For poultry farmers in Bangladesh, avian influenza can be a devastating problem. The avian influenza, called H5N1 HPAI, is highly pathogenic and spreads very fast. Once the flu is spread out, birds can die in 5 to 10 minutes from it and the farmer sees its poultry farm devastated. This information fact sheet sets out to show how an SMS Gateway system developed by FAO has been used to improve rural communication, support animal disease crisis management and contribute to livelihood resilience for small-scale farmers in Bangladesh. Focusing on the case study of avian influenza in Bangladesh,...
Ecosia is a search engine that plants trees each time you search for something. The Bing-powered search engine earns about half a Euro cent with each search and spends 28 cents to plant a tree. So to plant one tree Ecosia only needs about 56 searches. This way, the Berlin-based search engine has already planted over 7 million trees worldwide. Ecosia has focused on planting trees as it presents countless advantages, among which fighting climate change, restart water cycles, turn deserts back into fertile forests and provide nutrition, employment, education, medical assistance and political as...
In order to enhance its capacity to observe large swathes of territory on a regular basis, as well as viewing otherwise inaccessible areas, SWALIM developed a remote monitoring system using remotely sensed data. Remote Sensing (RS) is the ability to capture and analyse information from the earth’s surface from a distance. The system was developed in large part to address the issue of lack of access due to insecurity. The initial objective was to ensure accountability for FAO’s programme beneficiaries after the 2011 famine, following which FAO provided cash to communities in return for...
The online discussion on, “The role of Information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the Sustainable Intensification of Crop Production (SCPI)” has officially ended. This has been a very fascinating discussion!. The sharp increase in the number of people joining the e-Agriculture platform over the course of the three weeks as well as the remarkable enthusiasm, with which the topic was discussed put in evidence the significant role of ICTs in sustainable intensification of horticulture crop-based systems. Over the course of the discussion forum (06 March to 03 April 2017), 247 new...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Global Drylands Assessment is a thematic study based on the visual interpretation of satellite images in publicly available repositories (such as Google Earth Engine and Bing Maps ) focusing on drylands. Results are reported at the global and regional levels. More than 200 experts with knowledge on land uses in specific dryland regions conducted the interpretation using the Open Foris software tool Collect Earth. Collect Earth communicates with Google Earth Engine to facilitate access to freely available satellite images from...
Open Tenure is an open source software designed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to help communities to better govern their natural resources. It uses handheld tablets, and a community server allows community members to map and collect data on land tenure claims in their community. The data can then be viewed and moderated, and important documents and photos can be stored electronically for safekeeping. This video presents the Open Tenure trial with a community forestry group in northwest Cambodia during 16-20 February 2016. The participants were quick to...
OpenForis is a free open-source software for environmental monitoring. It consist in a set of free and open-source software tools that facilitates flexible and efficient data collection, analysis and reporting. Open Foris includes: Collect: Easy and flexible survey design and data management Collect Mobile: Intuitive data collection and validation in the field Collect Earth: Innovative land assessment through freely available satellite imagery Calc: Efficient and collaborative data analysis and results dissemination Geospatial Toolkit: Powerful command-line utilities for processing geospatial...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)’s Rural and Urban Crop and Mechanization Systems Team (AGPML) and the e-Agriculture Team, (OPC) are glad to announce the upcoming online ‘forum’ discussion themed, “ The Role of ICTs in Sustainable Crop Production Intensification (SCPI) of horticulture crop based system ”. This forum on ICTs in Sustainable Crop Production Intensification (SCPI) of horticulture crop based systems ( mainly on fruits, vegetables, roots and tubers ) is part of broader discussion that aims to present the ongoing evolution in Agriculture and...
Mobile money is a service that allows monetary value to be stored on a mobile phone and sent to other users via text messages. Mobile money was first introduced in South Africa and the Philippines about 10 years ago. In Kenya, this service was introduced in March 2007 and was called “M-PESA” (M is for mobile, “pesa” is Swahili for “money”), which became the country’s dominant mobile money service. M-PESA has since been celebrated internationally as an innovation that can bring the unbanked population into the formal financial system, with associated impacts on economic well-being and welfare...
The market-led, user-owned ICT4Ag-enabled Information Service (MUIIS) Service Bundle was officially launched at the CTA Uganda country office on 8 March 2017. MUIIS is an innovative project that harnesses the power of satellite data to support extension and advisory services to farmers in Uganda. The MUIIS Service Bundle consists of a series of context-specific weather alerts, agronomic tips and index-based insurance throughout the season and covers four agricultural commodities: maize, beans, sesame and soybeans. To access these services farmers must be profiled and once profiled, dial short...
