World Food Forum: FAO Digital For Impact is transforming agrifood systems

                                                                 Digital on the spotlight  

The week 17-21 October 2022 was a crucial week for FAO. In that week, FAO (in conjunction with partners) organized three major forums which encouraged a diversity of perspectives and facilitated the rationalization and inclusiveness of debate on our agrifood systems.

Besides the Hand in Hand Investment Forum, where 20 countries presented investment impact opportunities, held bilateral meetings and 3 regional initiatives were highlighted, the Science and Innovation Forum 2022  has been focusing more specifically on highlighting the centrality of science, technology and innovation for agrifood systems transformation; and the World Food Forum, led by global youth, aimed at bolstering  innovation for sustainable development in support of ending hunger.   

Seizing the unique momentum of these 5 days of intensive dialogue, networking and investment pitching aimed at addressing the world’s growing food crisis, the FAO Division of Digitalization and Informatics (CSI) took a bold action in organizing two important side-events. The first side event focused on ‘AgroInformatics: Actionable Data for farmers and decision makers’ and a second main session of the STI Forum on  ’Digitalization of Agrifood Systems’ with the presence of FAO Director General and the Chief Economist.

These events’ aim was to promote constructive dialogue and exchanges of best practices to enhance the undeniable potential of digital technologies for the agriculture of the future and explore new joint solutions.  Through an emphasis on science, technology and innovation, both events offered an international and inclusive platform to spark discussions on the transformation and modernization of agrifood systems and showcased concrete examples of digital technologies that are accelerating the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and FAO Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, while leaving no one behind.    

The launch of the new Digital For Impact Stream  

Digital has confirmed its  key role of catalyst  to bridge the urban-rural, age and gender divides and FAO is now championing transformational changes with digital having now been fully incorporated into the Organization’s new strategic framework, reflecting into its daily work, and as one Digital FAO.      

FAO’s new Digital for Impact stream is already providing new capabilities to decision makers, but also to farmers with tools in hand that will have concrete results in the ground, to foster targeted interventions for agriculture.   The focus areas of this work are to better and more timely access to real-time actionable information;   to engage sustainably with farmers and agrifood systems stakeholders to maximize their benefits from new technologies;    to improve access to markets, credit and insurance through the application of digital technologies;  to foster access to digitally-enabled climate-smart agriculture solutions;  and to enhance the digitalization of emergency interventions and social protection mechanisms.    

Data as an accelerator to power to digital agriculture revolution  

The first side event on FAO AgroInformatics work showed how more accurate, integrated multidimensional data is contributing to accelerating FAO’s strategic objectives towards improved sustainable agriculture and early warning systems.  Experts joined from many different locations and backgrounds, ranging from FAO regional offices in Tanzania, Chile, Ecuador, the National Agricultural Research Center in Jordan, the European Commission Joint Research Center, George Mason University and the  Food Research Institute from Ghana- in partnership with the Transformative Research Challenge from the World Food Forum. They all united voices-  to share ‘digitalization in action’ examples on how the use of data in agriculture has an essential role to play to support evidence-based policy, planning and implementation to improve efficiency and make agriculture more productive, profitable, and sustainable for all.    

 ‘Enhanced data and indicators support evidence-based decision making as public goods, whose dissemination needs rely on digital technology’ said Dejan Jakovjlevic, Director of the Digitalization and Informatics Division  and Chief Information Officer, during its opening speech.

‘It is then our priority to leverage the capabilities of digital and data as accelerators to support agricultural digital transformation in a joint approach’ he added.  

 ‘Agroinformatics ​is not just about agriculture production’ highlighted Zhongxin Chen, Head of FAO AgroInformatics team during his keynote presentation. ‘It can really be applied to a multitude of disciplines, including- supply chain, food safety, genetics and much more’ .

 Successful examples of FAO digital capabilities were then presented, including the award-winning HiH Geospatial Platform​ by Karl Morteo, Information Technology Officer at FAO;  ​early warning systems and data for surveillance by Eduardo Machado, IT officer, and the Climate Risk Toolbox, a new open-access resource​ for addressing climate risk​ at the early stages of agricultural projects​ by Arianna Gialleti from the Office of Climate Change. ‘‘The importance of these tools must be leveraged as Data have also the power the better predict and measure climate change’ she said.  

 FAO Digital Services Portfolio followed, presented by NARC representative Rawad Sweidan, from Jordan that showcased how a global digital solution could be tailored for local needs and response to provide advisory services to farmers.  Applications in the field were also the main topic of MaryGrace Balinos, Geospatial Information Systems expert, that highlighted geospatial thinking and global network shaping in the Latin American region ​through the use of the RLC Geokit Initiative.   

