Evidence have shown that technology has the potential to improve agricultural productivity. Specifically ICTs can help governments and developmental organizations to enhance food security and improve rural livelihoods through both knowledge and skills transfer. In most cases also improve the capacities of communities in agricultural productivity, pests control and easier access to markets. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) adopts innovations in information and communication technology (ICT) for agriculture and rural development. In a recent article by its President,...
The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has published a Call for Expression of Interest . This call supports the usage of drones to ensure that smallholder farming needs to become more productive, more sustainable and more profitable are supported. In the recent past, CTA has supported the use of drones in agriculture in their member countries. For example,in 2017 CTA partnered with leading private sector operators, and assisted ICT start-ups in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Jamaica, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and...
To mark the 2018 International Women’s Day (IWD 2018) FAO, IFAD and WFP will organize this year’s annual event on how media and ICT can empower rural women and girls to transform their lives, as a central element in the efforts to eliminate poverty and hunger, and build inclusive and sustainable...
FAO podcast published two podcasts that focus on what drones have to offer for agriculture. This part of Episode 7 of TARGET: Zero hunger . The Philippines Drone Pilot program In this first podcast, details the experience of FAO in using drones to gather detailed land and crop images for disaster preparedness. In this program about 25 FAO and government technical experts were deployed in the country to support drone missions and assess areas where farmlands were at risk from natural disasters. Click below and listen to the podcast or download transcript Interview with Brian McCornack- Kansas...
There is a growing momentum to encourage the participation of youths in agriculture in Africa. Migration – both rural to urban and intercontinental - seemed to have sparked this debate. In any case, agriculture is poised to be a major path to eradicate hunger and poverty in Africa. The theme of youth, ICTs and agriculture arose during the online discussion forum held by FAO and partners (on FSN Forum Africa ) from 25 October to 17 November 2017. The debate was aimed at soliciting opinions on capacity development sustainability for young agripreneurs in Africa and to contribute to identifying...
The curtain of 2018 came down, and as we begin the year e-Agriculture is hopeful to main the 2017 momentum in facilitating the dialogue, information exchange and sharing ideas related to the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in agriculture and rural development. We are looking forward, first and foremost, to the launch of a newly improved and redesigned platform under the FAO Domain. This will provide the community with a corporate look at feel and while maintaining the core- services, such as News , Blogs , Forum Discussions and other capacity development activities,...
The 6th International Conference on Sustainable Development (6th ICSD 2018) will be held in Rome,Congress Center, Piazza della Pilotta, 4, Rome, Italy Wednesday 12 to Thursday 13 September, 2018. The conference is organized by the European Center of Sustainable Development in collaboration with CIT...
Quick Read Gender imbalance exists with women and girls most affected Technology, ICTs in particular, promise to leverage farming practices Examples of projects where ICTs have been used by women in agriculture In most developing country due to rural urban migration and other reasons, agriculture is depleted of the needed workforce. In essence, the result is that many smallholder farmers have more women and girls remaining on the farms providing bulk of the labour force. At the higher level of development, it has been acknowledged that gender inequality persists worldwide, and this normally...