Question 1
Many stakeholders agree on the strategic importance of developing a national e-agriculture strategy, while others may doubt the potential impact of such a strategy and raise concerns that many of the strategies that have been developed to date have not been implemented. Do you think that a “National E-agriculture Strategy” is needed? Why? How best can a strong case be made for its development?
ICTs and mobile money can have multi-disciplinary impact given the nature of their technology(ies). As such, to leverage the power of these technologies requires the formation of agriculture ICT/mobile money strategic alliances with multiple stakeholders. A national e-agriculture strategy will provide the frameworks, parameters, guidelines and best practices for inviting potential partners, negotiating each partners roles/responsibilities and subsequently forming committed e-agriculture partnerships.
In the case of agriculture mobile money there are a number of dynamics that can strategically align a large commodity buyer with a mobile financial services provider and other supporting entities. The commodity buyer wants to replace its obsolete cash payment scheme with an efficient, low-cost digital payment mechanism, the mobile financial services provider wants more transaction fees and farmers benefit from convenient and safe receipt and storage of crop payments and option to use mobile money for more input supplies, health, education, solar power/lanterns, credit, savings, insurance and much more.
An e-agriculture strategy that accommodates mobile money and other ICT strategic alliances will create the enabling environment at the policy level that will match - and accelerate - the groundswell of interest in using these technologies to benefit agriculture!
Dear LeeHBabcock,
Just wanted to support your contribution. This option is being explored in Democratic Republic of Congo! we shall hopefully come out with good result as soon as possible.
I believe that generally, and for its principle, allmost all stakeholders in the agriculture sector would agree that a strategy for better inclusion of ICT in the agriculture strategy would be useful. This because most people literate or illiterate, would recognise that for all human endeavours, having a strategy is better that having none. But, it appears that most agricultural stakeholders, including many who are ICT savvy, have been doubious about e-agriculture strategies, not about its needs per se.
With agriculture stakeholders in general (including agriculture officials), the first issue lies with the full understanding of ICT benefits for agriculture. Until recently and maybe this is still the case, many of them understand the usefulness of ICTs only through the possibilities they give to process texts (office tools), to send messages across regions and to search now and then some information online. Fortunately for the sector and for all of us, the revolutionary social penetration of the mobile phone and the increased use of SMS to access market information and advisory services by farmers themselves and extension officers are changing the picture. However, we still need more awareness raising, more training and this will change the perception about e-agriculture strategy need with these stakeholders.
On the other hand, many stakeholders who fully understand ICT benefits including many ICT specialists who work with agriculture actors, are doubious about e-agriculture strategies, because they seem to me "afraid" of the cumbersomeness of policy processes; for them, the ICT dimension complicates the matter. Indeed, especially in African countries, experiences have shown that policy processes have taken too much time and financial resources, while concrete results taken time to emerge. ICT for development policy development processes in a great number of African countries offer the best "bad examples"; we have many countries that have developed beautiful e-strategies since a decade or more, but opening a webpage still take minutes in many cases in urban areas as well. Similarly, many beautiful strategies are not implemented, sometimes have not been even officially adopted by the government. Rural cyber-strategies or ICT strategies for rural areas or for agriculture have been initiated in some countries, mobilising stakeholders for months, without official adoption (cases of Mali and Burkina Faso). Therefore, e-Agriculture strategy advocacy and implementation processes need to learn from ICT4D policy processes. To make them acceptable and win the full commitment of these "ICT strategy-aware" stakeholders, the advocacy and development mechanisms need to be displayed as NOT cumbersome and displayed as pragmatic, with quick-wins. If those "ICTstrategy-aware" agriculture stakeholders are convinced, they will convince more easily agriculture stakeholders/officials.
Two elements can help here: regional e-agriculture strategy blueprints and the promotion of sub-sectoral e-agriculture strategies (for extension, agriculture trade, etc.), with the holistic strategies in mind.
More later.
The uses of approved e-Agriculture methods will be an incredible expansion to inventive horticultural generation, draw in youthful era in horticulture and help shield agriculturists from misfortunes, particularly little holders," said Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific. "These applications could go from a rancher utilizing a PDA to output the standardized tag of a parcel of affirmed seeds – something that could guarantee quality and a reasonable cost, to the establishment of ease sensors at the town level for hyper neighborhood climate da
There is no denying that we all agreee that eAgriculture is important. We are all researching in the area or stakeholders, policy makers etc. There has been a massive increase in the application of ICT in agriculture. This has mostly been at the research level and I agree with Gerald Sylvester that the problem is the level of adoption of these technologies. We are a very disjointed bunch of researchers crossing many disciplines. There is a percentage of agricultural researchers who view ICT as a means to complete their statisical analysis or some out-of-date production modelling tool. Likewise those coming to eAgriculture from a computing background lack the knowledge and context of what tools they are developing. This has lead to a fairly disjointed number of attempts to show the potential of eAgriculture technologies.
i fell the issue is to try and move eAgriculture into the mainstream, promote its potential and a strategy for research and development, engagement with farmers and other stakeholders, and a plan for the uptake and adoption of these strategies as part of the overall agricultural industry strategies.
