The Indian Central and State Governments have initiated several platforms using ICTS to provide agricultural information, largely to farmers. These initaitives are supposedly "open". Farmers are supposed to get land records, soil health status, market price data and package of practices for common crops online. As I wade through these, I realise that many of these initiatives in reality mean little to the farmer (smallholder) they are aimed to support. For example, land records are not with useful geospatial data and are not linked to soil health status. The approach to sampling and testing soils, interpreting them and offering advice leaves much to be answered and what I hear from the field indicates that there are many problems in this initaitve. The E-NAM prices are from wholesale markets and for bulk commodities, not what smallholder produce. It is easier for a farmer to call a friend/agent in his nearest market that use E-NAM information. There are problems of access to data, interoperability, trustworthiness and timeliness. And none answer the questions of what to grow, when to grow, where to market, how to grow, where to market and how to market that farmers ask?

There exists two types of private sector initiatives to use this data in India. One is by large, corporate ICT service organisations who are well funded and whose business at the moment is around  the large tenders the Indian Central and State Governments have for offering ICT services to mainly farmers and in a very limited way the larger agricultural sector. There is also a much smaller "stratup" sector, made largely of some technocrats who work hard to make it considering the many opportunities they think exists in ICT applications in agriculture. Both these types of initatives are really not able to develop useful information either for the Government, public sector agencies, the private sector or farmers. The core issue is of the availability and accuracy of primary data. Acquiring this data is extermely costly (which no organisation other than the Government can really afford) and present data collection and collation systems are still in the hand written register mode of collection and management. Further there are always questions of its reliability and of course they are not current, primarily because of the data management methods used. The small startups have very little financial resources compared to the needs for what they aim to achieve. An ecology for public-private sector partnership for these startups has not been created. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the State Agricultural Universities hardly have the capacities (in spite of all the incubators they have developed though none in ICT applications) needed to partner PPPs. Thus "open data" even if well intended through policy statements need much more to be useful.  

Making an ecosystem to use open data and offer value added useful services in agriculture and farming, especially for small startups who are the most innovative, needs many more things. They need clear policies (I am still confused whether I can use a UAV/Drone for farm monitoring in India), funding mechanisms, accessible and affordable data that is timely and trustworthy, regulations nad regulatory mechanisms (for example I get more than 20 phone calls and an equal number of SMSs regarding financial, insurance and health products I do not need on my phone because someone leaks or sells my private mobile phone number to these organisation and I am helpless to stop them even after writing to TRAI, the regulatory agenct to deal with spam), support from public sector research and extensin organisations etc.

Ajit

Ajit Maru, Ahmedabad, India

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

Thank your Andre, l would set the discussion with my personal observations.

In a joint workshop of farmers, extension agents and scientists held recently held recently at Dantewada, in North Gujarat, India in which I participated, some farmers, most of them small holder family farmers growing spices such as cumin, anise and chillies, demanded that the University develop an application (app) on their “Smart” phones that enables farmers to record their data. They wanted to record their data because they wanted their produce to meet GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) standards and get certification needed for export such as to Europe.

I as an observer started examining this demand. Farmers wanted a data driven agricultural system because they wanted to participate to earn more in a globally competitive market and following GAP standards and producing the evidence for having met those standards was a must. They wanted to use the latest available information and communication technologies (ICTs) that enabled easy data flows (Smart phones and 4G which is now available across most of India). Their immediate use was of course to present evidence of following GAP so that they could be registered and participate in International markets. But why did the University not do this in advance before being made a demand intrigued me! It should have had a foresight of this need. I started discussing this issue with the University people.

The issues that came to my notice was that the University leadership was not fully aware of the need. The demand of the app had not been articulated by their extension staff who were focused more in solving agronomic concerns of farmers not the whole agri-business of farming. The extension agents were also “shy” of using data as they had little capacity or training in data driven agriculture. They also had a notion that farmers could not use “advanced” technologies. No one among the University people discussed with me how such data could be made use of in their research and for innovation both by University and the farmer community.

I even goaded the University in my remarks when I suggested that data for incidence and prevalence, since both the location and time data were available, of plant diseases and crops could also be gathered and a plant disease surveillance and monitoring system be developed that can over time be developed using other data into a disease forecasting system.