‘The application of artificial intelligence and machine learning is also key for agricultural automation and better decision-making​’ said Liping DI, Chair and founder of the International Society of Agromatics in his presentation that deepened data-driven decision making at farm level, supported by sensor and sensing technology and big data. Policy data driven-decisions​ were then the focus of the presentation of Felix Rembold, Food Security Team Leader at the Joint Research Center of the European Commission​. ‘Earth Observation and geospatial data are the basis of digital agricultural early warning systems aiming at the prevention of food crises and at informing both humanitarian response and rural development’ pointed out Felix. 

 Young researchers finalists of the Transformative Research Challenge of the World Food Forum concluded the round of presentations by introducing their project of a food safety alert platform that helps to link the main value chain actors of indigenous leafy vegetables, for immediate feedback on pesticide residue, pathogen and heavy metal contaminations in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana.   

You can access the recording here with password ^Ig0q7D1   

The speakers' presentations can be found here  

Transformation in Action  

The Digitalization of Agrifood Systems event brought together at FAO Plenary, high-level representatives from FAO Regional offices in Ecuador and Rwanda, the Ethiopia Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), Uganda Development Bank, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Cornell University to share their practices and outcomes in further supporting each other’s common agenda for enhancing agrifood systems through digital technologies.  

Addressing the  event, the FAO Director-General QU Dongyu noted that digitalization brings transparency where “everyone can access information online equally” and “it also builds solidarity through a global platform” reaching thousands of people all at once.  

 FAO’s technical expertise and credibility as a knowledge and evidence-based organization enables it to translate the vision of digital agriculture into concrete action for Members and promote policy agendas to address the digital gap and “massify” digital benefits.   

FAO’s Chief Economist Máximo Torero cited also in his opening examples of FAO’s digital projects such as the 1000 Digital Village Initiative which is helping to bring digital services to rural communities enabling economic livelihoods and social cohesion. In making digital technologies more inclusive, it can support rural development and transform agrifood systems in low and middle income countries.

FAO Representative in Ecuador, Agustin Zimmerman, showcased specifically during the event the successful impact of this initiative in the Latin American and Caribbean  where since April 2021, 52 agrotourism projects, from 14 countries involved, participate with the aim of supporting and promoting digitalization in rural tourism experiences that are linked with agri-food systems.   

 FAO has also developed several applications, platforms and databases targeting interventions, providing targeted services to all actors on the ground and increasing access to useful information, and statistics making them available and accessible as digital services to the rural communities. One of these examples include the Digital Services Portfolio, presented by FAO Representative in Rwanda, Coumba Sow, who highlighted the importance of bringing those products closer to the farmers in the field, as well as several examples of successful digitalization initiatives in Africa to facilitate information sharing and acquiring loans.     

Temesgen Gebeyehu, the director of digital agriculture of ATA shared a solution that was introduced in Ethiopia, a “call-in automated helpline for famers which can be accessed in six languages” to provide agricultural advice or COVID-19 information. The hotline system is also able to use farmers’ personal data and “send out warnings informing them about crop diseases and pest infestations”.   

The Uganda Development Bank is in the process of digitizing loan appraisals by using a “credit scoring algorithm” obtained from “farm data, household data and transaction history” to help farmers in rural communities with crop and livestock insurance, said Francis Mwesigye,  UDB Chief Economist.  

 ‘Linking nuclear and digital techniques for enhancing the use and conservation of soil and water resources is key to enhance Agricultural productivity, Resilience to climate change and Remediation of environmental pollution’ said Gerd Dercon, Head of the laboratories of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s FAO Joint Research Center, presenting examples of the work of the agency in that field that include using cosmic ray neutron sensor for soil moisture monitoring, linking cosmic ray neutron sensors and satellite imagery data and the Agricultural water management with the AquaCrop model.   More collaboration is now expected between FAO and IAEA to make long-term real-time soil moisture and relevant observation data available on Hand-in-Hand Geospatial Platform;  Remote sensing, process-based model and in-situ data integration for soil moisture; as well as on the GEO-AI challenge or benchmarking on soil moisture remote sensing inversion using the UN OpenGIS GEO-AI platform. 

 Somil Aggarwal, young finalist from the WFF TRC, and student at Cornell University, brought finally the Youth perspective to the event by presented his research work which aim is to uncover the key successes from agtech in East Africa to provide insight to American smallholder farmers in their digital development.  

Concluding the event, Dejan Jakovjlevic, CIO and Director of the Digitalization and Informatics Division, reiterated ‘our strong commitment to Digital transformation, with considerable potential towards eradicating hunger poverty and bridge us towards sustainable development goals’.   ‘This strong commitment is not only in words, but also in action’ he stressed out ‘and with new digital capabilities already in place, with more to come – making digital for impact, and transformation a reality.’    

The recording of the event is available here 

 Speakers’ presentations can be found here 

 For more information, contact [email protected]  

 See FAO article on News section here 

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