FAO organized the stakeholders’ consultative workshop on development of e-agriculture applications and knowledge products using Information and Communication Technologies, on 12 July 2019, in Islamabad.
FAO is helping the Government of Pakistan develop a road map for transitioning towards e-Agriculture in Pakistan. These efforts will lead to the development of first e-Agriculture strategy of Pakistan. FAO is also making efforts for capacity development of provincial agriculture departments for the use of innovative ICTs and harnessing their potential for enhancing agricultural production. The Technical cooperation programme of FAO on the Development of e-Agriculture applications and knowledge products using innovative ICTs has been recently approved and the first stakeholder consultation workshop was organized in lieu of that. The workshop aimed to share the project’s objectives, discuss the components and acquire the feedback from the key relevant stakeholders.
Subject experts from academia, specialists from the provincial agriculture department Punjab, private sector IT solutions developers and technical experts attended the event. Opening the workshop, FAO Representative Mina Dowlatchahi said that ‘’FAO’s core funding, TCP is starting work on innovation for agriculture, which is an important step in light of the recently approved GCF project coming to Pakistan. New technologies and tools for farmers, institutions, and monitoring for data generation are important components of the new interventions. This initiative sits at the center of the work FAO is doing to provide Pakistan with a framework for e-Agriculture. The programmatic approach is critical and strategic, where FAO will be a facilitator focusing on agriculture, water for agriculture, forests, and fisheries, while utilizing technology to make improvements.
The workshop highlighted the existing work already done in the country. The participants spoke about their ongoing projects and the way forward while incorporating the new technology. The feedback received from the workshop helped in mapping out the direction of the project and strengthened the components in the light of existing work in the country, gaps and challenges in IT sector’s employment for agriculture.