Farmers could be given more reliable diagnosis of diseases and pest in their plants and crops if they shared images along with the occurrence of a plant/crop related problem. And, of course the University needed an open data and information policy, strategy and capacities to implement it so that farmers and other users (including fertilizer and pesticide suppliers) could contribute and see the results and impact of data contributions. This also needed change in both the University’s and its people towards using ICTs in agriculture.

The purpose of this discussion is to explore how information communication technologies (ICTs) can be used in facilitating the fair use of open data in agriculture and nutrition by farmers in general and especially by the more vulnerable among them such as family farmers, rural women and the youth engaged in farming as a livelihood. The above story illustrates some of the issues that use of openly available data and information face in farming and agriculture.

I am sure others also have similar stories and insights.

Ajit Maru

A checklist for an e-agriculture strategy could, after establishing an appropriate vision, be around the following elements:

1. Infrastructure D3velopment - Hardware, Software, Connectivity, Storage/Cloud, Human Skills

2. Content generation and management

3. Integration of information and information systems, Intellectual Property Rights/copyright, Systems Security annd management

4. Enabling Effective use of Data and Information including developing capacities at various levels for systems management to actual user.

The most effective approach is to consider all elements together and starting from element 4, with effective use being the ultimate goal of the strategy.

Ajit

I am concerned that many of us in this discussion equate an E-Agriculture strategy with the strategy of how ICTs can be used by farmers.

In all countries, agriculture is becoming market driven. Now agriculture is more about participating in markets than “farming” as only a food and other commodities production system. In the next 10-20 years, national agricultural strategies will be markets centric and aimed at satisfying the demands of participating effectively now rapidly globalized, highly competitive markets. National E-Agricultural strategies will need to be developed congruent to these market centric national strategies.

In market driven agriculture that is making efforts to balance sustainability around economic, social and environmental parameters an E-agricultural strategy has to focus on information needs of entire communities of actors and stakeholders. The use of new ICTs enables these communities to be defined beyond conventional livelihood related and geographic boundaries such as of farmers, rural people and villages.   

The primary purpose of an E-agricultural strategy should be to improve appropriately the efficiency of using information in an Agri-food system. The vision many countries, such as in Europe, now have for Agri-food systems is that they sustainably produce and consume food, agro-industrial feedstock (conventional and new bio-based), energy, provide environmental, recreation services and maintaining cultural heritage.

In market driven agriculture each product emerges and feeds into a complex value addition chain many a times spanning several countries. The information needed for markets in an Agri-food system currently flows  in three networks along with the individual commodity/product. These networks are those that provide information about the food and commodities production processes such as at input, farm, processor and consumer levels, the information that is needed to manage the flow of tangble resources, materials and commodities such as for transport, storage, wholesale and retail shelf level marketing and the information related to the flow of finance/money. The information about food and commodities production processes is to support decision making, education and learning of actors involved as also innovation in production. The flow of this information is as in a social network and complex. The information for flow of resources and commodities is usually temporal and geo-spatial information that enables reduction in cost and wastage of the commodity, management and assurance of quality and safety as reduce drudgery and human pain in the movement of the commodity. This flow is usually linear in a chain and flows from and between input supplier, farmers, processors, transporters, market intermediaries, consumers etc. The information flow for finance primarily aims to reduce the transaction cost in terms of time, money and resources along the market chain for a commodity. The flow of finance is usually between Financial Institutions and participants in Market Chains. This flow is also linear, in a chain but in the reverse direction of the flow of the commodity. At the moment in most countries, there is very little integration of all the three types of information flows and the networks though they have overlapping participants and notes in an Agri-food system and a huge potential of economic, social and environment gains lie in enabling integration of these flows.  A critical component of an E-Agricultural strategy would be to bring efficiency in these flows of information holistically in an Agri-food system.

An E-Agriculture Strategy therefore has to consider many dimensions in addition to technological infrastructure, content, flow and channels for information. These include

• The vision for developing agriculture in a country and the role of ICTs (along with other technologies) in contributing to this development. Along with this vision appropriate policies are needed to be considered for Institutions, Technologies to be to be used and developed and for participation with cooperation and collaboration of communities and the national society as a whole. The E-Agriculture strategy will also need to consider other national strategies such as for e-governance, e-health, e-education etc., and the state of the art in Institutions, Technologies and Community participation. The E-Agricultural strategy will also be a sub-strategy to enable the fruition of the national vision for developing agriculture and overall development as such and cannot be standalone.

