Day 2: Desired scenarios for a future where data-driven agriculture is successfully adopted by smallholder farmers
Data-driven agriculture is expected to increase agricultural production and productivity, help them adapt to/ or mitigate the effects of climate change, bring about more economic and efficient use of natural resources, reduce risk and improve resilience in farming, and make agri-food market chains much more efficient. This is in general the positive scenario envisioned for data-driven agriculture.
More precisely, could you describe specific desired scenarios for a future where data-driven agriculture is adopted by smallholder farmers? What would success look like in practical terms?
Scénarios souhaités pour un avenir où l'agriculture axée sur les données est adoptée avec succès par les petits agriculteurs.
L'agriculture axée sur les données devrait augmenter la production et la productivité agricoles, les aider à s'adapter aux effets du changement climatique ou à atténuer leurs contributions aux effets du changement climatique, favoriser une utilisation plus efficace et économique des ressources naturelles, réduire les risques et améliorer la résilience de l’agriculture et rendre plus efficace les chaînes de valeur agroalimentaire beaucoup. C'est en général le scénario positif envisagé pour l'agriculture axée sur les données.
De façon très précise, pourriez-vous décrire des scénarios spécifiques envisagés pour un avenir où l'agriculture axée sur les données est adoptée par les petits agriculteurs? À quoi ressemblerait ce succès en termes pratiques?
Cuáles son los escenarios deseados en el futuro, donde la agricultura basada en los datos sea adoptada de manera exitosa por los pequeños agricultores?
La agricultura basada en datos se espera aumente la producción y productividad agrícolas, ayude a adaptarse y mitigar los efectos del cambio climático, resulte en un uso más eficiente y económico de los recursos naturales, reduzca el riesgo y mejore la resistencia de la agricultura, y genere cadenas agroalimentaria mucho más eficientes. Esto, en general, es el escenario deseado del futuro de la agricultura basada en los datos.
Podría Usted describir los futuros escenarios deseados donde la agricultural basada en los datos es adoptada por pequeños agricultores? Cómo sería un escenario exitoso en términos prácticos?
If l may remove my hat as a moderator, first l thank all those who commented and enjoy the submissions so far.
With regards to today's questions, for me l envisage scenarios where farmers have platforms that they access the data they produce. I imagine a situation where with precision agriculture each farmer produce data, if this data can be stored on a shared cloud service that agreggates data from similar farmers. This data can be useful to these farmers.
So l see a need for shared approach, common data themes within farming communities and these clusters of farmers need to be connected if individually produced farm data can be useful beyond the farm walls.
With developing countries, there is still a need for aggregation of off farm produced data that will be useful to farmers, such as weather data and market related data.
In essence, organised data communities for farmers, common aggregation services, farmers should be able to consume and use that data for decision making. Partnering with service providers will be essential.
Hi Thembani. I agree. I also think that whatever the farmer/grower need should be available on line both for what is available now and also for what should be available when a new problem shows up. If, like in the case of the fall armyworm, growers and responsibles do not have the instant information of what is available worldwide to address the problem, they can not establish a sustainable strategy and try to solve the problem with the tools they ve now which either do nto work or cause more collateral damages than they solve the problem. I bring the element of rapid response into the discussion as well which in principle should be a component of open data.
I see that Jacques and Thembani have described specific scenarios they would see as positive futures. Both suggesting that all data from the farmers and from other providers shold be available on an online platform. And Jacques in his previous message also specifies who (farmers, government, private sector) would do what.
I would have a few questions especially for Jacques who goes into describing which actors should do what: in such a scenario. a) Would you see this data platform as necessarily provided by the government? Would there be national platforms or (considering the global nature of markets) international platforms? If it's a cross-national or international effort, who would you see as responsible for the transparency of such a platform and who would design the data policies? b) Do you imagine that for data on such a platform there would be different access permissions, so that certain data can be accessed by certain actors (e.g. government, banks, suppliers) and others can't? Who would establish these access rules, which could benefit more or less specific actors? Who would be trusted with this?
I'm asking these questions because one idea that is mentioned in our white paper but I think is also pursued by CTA (perhaps Chris Addison can comment on this) is that for instance we can imagine that in the future "Trust Data Centers" could exist at different levels (starting from farmers organizations or broader consortia of farmers and other actors, not necessarily at the national level, also regional or by commodity or by vaue chain segment...). The idea of "trust" being central, so based mutual benefit and agreed policies.
Just to examine possible other futures beyond one where things are expected to come from the government and to highlight the importance of trust.
I wanted to re-emphasise Valeria's comment that farmers organisations and farmer-led businesses suggests that these bodies can be centres of trust for the farmer and an enabler to handle data. See https://www.cta.int/en/data4ag for examples in Swaziland, Lesotho, Samoa and Uganda. We are investigating which data services are priorities for farmers organisations and what are the issues and capacities that are needed to engage or deliver these services, starting at the first level with farmer registration.
