What role can ICTs play in using Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition for family farmers?

One can find 3 separate questions within the question: (a) What is the role of ICTs in Open Data? (b) What is the role of Open Data in agriculture and nutrition and (c) How can Open Data benefit family farmers? Here are a few thoughts on each of these.

(a) What is the role of ICTs in Open Data?

There is no Open Data (with capital letters) without ICTs. That is because one fo the two defining characteristics of Open Data, machine readability, is an ICT concept. There could still be data openly available to the public without the use of ICT technologies, for example, the case of the rural school which decided to publish its budget by writting it in chalk on the school walls as a way of soliciting parents and community views on it. That is admirable and deserving of support, but it does not allow for data re-use, which is the main benefit of Open Data.

(b) What is the role of Open Data in agriculture and nutrition?

There are many ways in whcih the goals of agricultural and nutrition policies can be advanced with the use of Open Data. these range from better policies, to wider coverage of agriculture and nutrition public services, to improved coordination within the public sector, opportunities for new private business (which in turns contirbute to GDP growth and employment) and more transparency and public participation in the policies, programs and projects in the two sectors. Rather than cite examples, interested readers could consult examples of the use of Open Data for agriculture and nutrition at:

• http://www.godan.info
• http://www.opendataimpactmap.org/usecases.html
• http://opendatatoolkit.worldbank.org/en/essentials.html (please scroll down to section Open Data by Sectors/Topics)

(c) How can Open Data benefit family farmers?

The various channels thorugh which Open Data can contribute to progress in agriculture and nutrition create benefits for a wide range of stakeholders in these two sectors: farmers large and small, consumers, policy makers, media, researchers and many others. But it can be argued that the benefits may be comparatively larger for small farmers, because large farmers have the means to access and exploit data even when it is not Open in the technical and legal sense. Making data available in re-useable formats and for free to everyone allows the creation of various applications that use the data to convey information, create transactional platforms, allow analysis and other applications. These re-uses of Open Data make it more user-friendly and easier to consume for small farmers, who otherwise may not have access to relevant data and, even if they did have access to it, may not have the capacity to understand it and use it practical ways. Several of the examples given in point (b) above illustrate this point.

Mobile networks, location-based technologies, sensor-web technologies and cloud computing offer the potential to develop powerful, flexible and low cost information and services networks, linking rural farmers with other communities, both rural and urban. These networks can be deployed to deliver a wide range of services to rural farming populations who  depend on agriculture as their livelihood  to receive back voice, text and image-based data for review and analysis. This will facilitate information rich interaction and iteration and the electronic delivery of high-quality professional diagnostic and information services.  There needs to be emphasise on local language interfaces, icon and voice-based input rather that keyboard input both because of mobile device restrictions and because of low levels of literacy in some rural communities.  Icon and voice-based user interfaces needs to be used where feasible to minimise the impact of the multiple languages and varying levels of literacy. 

My question is how can we use ICT and Open Data to lower barriers for varying levels of literacy so that everyone can benefit? All ideas welcome.

Thank you to the hosts and moderators of this important discussion, and for all the great coments so far! Several excellent points have already been made, which I'll try to add to and not repeat here.

In terms of the what roles ICTs can play for family farmers in using Open Data, I think the list is potentially quite long and perhaps limitless. Especially if one looks at the farm as serving many purposes, or being "multifunctional". That includes supporting not only informed decision making related to farm productivity, market access and economic viability, but a variety of things often overlooked from a technical perspective, like family health and resilience, and self-determination.

For a variety of reasons many "experts" including academics and consultants are often focused on using ICTs for a particular set of farm outcomes, sometimes blind to or at the expense of others which may be equally important to the long term well-being of the farm and the families which depend on them.

My Cornell colleague Rebecca Nelson has suggested that instead of using ICTs to "optimize for simplicity", focused on disseminating top-down (often proprietary) one-size-fits-all solutions for problems and opportunities that are in fact extremely diverse, we instead leverage them in support of solutions which are "optimized for complexity". This ultimately means helping farmers assess and experiment with what the best options are for their particular context, at the individual farm level and through collectives like "Farmer Research Networks" (FRN). I had the privilege of visiting one such effort in Australia last spring, the Birchip Cropping Group.

This shifts the focus (and perhaps the original question of this forum) away from farmers as users or "consumers" of Open Data, toward helping them become active participants in the creation, exchange and transformation of it within larger systems, or "value networks". Modern ICTs and the Open Data Ecosystems which initiatives like GODAN are promoting are perfectly suited to support this shift.

But getting from here to there will require new "sociotechnical capabilities" which acknowledge and develop technical as well as social capabilities needed for equitable and effective participation within such data ecosystems, open or otherwise. That includes greater attention to and investment in the role Open Data Intermediaries and related entities like FRNs play within these ecosystems.

Here in the U.S. I've been advocating that our own Land Grant and Cooperative Extension systems pay closer attention to the role of ICTs and Open Data/Information Ecosystems, and how we might leverage them in support of healthier people, communities and food systems.