• A key issue for the E-Agriculture Strategy is in enabling mass innovation in agriculture. ICTs have democratized learning and is bringing more equity and participation for information management such as through social media. This has also democratized the learning of science. This is leading to mass innovation by individuals and communities in developing, adopting and adapting technologies. In agriculture, especially of developing countries, each producer has unique problems. The producer seeks customized solutions offered as options for implementation. This therefore brings new challenges to national systems supporting development of Agri-food systems.

• The complexity of developing and implementing an E-Agriculture (and other E-services) strategy is in its rapid development that brings transformational change in Institutions and Community participation. It has now been experienced that the use of new ICTs with ubiquitous connectivity especially of cellular telephony, many Institutions in a country such as those related legislation, regulatory mechanisms, standards and norms, policies formulation, organizations that support the establishment of the vision for agriculture, for ICT related support structures such as for adopting and developing new hardware, software and storage applications, connectivity and skills development and enabling community participation now need to be either revamped or built afresh.

An E-Agriculture Strategy will need to consider all these issues also and not only how to implement ICTs use for farmers.

Ajit Maru

GFAR

The potential of ICTs, as this discussion by its proponents indicates, to contribute to improving family farming, especially of smallholders and resource poor as the majority of farmers are in Africa, Asia and South America are, is now accepted without much doubt.

The overwhelming notion that an individual may get from reading the opinions and perspectives addressed in this forum would be that ICTs are the panacea that has alluded this category of farmers for all their problems since the dawn of farming.

Is this notion true?

Or is it that ICTs will usher changes that will further diminish this type of farming and cause even a more drastic decline with smallholder farmers leaving this livelihood even more rapidly. And, what will be the consequences on our food systems and quality of life when such a phenomenon as the exit of these farmers from farming occurs?

First of all, it is a very romantic perspective that ICTs will hold, stop and reverse the decline of family farmers in this livelihood. ICTs cannot even maintain the status quo of today’s agriculture as this agriculture is largely influenced in its rapid evolution by global, highly competitive agricultural commodities markets and not by advances in technologies.

The use of technologies, be it biotechnological, nano-technological, materials related or ICTs will be influenced by these markets and not by what we as a group of very interested persons in the betterment of these farmers would want to happen. History tells us this again and again.

The discovery of Mendelian genetics applied to breeding of crops and animals, of urea, the development of the tractor and the genetically modified organism as seed or embryo all have contributed to the formation of an agriculture that has always challenged and replaced the existing farming system.  But behind their effective use was change in economies. The settlement and growth of larger cities in industrializing Europe and the USA with their demand for food created the need to increase productivity and yields with the use of fertilizers and breeding more higher yielding corn that could not be done with traditional methods. Tractors came into being to replace the loss of labor in USA in the First World War. Similar shifts such as through highly competitive, globalized markets are happening now and will continue to happen in the future bringing the need for new agricultural technologies.

There are many signs that portend the decline of the family farmer. This is because current theories of economic growth force it. Current theories see rapid economic growth only through industrialization and growth of services. Because of these theories, public sector investment and that of government is rapidly declining in supporting and developing rural areas, except to set up industries and new cities, and especially for this type of farming and farmers. The private sector has no reason to support small family farmers as their participation in markets is more expensive and less profitable for the sector. The community sector is too weak to even protest against this phenomenon.

The investment by the public sector has also declined and is further declining in the development and use of scale neutral or small farmer biased agricultural technologies and measures as the state of Agricultural extension and research in developing countries shows. The policy maker in developing countries as already stated wants development of industries and services and that can only happen, according to them, through urbanization. This is what China, the largest and most populous country and India, closely following are implementing as policies. This is what Sub-Saharan Africa desires and wants to emulate.  In my opinion, the world at least in the next few decades will continue to see this decline of smallholder family farmer till new farming systems (See some of these discussed here: http://www.egfar.org/documents/e-discussion-forward-thinking-ict-use-as…) replace them. And along with these farming systems there will be a new type of farmer. Maybe she may not be a farmer as we have considered them but a knowledge worker using autonomous machinery, sensors and large knowledge based systems to manage these agricultural production systems.