In each case the starting point of these data projects was farmer awareness of the data collection and reassurance of use, using national data agreements and having data agreements with individual farmers, e..g Igara Tea.
USAID, FHI360 and Grameen will be discussing some of these issues next week at the ICTforAg meeting, it will be intersting also to hear their conclusions. From what I understood at their last webinar they have a similar focus on äggrgators and farmers organisations playing a role in ensuring farmers have control over their data. The blockchain solutions for ID data management may play a role here but the trust issue will still play the key role.
Tim Berners-Lee in the semantic web stack (W3C 2006) put trust at the top his model for the semantic web stack talking about how the next wave of web developments would be built after web2 apps and social media. Blockchains may be seen to underpin a mechanism for technical trust but human nature means these services are more likely to be trusted if introduced by those organisations individuals already trust at a local level.
Some of the research that has been done on attitudes of farmers to the sharing of their farm data shows a willingness of many farmers to share different types of data with different stakeholders. For example, many are willing to share soil, weather and nutrient/chemical data with Governments on the understanding that this will then be made available to other farmers and agronomists who will return benefits of aggregated services to farming communities. With developing countries, it is these public data sets that need to be available to farminig communities with as little or no cost. Other sorts of data such as production/yield etc may be shared by farmers and their communities to other trusted communities where the benefits gained from the data and knowledge shared can also be equally distributed among the data contributors. There will always be some data or information, particularly in Indigneous farming communities that may be shared but on a more restricted arrangements (as envisaged by the CGIAR approach to data sharing). It is important that the small holder farmers are given opportunities to learn about the potential value of contributing data while at the same time being given some tools to understand the potential risks of sharing where there is little or no security or privacy protections in place.
Dear participants, thanks for the active engagment and very interesting comments by all.
I do not pretend to capture the richness of the discussion so far just here, but I do seem to sense some broad common threads and issues which in some way link many of the contributions.
1. The notions of cooperation/collaboration, free flows and exchange of data, and management of data, seem to be at the core of a "data driven" agricultural system (and I mean by "system", concrete examples of small holder agriculture, whatever its features are).
2. Data driven and precision agriculture should not be conflated; the way I read the background paper, data is one tool which can support what is widely being regarded as "precision agriculture". I don´t have a particular problem with the concepts in general. I do think the concept of "precision agriculture" in the conext of small holder farming can be problematic in terms of its preference for or ficus on efficiency as one of its driving forces. But that may be another interesting discussion some day. I would argue (and prof. Besemer nails it) that data-driven agriculture has alwas taken place albeit not always in the digital and technological revolution and form we seem to envision as part of our discussions. In fact, and this is food for thought, I would raise the idea that data-driven agriculture may not even need to be associated necessarily with precisision agriculture per se.
3. The management, platforms, "organized data communities", rapid response, seem to also be elements which permeate mre than one comment.
I am afraid I do not speak/read French so Mr. Ahanda Sosthene´s comment I can´t really get into ... maybe someone can summarize in English so wecan integrate it into the discussion.
Thanks again and will get back in a while.
Have a good afternoon and morning for others in this region !
Cheers,
Manuel
In order for smallholder farmers to use appropriately adopt data driven agriculture in the near future, there is need to have these farmers (smallholder farmers) organized in groups or associates and registered in a platform that brings in also big service providers (agro advsiory services, e-market players, agricultural production service providers, smart irrigation services, finance and insurance). The existence of such service providers will create a demand for data services and push the adoption of data driven agriculture. Obvisiously there will be greater need for training especially in sub saharan Africa. As we move into the future, I see greater need for public/private support for expansion of the infrastructure to accommodate the expanding demand for data driven agricultural services. There will be greater need for a robust legislation and policies to regulate the e-agriculture environment. Success would be (i) when smallholders farmers are better organized and would be willing agree to have their data shared with other actors (provided there is adequate legislation to check abuse) for the good of all actors; (ii) when increasingly more smallholder farmers are using/adopting smart technologies to leverage agricultural production & productivity, and mitigate against climate change effects; and when the public sector (government) starts to play an active role in negotiating for better services at reasonable and affordable costs and ensure neccesary infrastructure is available to spur the data revolution.
Are you aware of any platform that can be seen as exemplars?
Thanks
The ixo Foundation, based in Switzerland but with most of its current operations in South Africa, has tools that could achieve this kind of data collection. The pilot version of their protocol is being tested now, and so far much of the support for ixo has come from UNICEF.
I'm a volunteer ambassador of the ixo Foundation (www.ixo.foundation), and am happy to answer more questions on the specifics of how this can work.
An example is the Greater Masaka Innovations Platform in Central Uganda. And i bring this one out because it is more of a grassroots platform bringing together all stakeholders playing a role in the agricultural sector in the region. It is chaired by a prominent produce buyer and to make it inclusive, deliberations are carries out in the local dialect. It is informal but the group shares information through regular meetings and use of the mobile phone.