Globally (even in agriculture) there are two major on-going processes brought about by the information and communication revolution. The first is of "Democratisation of Science and Learning" where there is universal access to learning and the second of "Mass Innovation". At one time learning was limited to the men of religion, later to the aristocracy and the rich. It was only in the period after the "First" World War (1914-1918), that learning opportunites were made available to the middle classes. It was after the "Second" World War, (>1945) when returning soldiers from the second world war were given opportunities to join Universities in the USA and to some extent Europe. After the end of colonial rule, many countries in Asia and Africa enabled many of their citizens (though mainly elite) to attend Universities and study science and therefore develop skills and technology needed for economic and social development. The Internet and the Smart phone has opened the avenues for exposure to science and technology and learning about it to all, even those who are not literate through video and audio, and is triggering mass innovation by those who need and actually use technology and not scientists alone. Open data (and information) contribute significantly to this process of mass innovation. What we now is to focus on is also enabling, along with democratisation of sciences, the abilites to analyse data, infer information and convert it into use as knowledge and skills.

 There has been several comments alluding to the costs of generating, collecting, collating and organisation of data and information.  Almost all data and a large amount of information today is generated now by automatic and autonomous means and contributed voluntarily. Just see how much information is available on Facebook or Youtube related to agriculture. Only a very small percentage of total data available for agriculture needs manual intervention. There are two core issues that we have not really tackled. The first is the development of Institutions who can and will enable availability and access to all this data that is affordable to all and the second is the building of capacities so that data and information can be effectively used. If we note global trends carefully, we see that data availability is becoming less costly and almost free but the costs of accessing and effectively using data are growing. Therefore the second issue is of enabling universal access and processing of data into what an individual or a community will find relevant and useful. How do we do it? Now we need applications that collate useful data and contributes to converting it into use as needed by an indicvidual and/or a community.

Ajit

Ajit Maru, Ahmedabad

ICT,Information and Communication technologies can be used,to understand the actual anual Rainfall,precipitation and run off.Irrigation is only to stabilize,and suppliment the natural rainfall.Thus storing water for all human needs is an essential feature of human living.

We do not encourage such practices,which do not suit the farming,in slopes or very loose pervious soils as the water retentivity of soils is less.It is also essential as our friends from India has suggested to know the "epidemiological system that with adequate data can be used to manage and forecast for prevention outbreaks of the disease and pest".In such cases humna lives are also at risk because of malaria.This has a tendency to breed and spread in standing waters.

Humans have arrived at  A staple food, or simply a staple, a food thatconstitutes a dominant portion of a standard diet for a given people.But if the irrigation practices fail due to uncertainities in climate they have two alternatives[1]Reduce slowly the intake or Rice or Wheat,while replenishing the quantity with the so called millets.[2]Swith over to some other millets,which can grow with less water.

Alternate genetic engineering to produce pest free Staple food,and find other resources with less quantum of water available are also on anvail.How ever the best for societies,and nations is to collect yearly data on [1]irrigated land[2]water storage[3]food production[4]Cattle use.These in relation with the population can find alternate markets for the farm produce and can fetch reasonable price for the produce.

Dear all,

How to contribute our data into GODAN?

Thank you very much in advance.

Warmest Regards,

Suryadi

The role of ICT  in livestock developmment cannot be gainsaid. A lot of work has been done to try come up with apps and SMS lines for reporting disease outbreaks, pests and fodder scarcity. This has had varied success depending on penetration of ICTs and tech literacy especially in sub-Sahara Africa and Kenya in particular. While this is positive, the one aspect that is mostly forgotten is the extension agent. With the move toward farmer and site-specific solutions to challenges in livestock, it is important to invest in extension. There is huge potential in using ICT and e-learning to train trainers. One of the major challenges of extension and advisory services is the cost of rolling out such programs. Having a blended approach that includes face-to-face training and e-learning could geatly reduce this cost and help in teasing out site specific challenges faced by livestock keepers in Africa.

While theoritically, Open Data would bring in great benefits not only for family farmers but for everyone involved in the agriculture/nutrition value chain. The growth of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the last decade has made implementing and harvesting the benefits of these initiatives much easier. However, the big question is the necessary ecosystem needed to sustain this open data revolution. To begin with, we need to discuss data hygiene - is the data that is collected good enough for consumption? If analytics are inferences are built on data that is not reliable then the advisory that comes out would be useless. Second, data privacy issues - what data can be shared, with whom and for what period of time etc., These are in many cases beyond the purview of the agriculture ministry (and the health ministry if we bring in nutrition). Data interoperability standards if not implemented would prove to be a major stumbling block into realzing the benefits of open data. These standards and policies are mainly decided through the country's eGov (e-government) initiative. 

The next major concern after data interoperability is of platform interoperability. Systems are developed in isolation. Sharing data across applications and across platforms are exteremly difficult at the national level as of today.

Hence, a multi-stakeholder engagement is necessary at the national level to realize the full benefits of Open Data for agriculture and nutrution. Extending it further, are regional or sub-regional understanding should also be estabilished as data related to transboundary disease/pest and trade would greatly benefit from having access to reliable data based on which actionable information/advisories could be deduced.