Hi everyone,  Good to see some of my colleagues contributing to this important discussion. 

Just back from interesting national conference in Australia on harvesting the benefits of digital agriculture and some discussion on the access to open data to improve agricultural productivity.  Farmers and industry do have concerns with providing their farm and paddock data if they can't realise the individual benefits it can have for their farm.  There seems to be interesting move by some farmers to develop data coops which allows for the pooling of farm and supply chain data for the overall benifit of the farmer goup. This is an interesting concept, though i feel could be exploited by governments and private industry.   

Some other thoughts to ponder,  

1) There is no point collecting big data sets related to agricultural production if this data can not be presented to answer the questions the farmer hads or address the important decisions he need to make.   

2) how can these tools improve on the innate knowledge that the farmer or encourage them to explore new farming systems. 

3) how can we pool data and continually enhance the prediction models for individual farmers  senario or district regional level.  

 

 

Hi everyone, 

I have just joined the forum,  

I am interested to know what experiences you have had with the the use of ICT to improve peri urban and urban agriculture/horticulture systems. We have started to explore the potential of vertical farming and community gardens in Australia and India.  We are interested to see how Decision support systems and real time monitoring for climate and fertilizer and irrigation can improve production and quality of the crops 

Hi everyone, I am Leisa Armstrong from Perth Australia. I am a Computer Science lecturer, with a background as as Cereal Agronomy research. I now have developed a keen interest in the the use of ICT to faciilitate the dessimination of information to farmers in order to improve agricultural productivity. I am also interested the use of data mining and other ict tools and mobile technologies in assisting farmers to make decisions. I am interested to see what ideas will be expressed in the forum.

Hi everyone, In Western Australia, mobile phones are used widely for general communications. however little research has been done on whether the farmers want to receive agriculture related information through mobile services. Mobile phone services are now available as 3 G services, however cost is limiting factor for most growers to use mobile internet services. My feeling is that sms services would be the best way to deliver information, most economic and easy for farmers. While farmers currently have access to internet through desktop machines, I think most woud prefer a more mobile service that they can access while they are working on their farms. There are a number of factors which will determine the sucess of delivering infomation services in WA, - need to customize the information for the farmer - target for their farming situation - a decision aid component that allow farmer to query and receive customized answers - weather and climatic conditions In term of the actors that are involved in the system. growers are heavily reliant on the government extension (development officers) for cropping information. Most farmers also use private agriculture consultants (Elders etc) which customize farm plans etc. Marketing informatoin is provided by a number of governmnent and private agencies. There are some issues related to who owns the information; that needs to be sorted out mobile services are to be provided for growers, especially in term of variety information and market prices One other factor is that the use of mobile sms to deliver information means that information needs to be tailored to a reduced text format, this factor needs to be taken into account Dr Leisa Armstrong Edith Cowan University [email protected]

Hi Dr Hadir, your project seems to be very interesting, with what institution in India are you collaborating. I am visiting India in February and would love to see what progress has been made cheers Leisa

Hi Michael, I remember seeing you at the ICT in Agriculture conference in in Japan in August. Following on from some of the work that was discussed in at that conference, I have initiated a study on the use of mobile technologies to assist cereal growers to receive agricultural related information in Western Australia. I believe there is a great potential in the use of mobile technologies not only in rural communities in Asia and Africa but also in remote and rural communities in Australia. cheers Dr Leisa Armstrong Edith Cowan University [email protected]