“Don't limit yourself to just one thing, opportunities are everywhere.” – Those were the words of Esraa Jaddaa, a young agricultural engineer from Homs who is celebrating with her team the first place award for their project, titled “The Shepherd”. She is one of sixty young beneficiaries who benefitted from FAO’s awareness sessions and intensive training on Digital Agriculture.

Despite being new to the digital agriculture concept, Esraa stresses that to win this award, all she needed was openness to new ideas and eagerness to learn. “I didn't expect that clicking one link to sign up for this FAO training will lead me on a journey to learning about digital agriculture and winning first prize.”

Esraa and her team have developed a unique business proposal that uses smart systems to automate sheep feeding, monitoring, and production. The project will use electronic sensors that can detect sick sheep by measuring their body temperature, as well as ready-for-consumption sheep by measuring their weight gain. With this technique, the project hopes to reduce production costs by shortening the livestock production’s value chain and reducing the prices of meat available to consumers.

Innovation is deeply set within agriculture, which in itself was an innovative and transformative event in human history, and younger generations have the potential to change the outlook of agriculture through their ability to innovate. FAO’s Nabta programme, implemented under the Smallholder Support Programme (SSP), is supporting young agri-preneurs to successfully start an agricultural business at the local level, which will boost the local economy and create new jobs opportunities.

The ‘Digital Agriculture’ intervention gives priority to a new, cutting-edge approach to agriculture, promising accessibility and efficiency. Digital agriculture is broadly defined as the use of computing, remote sensing, and mobile technology to facilitate efficient farming and livestock keeping. FAO introduced it in Syria to help the youth change their mindset toward starting a profitable agri-business, with the goal of improving the food situation.

This intervention targeted youth and women with a background in agriculture and Information Technology (IT). Twelve business proposals were successfully presented, which integrate technology with agriculture, and were screened by a panel of experts. The participants proposed innovative ideas ranging from mobile applications and e-markets to the use of remote sensing and automation technology.

Among the other awarded proposals were ‘My Farm’, a mobile platform dedicated to marketing agricultural products, and ‘Smart Farms’ that uses vertical farms within a controlled environment to speed up wheat production and eliminate the seasonal limitations imposed by traditional farming. These proposals are simple yet smart applications to serve the same eventual purpose of agriculture: produce nutrition for the public and provide livelihoods for the farmers.

By engaging Syria’s youth, FAO is contributing to the improvement of the agriculture sector, and motivating upcoming generations to promote smart solutions. As the world grows more interconnected, Syrian youths have the opportunity to utilize information and communication technology as a gateway to helping their communities. This will lead to developing a more progressive mentality helping their country to produce food more efficiently.