In my opinion all that we can hope for is to somehow slow this decline of family farmers so that we and the small farmers do not face economic and social chaos which we see already emerging in the growing urban slums, urban poverty, hunger and malnutrition and total abandonment of rural areas is indicating to us in many developing countries.

We have not discussed how ICTs can contribute to ease and enable family farmers to cope with the current economic, social and environment related pressures on their livelihoods and quality of life in our discussions.

This forum did not discuss in detail necessary whether these farmers can afford to use these technologies and who will bear the costs for rural connectivity so essential for many of these technologies to work? Or how we will develop and provide access to the content that these farmers now need to cope as their environment, physical, economic and social change? What happens to their rights to privacy, the property rights of data and information they may produce or how we will create the necessary learning systems that will enable them to use ICTs effectively to cope with the problems and issues they face in their farming now be it in participating in markets or dealing with change in climate?

As I sign off from this discussion IMHO we must all ask ourselves how responsible we all are and will be in future in presenting all dimensions in their starkness in such dialogues when we offer a very optimistic future through the introduction of ICTs for family farming?

With warm regards,

Ajit

Ajit Maru, GFAR Secretariat

Dear Colleagues:

Beyond informing, educating, enabling the building of new skills and spread of technologies, ICTs impacting upon family farming to improving family farms’ production, planning and process monitoring in farming operations, use of machinery and participation in markets now and in the near future are:

• Automation, Robotics, Autonomous, Linked Tools, Equipment and Process Monitoring,
• Wearable Computing
• Controller Area Networking/Sensor Networks/Grid Computing
• Big data at different scales from field, farm to global
• Farm Management Information System
• Global Positioning System – Multi satellite
• Drones and Low cost Satellites/Micro satellites
• More precise geo-spatial data and 3D maps with elevation information
• Humidity, Ambient Environment and Soil Nutrient sensors
• Photometry
• Visualization and Integrated Display
• Social Media, MOOCs, Online Learning
• Rural access to online financial services
• Traceability systems using low cost RFIDs, QR, NFC and other new technologies
• Telematics
• Variable rate Irrigation/Fertigation and prescriptive planting
• Weed, Biodiversity and Pest Management through Integrated systems

However family farmers face major issues in the availability, accessibility, affordability and making effective use of many of these technologies.

A key issue for the smallholder family farmer is of  “aggregation”  such as through forming cooperatives and producer organizations to bring efficiency in use of these technologies through sharing of costs and optimizing small farms use of resources for input, throughput and output as products and participating collectively in markets. 

The needs of smallholder farmers are:

• Policies promoting and enabling aggregation of family farmers and farming systems such as through cooperatives, producer organizations, farmer organizations etc.

ICTs can contribute to “virtual” aggregation of farms, synchronization of farm inputs, processes, outputs and logistics to participate in markets.

• New Forms of advisory and support systems for knowledge, skills and technology.

ICTs can enable access to just-in-time information for decision support and action.

• Trust Centers with Data and Information Agreements, Treaties with regulatory and enforcement mechanisms to share data at various levels and among multiple categories of users from plot, farm, farming system, region, national to global agricultural and related systems.

With the emergence of big data, cloud computing and advanced analytics, new issues and concerns on privacy, security, intellectual and property rights, values, ethics etc. are emerging in data and information management related to agriculture and farming. This will need transforming existing and developing new Institutional arrangements at various levels for data and information.

• New business-models that integrate  governments, farmers and  banks, insurance,  market intermediaries, cooperatives etc. for participation in markets
• Inclusive governance  of flow of data, information, knowledge, skills and technology
• Inclusive development of standards
• Open Technologies – Open data, information, knowledge, learning
• Increased democratization of science, learning and support to exponential innovation
• Lower cost of Hardware, infrastructure and connectivity

There are several dimensions in fulfilling these needs such as for investment through public, private, crowd and community, infrastructure such as for data, applications, analytics, hardware, software and connectivity, content, integration of data, information, information systems and applications and governance.

