Hi Sridevi, Your thesis research sounds great! Such an important topic and relevant to this forum. I hope you find some useful ideas as well as contacts with people here. Please check the first discussion question which is now posted under the new thread "Discussions - Week 1". Cheers, Michael (FAO)

Dear all, It is great to see the issues coming forward already. Thank you! :D Please check the first discussion question which is now posted under the new thread "Discussions - Week 1". Cheers, Michael (FAO)

Greetings Sapna! I'm glad you are joining us again and look forward to your inputs.

Dear all, Greetings from the e-Agriculture team. A big thank you to all who participated in this forum! As with any meeting, virtual or otherwise, its success depends on you. The comments and experience you have shared will benefit all of us in our work and promote the development of successful e-agriculture. We wish to thank the subject matter experts for this forum who willingly shared their experiences and provided insights on many complex issues. The forum will be closed now and we will begin to prepare a full summary of the forum. This report will be posted here on e-agriculture.org. The forum will also be discussed at various live events in the region including the e-India 2008 conference in New Delhi this July and at the IAALD Conference this August in Tokyo. If any of you plan to attend these events please do look for us there! Please remember the e-Agriculture community is for you. Stay involved and do not hesitate to contact us at any time with your suggestions for new issues to be addressed, new projects, or any other idea. With regards from your moderators and facilitator, Manish Michael Charlotte :D

Hi Noel. In the particular case of Farmers' Home there is no equivalent to the Google advertising approach of matching ads to information queries. Most queries are handled either by phone or face-to-face. This does lead to extension agents who are present on site, when appropriate, referring the farmer to one of the sales agents. This could be considered a non-electronic means to the same end. There may be cases of this happening when individuals browse the Internet from a computer inside Farmers' Home, but I don't have any information on this. It is an interesting question, one I will have to refer to my friends in China. :idea: This is a very interesting point raised by Noel. We would be very keen to know if anyone else has examples of where a Google-like approach is used for matching search queries to ads or links to the private sector. Please let us know! Thanks, Michael (FAORAP) :)

Dear all, For your consideration and discussion I submit one model in which PPP is supporting e-agriculture. (This is based on a study done a few years ago. Note that as moderator we are not exepcting all cases discussed in week 2 to be this detailed. Rather take this as an example of what can be done and consder options for new cases and how we can do better.) :arrow: In Lanxi China there is a sort of community information center called the "Farmers' Home". It is primarily run by government entities (the local agriculture, forestry and fisheries conservation bureaus), but there is private sector involvement that while small is an integral part of the success of the center. Basically the Farmers' Home provides a "one-stop shop" where the community can obtain agriculture related information and extension services from trusted sources, real-time market prices, and learn about new farming input products and purchase input products to which they would not otherwise have access. As for the reasons behind the success and some lessons learned: One might consider this a win-win situation because the private sector is able to promote their products while the public sector is able to recoup some costs of running the center as well as provide the community with a full offering of information and products. The onsite presence of government staff and their access to digital information (e.g. China Agricultural Information Network) result in content that is considered both timely and of good quality by the community. Awareness is actively promoted both by various forms of communication (Internet, local newspaper, etc.) as well as the strategic placement of the center itself. There have been some qualitative measures of the impact of this e-agriculture initiative, which are available in the full report (see below). Quantitative measures are available but to my knowledge they only exist with the government as so are in Chinese language. It should be noted that this is one of several models of successful e-agriculture found in China. Its PPP component is somewhat unique, but undoubtedly there are others to be shared. The report also details some of the limitations of this model. I encourage any comments or questions you may have on this. I will do my best to answer questions. If there is anyone else familiar with this case please also feel free to add your comments! A summary of this model and case studies can be found at [url]http://www.fao.org//docs/eims/upload/192792/Lanxi%20Farmers%20Home.pdf[…] The original full study is available at [url]http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/ad504e/ad504e00.htm[/url] The study makes up part of a larger group of work ongoing by FAO and its partners to bridge the rural digital divide. There is a website dedicated to this work at [url]http://www.fao.org/rdd[/url]

Noel, would you also comment a bit more on the Creative Commons agreement, as some of the forum participants may not be familiar with it. Is there a sample text for this somewhere? Thanks, Michael (FAORAP)

Hi everyone. Thank you again for all your inputs and contributions to the discussion last week! This is great! :D Please take a look at the Week 1 summary that was posted this morning. We identified some key issues of public-private partnerships for e-agriculture, including challenges, lessons learned and the identification of valuable models. As Manish said, now we want to look deeper into cases where public-private partnerships have been successful in e-agriculture. This could be a project specifically on e-agriculture, but it could also be an e-agriculture component of a larger project. :idea: The real value in Week 2 will be identifying cases that could actually be studied and used as learning tools so that others can benefit from the experience. So please try to focus on cases that you are familiar with and believe have this potential. Cheers, Michael (FAORAP)

Hi Sapna, this AGMARKNET sounds quite interesting as a PPP example. I am not familiar with it myself. Can you give us some specific examples of who and how the private sector has been involved in this, and what benefit or challenge that brings to the whole project? Thanks, Michael (FAORAP)

Mr Islam, thank you for your comment. I and many others it seems agree with you that there are indeed impediments to progress with the use of new technologies, not the least being infrastructure. Unfortunately, most of us are not in position to implement infrastructure projects so we have to make the best of what is available. Starting small is good, as long as we can share and build upon what we've learded - and for that we are grateful to all who are participating in this forum. I wonder if you have developed any criteria for how to measure success or the impact of projects like the AIS that you described earlier? Also are there plans to involve private sector partners directly? Thank you, Michael (FAORAP)