Farmer to Farmer – Page 2

Agriculture, Farmer to Farmer, Food Security, Health, Irrigation and Water, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Sustainable Agriculture

Haiti’s Food Security

Haiti’s post-quake food security show signs of improvement, which may get even better with the right mix of policy priorities. Although the Caribbean nation remains more food insecure than it was prior to the January 2009 earthquake, it is 13 percent more food secure than it was in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake.

In order for Haiti to meet the needs of its 2.5 to 3.3 million people thought to be food insecure, there ought to be a raft of bold nationally-led agricultural policies and projects. Haiti is in a prime position to chart this course due to its central position in the U.S initiated Feed the Future investment plan. This country-led initiative aims to foster food security and agricultural development in a truly endogenous manner. In other words, Haitians, like other Feed the Future countries, will have ownership over the process.

Although Haiti’s agricultural productivity hinges on a myriad of bold policy initiative, in my view, two things top the agenda: 1) The establishment of a national ICT policy with key focus on agriculture; and 2) The decentralization of agricultural management and educational facilities.

Despite demonstrable economic gains worldwide from ICTs in agriculture, Haiti still lacks a national ICT policy. A clear ICT policy will provide a guide for action for multilateral agencies, national action and NGO involvement in the ICT for agriculture sector. Haitian farmers are subjected to ad hoc marketing systems, a wide range of anthropogenic shocks, natural disasters, and limited information to make sound cost-benefit analysis. A solid national ICT policy will provide a basis for Haiti and its transnational donors to tackle these challenges in a coordinated manner—eliminating the well-entrenched culture of duplication.

It is imperative that the state take a lead on this to build its credibility and bring order to a development landscape dominated by NGOs—there is one NGO for every 3, 000 Haitian. Since the 1970s , NGOs have steadily gained a toehold in the country. This is largely because of the perception of endemic corruption within the Haitian government.

While I believe that ICTs ought to be used at all three major stages in the agriculture sector –pre-cultivation, crop cultivation and harvesting, and post harvest— it is most critically needed at the first juncture, pre-cultivation, crop selection, land selection, accessing credit and itemizing when to plant. If given the information for the proper selection of the best crops to plant according to their land type, access to input and generous credit, Haitian farmers will be well positioned to make proper cost-benefit analysis and thrive.

To achieve this, the ICT policy must emphasize the use of GIS and remote sensing. GIS and remote sensing technologies may be used to gather information on soil quality and available water resources. This will aid irrigation strategies in Haiti where water management is poor. Further more, the ubiquitous nature of cellphones in Haiti means that this information may be easily disseminated. Farmers may also be alerted about where to get seeds/other inputs and access credit.

To this end, Haiti ought to decentralize its agricultural framework. Haiti has evaded decentralization proposals for decades, but as the post-quake scenario shows, new life ought to be bred into this initiative with urgency. One third of newborn babies are born underweight. Acute under nutrition among children under five years old is five percent and a third of them suffer from chronic under-nutrition.

The collaborative work being done by the Les Cayes campus of the University of Notre Dame d’Haiti (UNDH), an innovative agronomy school, attests to the importance of decentralization. “The University uses its 40 acre farm as a catalyst for outreach, to assist poor farmers in building sustainable livelihoods, to map and protect biodiversity, and to expand civic participation among the rural poor.” Through these interventions, UNDH seeks to contribute to sustainable development and governance, important factors in rebuilding Haiti after the earthquake.

June 6, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Extension Service, Farmer to Farmer, Food Security, Health, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Sustainable Agriculture

The Spoken Web: Searching for Farming info by Voice (VIDEO)

The emergence of IBM’s Spoken Web, a mobile innovation that eliminates literacy as a precursor to access the internet, is a game-changer in the ICT for Agriculture sector.

Unlike other efforts to bridge the global information divide, even people with limited to no functional literacy skills will find Spoken Web user-friendly. With nearly 800 million functional illiterates around the world, the inability to read remains a major impediment to the use of ICT4D. This is most acute in the most remote parts of the developing world where livelihoods and agriculture are inextricably linked.

The mobile innovation is essentially a world wide network of VoiceSites joined to make the Spoken Web. Its most essential hardware is a telephone, which people use to browse VoiceSites by saying keywords, also known as VoiLinks.

This rapidly progressing network of voice recordings is predicated on a system called VoiGem, which simplifies the process of creating voice-based applications. VoiGem is unique compared to existing interactive voice response technology because it allows users to create their own VoiceSites that consists of voice pages (VoiceXML files) that may be linked. Each page is identified by the user’s phone number. This identification mode allows the user to easily edit VoiceSites and pages from their phone.

