising with the adoption and uptake of digital technologies in agriculutre and for effective and ethical decision making, it is important that there is training provided and adopted by the Digital Council, around the legal social and ethical and technological implications of digital agriculture. This will assist in developing a common informed view that will assist the Digital Council perfrom its role effectively.
Guillermo MartinezCentro de Investigación en Ciencias de Información Geoespacial, A.C.Mexico
The establishment of a council is a good opportunity to enhance available resources to address the limit of a barrier to adopt technology for agriculture. People in it have to seek for general benefits, sometimes thinking in local scale, other times in national level and even thinking of regions including parts or different entire countries. A special benefit of a council is that people proposing and taking decisions can (and should) be from de site, but also from other areas, to bring a different point of view.
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