Knowledge & Information is the key intervention

Hi I am Raj from India. It is a nice platform to initiate, participate and extend the 'Knowledge/information', which I believe is the key intervention for bringing in much desired 'Growth in Agriculture' and making it 'Sustainable', for our rural friends specially 'Farmers'. The 'E' tool if rightly integrated can bridge the gap, not only between 'Lab to land' and 'market to farm' but may also serve as a delivery tool for many other sectors like health, food, governance, disaster management etc. I am a agri-dvelopment professional with interests in food & nutrition, sustainable farming, rural development, enterprise & market development. Shall look forward to exchange learnings.

Hello Raj I appreciate the great interest you have for this forum. But before I can continue, let me ask you this question: How can a country with high iliteracy rate can organize, manage and sustain an agricultue entreprise. I am in an NGO called Reaching Out for the needy where we are trying to get organized the farmers around the farming activities for real human and economical development. But this seems to be impossible. the main factors empeding this is the lack of adequate techincal skills to deal with it, the lack of funds to assist farmers in-between harvest season; the high rate of iliteracy which opposes a strong resistance to change. So how can we apply the advantages of ICT to bring about some positives changes that can really improve the production system of developing countries so they can really make good benefit at a mico as well as micro level? can you link me to E-Tool? or other material on agricultural entreprise development ? Haertfelt thanks Epiphane ADJADJI Benin Wewt AFrica

Hello Raj I appreciate the great interest you have for this forum. But before I can continue, let me ask you this question: How can a country with high iliteracy rate can organize, manage and sustain an agricultue entreprise. I am in an NGO called Reaching Out for the needy where we are trying to get organized the farmers around the farming activities for real human and economical development. But this seems to be impossible. the main factors empeding this is the lack of adequate techincal skills to deal with it, the lack of funds to assist farmers in-between harvest season; the high rate of iliteracy which opposes a strong resistance to change. So how can we apply the advantages of ICT to bring about some positives changes that can really improve the production system of developing countries so they can really make good benefit at a mico as well as micro level? can you link me to E-Tool? or other material on agricultural entreprise development ? Heartfelt thanks Epiphane ADJADJI Benin Wewt AFrica

Raj, thank you for joining and for your interesting introduction. From reading this, :question: I wonder if you have any examples of where the private and public sector have come together, either formally or informally, using e-tools to bridge the gap and/or promote sustainable practices? From my past experience, India has started quite a bit of activity in this area. Anything you could share with us would be great! Cheers, Michael (FAO RAP)

Dear Adjadji, Greetings. Nice to hear from you. Yes illiteracy is a challenge for bringing in the pace of development. But I believe it shouldnot be taken as a bottleneck. In India too we have a serious literacy problem, more so in rural India, however rural India is changing fast with increased market reach, agro-enterprise and development of other sectors. The key thing is market assurance, in agri-enterprise. Once the return of produce is assured then initiating the change process for increased production efficiency, processing & value addition, quality systems becomes very easy. Yes literacy does help at this point to inrease the pace of 'change adoption' or at time helps to mitigate exploitation by private partners. I don't know in which country of Africa you are or the kind of agri-enterprise you are refering, but as a thumb rule the steps to start an agri-venture is to - 1. Understand the value chain, and seek measures to improve the efficiency by integrating process and product innovations, supply chain management and ensuring sustainability. 2. Understand market and developing the marketing strategy, 3. Institution development, management system and finance. I hope I could add bit of dimension to your thoughts. I shall try to suggest you some e tools, in a day or two. Please feel free to get back. Best regards Raj

Hello Everyone, A quick introduction. I am part of the management team of a new DFID programme called Research Into Use whose principal purpose is to take the best of natural resources research findings and apply them widely for the benefit of resource-poor farming communities in 6 sub-Saharan African countries and 6 countries in Asia. I am personally responsible for communication issues in the 5 year programme - with field practitioners, with global decision makers and with 'infomediaries' in general. We are particularly anxious to promote mechanisms which stimulate demand for information from diverse institutions in the farm to fork system and are conscious of the need to integrate the supply of information with supportive goods and services and an enabling political and economic environment - what the Green Revolution used to call the 'symphony approach'. We are living in remarkable times wth respect to the rapid global availability of emerging ICTs for up- and out-scaling information. I believe one of the challenges we face in the e-agriculture field is how we harness appropriate and currently available ICTs in-counry with those which are likelty to be at hand over the next few months and years - and how these can be integrtaed innovatively with more conventional approaches including use of the media. What might help the e-agriculture meeting in my mind would be to draw boundaries around the 'e' issue. Does it include all ICTs such as mobile telephones, PV, TV/radio etc or should we have a narrower definition? I look forward to contributing to the discussions. Wyn [www.researchintouse.com]

Hellow to everyone and straight coming to the question that majority of our rural settlements do suffer with illiteracy and when we talk to develop a relationship of agriculture with ICT. To some of my friends in this forum it has sounded them otherwise. let me tell you that information communication takes place through a two step of communication in the way that information first reaches to the receipient who later dessiminates it to the fellow brothern and for that matter our village communities are closely knit who in fact will make this e-agriculture a sucess. SHAH Masood

Raj, Very interesting? I am curious how technology is adopted by the farmers and in the rural communities. Is there a strong desire to get acces to and connection with technology in order to leverage its power - that is to say is the demand driven by the populace? Or, does the community have to be sold on the value of technology and communications infrastructure? Yours, Philip

Hi everyone, Dr. Richards you have rightly identified the key words i.e., 'Innovative integration' of the 'available technologies'. As such the scope of ICT should not only include all the available technologies but should also offer an window of innovation to integrate the traditional communication tools to facilitate user participation, ease in adoption and generate continuous interest among the user groups. I believe the technology combination should also take into consideration the issue of local available energy apart from being lower in cost and maintainence. Empowering the user groups in complete ownership of the system is very important. Apart from the technology, which just acts as a tool of communication, I believe the information and knowledge assumes greater importance. What to disseminate? Vs What the user groups require? may ultimately decide the sucesss. Most of the time ICT is used to disseminate what we believe needs to be diseminated rather than putting efforts to understand what is the farmers requirement. This dimension is pointed out by Mr. Phillip as well, in this thread. "Is there a strong desire to get acces to and connection with technology in order to leverage its power - that is to say is the demand driven by the populace? Or, does the community have to be sold on the value of technology and communications infrastructure? I storngly believe that for any system to be sustainable it needs to be demand driven. In India the ITC E Choupal system is a success because in the areas targetted there was a felt need of 'market information'. Once the key demand is met with the other secondary information can flow in as per the priority. Information and knowledge therefore assumes more importance than the ICT, to continuously generate interest among the user groups thus ensuring sustainability of the 'ICT enabled extension system' The green revolution was a great success but lately we learnt its pit falls too. To make the 'e revolution' in agriculture a development milestone which is definitely the need of the hour to ensure food/nutrition security and above all mitigate poverty, we need to have a 'faster learning curve' approach. The wheel need not to be invented every where, it needs to be continuously improved from the learnings accross the globe. Thanks Best wishes Raj