The mobile-centric nature of this development reflects a global trend and complements a development need, particularly for agriculture. Although small scale farmers, scattered across some of the most far-flung places around the globe, make up a large portion of the 5 billion people without access to the internet and computers, a growing number of these people own cellphones. In fact, farmers constitute a strong contingent among the 3 in 4 people worldwide who own mobiles. Although only a fifth of those with mobile subscriptions worldwide have access to mobile broadband services, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) “predicts that within the next five years, more people will hop onto the Web from laptops and mobile gadgets than from desktop computers”.

As more farmers join the growing legion of wired folks, they will have faster and more reliable opportunities to access and share information. This development will reduce information asymmetries, structure and strengthen agricultural markets by bringing the internet to parts of the world where small scale farmers, consumers, middlemen and traders have limited knowledge about where to access and trade food.

The technology is also culturally appropriate given the oral nature of many cultures in the developing world. Farmers will also have the opportunity to efficaciously share valuable indigenous farming retentions.

As with most things, the Spoken Web also comes with challenges. Chief among the challenges is that though v oice-recognition technology can match search terms against a previously processed index of recorded voice sites, it presents cumbersome results. However, the technology is being refined to be more precise. Precision is especially important because farmers and other end-users will not be able to retain all the information found on lengthy voice pages/sites, and they may not have the literacy skills to jot down points. Interestingly though, the Spoken Web comes with a fast-forward feature that enables the user to listen as if they were skim-reading.

Despite these challenges, the technology has been successfully piloted in eight Indian villages. It is now a central part of farming and health-care delivery in four Indian states, parts of Thailand and Brazil.

June 3, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Farmer to Farmer, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ACP Youth Leaders Call for Stronger Pro-Youth Agricultural Policies

White text on a green banner calling on you to use ICT to address agriculture

CTA/ARDYIS Facebook Photo

Emerging leaders in ICT for agriculture, from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states, are calling for pro-youth policies to reduce youth unemployment. Although agriculture accounts for over 50 percent of the GNP of many ACP countries, youth involvement is very low while unemployment remains high.

The young agriculture and ICT leaders have called for “thoughtful, dynamic, multilevel and relevant policies” from governments and institutions across the block of countries to remedy the problem. They have put forward a series of recommendations that they believe will help to encourage more young people to work in agriculture. The recommendations range from curricula revisions to capacity building and financial aid, ICT proliferation to increasing the involvement of women and marginalized youth.

The group wants to see the dynamism of the agricultural sector reflected in curricula across all levels of education as well as emphasis on agri-business and technological integration. “The absence of agriculture from the curriculum, particularly at the compulsory levels of education in some ACP countries is untenable. Its broad-based and compulsory inclusion with the appropriate resources will help to motivate youth towards having a more favorable view of employment opportunities in the agricultural sector,” said ICT4D Researcher Tyrone Hall.

The requisite financial resources also need to be made available in the form of scholarships, grants, concessionary education and research loans to those under 35 who are interested in critical areas of agricultural and rural development such as agronomy, food science and technology, agricultural engineering and water management.

“The current university structure in most ACP countries favors the Arts and Social Sciences, sectors for which our economies are expanding too slowly to provide enough employment opportunities,” according to ICT developer Chris Mwangi.

Complementary capacity building is also necessary to get the most out of the sector, the group recommended. This will require training in good agricultural practices and agro-processing as well as developing ICT officer programs across the ACP group to assist young farmers master their trade. “Our collective experience shows that a critical mass of young people in ACP countries is interested in pursuing careers in the field of agriculture, but they are hamstrung by limited skills, knowledge and training opportunities. Resolving these intractable problems requires urgent attention… given the need to reduce food imports,” added Tyrone Hall.

Another recommendation is the creation of “a legible, collateral-free micro-credit environment that offers incentives tailored to the financial needs of young farmers, and ICT software developers who are focused on rural development and agriculture,” said Samantha Christie.

The establishment of regional ICT incubators over the next five years to develop contextual and efficient technological responses to agricultural problems is also critical.

Finally, the participants recommended the provision of legal structures to facilitate increased participation of the youth in ICT, particularly women, physically challenged and marginalized youth with the required skills and interest. “We forthrightly endorse the prioritization of these groups in land reform programs. We also urge ACP countries to meaningfully institutionalize youth involvement in agricultural policy making,” said the group.

We are energized and prepared to share our newly acquired and boosted skills in advanced web 2.0 tools and to support networking among youth involved in agriculture and rural development in our home countries,” said Maureen Agena.

May 31, 2011/by actualize

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