These needs have to be considered together and actions taken to be holistically addressed to yield benefits to family farmers. They cautioned that action on only one or two items, as it usually happens, may not have beneficial results.

To contribute to improving smallholder family farming, ICTs should make agriculture more knowledge driven and:

1. Enable family farmers to participate equitably and as entrepreneurs in markets that are just and fair.
2. Reduce transaction costs, wastage, improve quality, save time and decrease drudgery.
3. Enable and involve the private sector, especially small, medium entrepreneurs and public sector agricultural research and extension services in partnership to provide knowledge based services for these farmers.
4. Enable gender and youth to access and share information and participate and engage effectively in all aspects of decision making in their farming and related livelihoods.
5. Enable and support small holder farmers to aggregate into cooperatives, producer companies and organizations with similar functions
6. Support these farmers to continuously innovate their farming and participate in research
7. Help formulate policies, change Institutions, their structures and work processes to effectively generate, manage and use information and ICTs in farming.

The detailed report on how these conclusions were drawn is available on GFAR Website http://www.egfar.org/documents/icts-improving-family-farming

Warm regards,

Ajit

Ajit Maru, GFAR Secretariat

Dear Colleagues:

My last contribution drew attention to issues of exclusion of family farmers in the use of ICTs.

There are very few documented narrations of the thousands of ICT initiatives across the developing world in agriculture that have not yielded their stated potential and have been unsuccessful.  Because of this, we cannot learn more about why these initiatives failed.

The abuse of ICTs that have seriously affected smallholder farmers has also not been recorded in significant numbers. That does not mean there is no abuse. There is. Let me give to an example.  In India, in the State of Karnataka, some very progressive Government administrators initiated a project to use GIS for electronic documentation of land ownership of farmers. Once the maps were drawn and publicly available, in addition to helping farmers, it also helped land sharks to grab land that did not have clear ownership or were owned by the Government. This was easy to do since the information was easily available. The result was farmers who owned ancestral lands but without clear legal documents were jeopardized in losing their land to these land grabbers. Also public lands which were used as communal pastures or as village lakes and ponds were relatively easy to grab as the Government could not easily maintain a watch of all of the land in its ownership and which could easily be disputed as water levels that demarcate these lands can vary and can be made to change to benefit those without scruples especially those that had political power. Resource poor smallholder farmers who grazed their animals on these lands lost out to the land grabbers who could manipulate the now easily available electronically kept land records.

In the UK, after the incidences of “mad cow disease” (BSE), private small-scale butcheries and small abattoirs were drastically affected by rules that enforced traceability (largely through electronic means) of the meat. This has made farmers producing meat dependent on large abattoirs that are usually owned by large food processing companies and supermarkets for selling their animals. This effectively removed the smallholder family farmers selling their own meat in local markets. A more unrecorded phenomenon was that farmers who traditionally produced local foods such as meat pies and sausages and retained a cultural heritage could not do so using the meat they had produced on their own farms. Thus the farmers not only lost economically and became dependent on large corporates but also the local heritage and culture was severely affected.  As a consequence tourism and other similar vocations that contributed significantly as additional income for farmers were affected by the need for traceability that used ICT to manage records. It is not very difficult to reason why rural areas in UK and Europe are losing out farmers at a very rapid rate affecting rural economies, the environment and cultural heritage.

As experts in ICT use in agriculture, we must concern ourselves in exploring how information flows which are in consonance with commodities and associated financial flows in farming and production systems and the Agri-food chains and which cannot be disaggregated from each other, contribute and affect smallholder family farmers? We must analyze and document all phenomenon in ICTs use at a systems level. We must consider what happens when a farmer uses m-Pesa or Bitcoin which are not backed by conventional banking systems and have no reliable government assurance which is one of the key functions of the banks.

We must also explore how ICTs can help develop farming systems that can stop adverse phenomenon for farmers to happen. We need farming for many reasons other than food production. We must also consider whether the uses of ICTs are contributing to exclusion or inclusion in the farming systems that we now contribute to develop and innovate. Would the world like to have rural slums as we have urban slums of excluded individuals serving from the margins of societies rural industrial complexes that produce food and other agricultural products? And, all this because indiscriminate use of ICTs contributed to this happening.

Warm regards,

Ajit

Ajit Maru, GFAR