One issue in Australia seems to be lack of focus for a body that is solely aimed to promote eAgriculture, There seems to be a conflict between what is termed as Precision agriculture and the more broad aims of eAgriculture. I do feel a discourse on developing a eAgriculture strategy that can be used to lobby the government and research organizations and farmer bodies to focus more on how eAgriculture can facilitate not only other agricultural research but also farmer practices is needed We have formed a national society in Australia , ASICTA http://www.asicta.org/ (which is dedicated to such aims ).
How do we determine the stakeholders and create discussion amongst them to get the dialogue going. And more importantly how can we get the funding to dedicate time to determine these strategies.
We have discuss these matters amongst our ASICTA members in terms of starting to develop a white paper on eAgriculture strategies at a national level. This is one of the goals of of our national society.
I would also agree that there needs to be a development of a regional strategy (Asia for example) as well as perhaps statewide strategies which could be tailored from the national and regional strategies. I suggest that all the other national ICT in agriculture societies and regional bodies such AFITA, EFITA work on developing white papers on this.
Thank you Leisa for your contribution. It is interesting to learn about existing structures within countries that promote e-agriculture at a national level. We would really like to learn more about it.
How does ASICTA go about it? Who is involved? What is essential for ASICTA to function well and to obtain results?
To all other participants in this forum. Do you have similar structures or initiatives in you country?
Thank you all for your contributions !
Dear all,
Les discussions sont intéressantes. Merci pour vos contributions respectives. Je les apprécie.
Je partage pleinement les avis émises sur la nécessité de faire intervenir toutes les parties prenantes dans l'élaboration d'une stratégie e-agriculture. Dans ce cadre, les ONG et les associations ont parfois beaucoup d'avance, d'expériences et de réalisation que le gouvernement. Les ministères en charge de l'agriculture devraient capitaliser les acquis de ces dernier et les associer étroitement au processus.
Afin de faire face à des situations très disparates des pays en termes de priorités en matière d'agriculture et d'usage des TIC, je verrais la stratégie e-agriculture comme une sorte de feuille de route fixant différentes étapes qu'un grande région géographique, un pays, un groupement, une coopérative, ...à laquelle ces derniers se réfèreraient pour pouvoir tirer plienement profit de l'introduction et de l'usage des TIC dans leurs pratiques quotidiennes.
Cette feuille de route devrait, notamment, comprendre une phase de caractérisation du terrain (e-readiness), une phase de préparation du terrain (choix des actions prioritaires), une phase de déploiement (pilote, progressif), une phase d'extension et une série d'évaluations.
Cette stratégie en e-agriculture devrait avoir un noyau générique tout en donnant des possibilités d'ouverture afin de pouvoir être taillé sur mesure pour tenir compte des spécificités propres à différents espaces géographiques.
Continuons ...
As promised e-Agriculture provides a quick translation of comments in French or Spanish to English to facilitate the discussion. And if needed we are still here for other questions : [email protected]
Merci Marius pour votre contribution.
Translation of post above:
Need for a clear roadmap
The discussions are interesting. Thank you for your respective contributions. I appreciate them. I fully share the opinions expressed on the need to involve all stakeholders in the development of an e-agriculture strategy. In this context, NGOs and associations sometimes are way ahead, concerning experience and realization compared to the government. The ministries of agriculture should build on the achievements of these last and closely involve them in the process.
In order to meet the very different situations of the countries in terms of priorities in agriculture and use of ICT, I would see the e-agriculture strategy as a kind of roadmap setting stages for a large geographical area , a country, a group, a cooperative, ... that they can refer to, to fully benefit from the introduction and use of ICT in their daily practices.
This roadmap should include, among other, a characterization phase (e-readiness), a site preparation phase (choice of priority actions), a deployment phase (pilot, progressive), and an extension phase a series of evaluations.
This strategy e-agriculture should have a generic "core" while providing opportunities opening in order to be tailored to take account of the specificities in different geographical areas.
Let's continue the discussion
Bonjour à tous,
La discussion est vraiment interresant,
Il est bon temps de susciter l’exploitation de TIC dans les stratégies de développement nationales. La mise en place d’une politique nationale d’e-agriculture ou de TIC au service du développement rural s’avère nécessaire. Pour définir une stratégie e-agriculture, pour Madagascar, il faut une contribution participative des OP organisation paysanne, les facilitateurs comme les ONG qui interviennent dans le développement rural, les collectivités territoriales Fokontany, commune, région ; sans oubliés les opérateurs et réseaux (TELMA, ORANGE, AIRTEL…) et grande partie les responsables du développement rural.
Un axe stratégique national d’e-agriculture doit comporter les points suivants :
Bonne continuation!
Hello everyone,
The discussion is really interresant. It is a good time to encourage the exploitation of ICT in national development strategies. The establishment of a national e-agriculture or ICT policy for rural development service is necessary. To define an e-agriculture strategy for Madagascar, we need a participatory contribution of farmers organization, facilitators such as NGOs involved in rural development, local authorities, town, region, without forgotting operators and networks (Telma, Orange, Airtel ...) and largely responsible for rural development.
A nationalof e-agriculture strategy should include the following points:
- ICT infrastructure and equipment;
- applications and services tailored to agriculture;
- legal and institutional framework;
- ICT capacity building program;
- agricultural information system.
Good luck!