Horticultural Hubs
The main objective of the Horticulture Community of Practice (CoP Horti) is to link professionals in West Africa horticulture supply chains, based on a collaborative web platform allowing users to keep up to date on and exchange and coordinate activities targeting the strengthening of horticulture products value chains.
ICT-KM Website
The ICT-KM Program of the CGIAR promotes and supports the use of information and communications technology (ICT) and knowledge management (KM) to improve the effectiveness of the CGIAR System's work on behalf of the poor in developing countries. Enter Website.Connecting and informing the diverse and dispersed community of H4D professionals
A key component of the Global Horticulture Initiative will be to establish interactive hubs for gathering and organizing information that will help research and development organizations and farmers to seize new opportunities and solve problems constraining horticulture systems. Since many local partners and stakeholders in the poorest developing countries do not have internet access today, media for information delivery will be diverse and appropriate for local contexts.
This activity includes:
- Set-up, maintenance and animation of a virtual portal of horticultural research for development
- Establishment of partnerships and agreements with data base owners and information providers (FAO, WHO, ISHS, CABI …) for free access to scientific and technical information for South partners
- Stimulating networks and encouraging new ones
- Maintaining networking links during gaps between funded projects (bridge funding)
- Regional Coordination
An expert in the technologies of Information and Communication with experience in setting-up and managing electronic portals has joined the Executive Secretary, to establish strong links with CTA, FAO, ISHS ASHS, e-managers etc.
Video-mediated farmer-to-farmer learning for sustainable agriculture
Published on 12th Nov 2011
The survey was announced via various listservs, websites and blogs (Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education; CTA;eRAILS; PAEPARD; FARA-net; FFSNet; KIT; LinkedIn Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development; Prolinnova E-group; Swiss Forum for Rural Advisory Services; and various regional farmer platforms such as ROPPA, PROPAC, EAFF).
The on-line survey, with more than 500 respondents, indicated that research institutes, universities and NGOs are better linked to professional networks and hence more easily reached through the internet than extension services, radio stations and farmer organizations. Although feedback from the food industry was relatively low, most SAI Platform members were represented.
There is a general consensus that farmers need good agricultural training videos, but they do not browse the web in search of them. For watching videos they rely mainly on outside agencies.
Farmers would watch videos on their own with their family or neighbours if video disc distribution mechanisms were in place. And they are willing to pay for video discs and video shows.
Only about 20% of all respondents have never used video to train farmers and have never searched the web for agricultural videos. Many of those didn’t know where to look for videos, hadn’t found videos on the right subject or hadn’t found videos in their local language.
About 85% of the respondents found local languages very important for farmer training videos. To ensure that videos are sharable and of use to the global community of extension service providers and farmers, producing many poor quality local language videos is not cost-effective. The zoomingin, zooming-out (ZIZO) approach shows how to make regionally relevant and locally appropriate videos. Organizations are willing to translate and use videos made in other countries if they are relevant and of good quality, and if video scripts are available. Lower quality videos serve intermediaries only and are rarely used to actually train farmers. The five priority areas for new video productions are: crops and trees, water management, plant health, soil health and farmer organizations.
The report compares the pros and cons of key models of farmer-to-farmer video production and dissemination, and discusses the implications for future capacity building and how each model could contribute content to a global web-based platform.
Most (82%) public and private service providers are keen on the idea of a new web-based platform devoted to agricultural training videos only. Many people opposed including advocacy and opinion sharing, but suggested a type of a discussion forum for users of the platform to exchange experiences on video production and use.
To reach farmers with agricultural videos, a new web-based platform is required, but not sufficient. Efforts to link people with different professional backgrounds and to establish regional and national communication, translation and video disc distribution mechanisms have to be established.
A new not-for-profit organization, called Access Agriculture, is proposed to facilitate content creation and sharing of agricultural training videos through its web-based platform and an evolving network of linkages and experts. Institutional set up and operational models for Access Agriculture have been discussed with SDC, GFRAS and SAI Platform, but are not included in this report.
See also: http://paepard.blogspot.com/2011/11/video-mediated-farmer-to-farmer.html
Information and Communication Technologies for Agriculture: Connecting Smallholders to Knowledge, Networks, and Institutions
Published on 15th Jun 2011
The World Bank’s Agriculture and Rural Development department and infoDev teamed up to launch two sourcebooks on agriculture innovation and ICT in agriculture at infoDev’s 4th Global Forum on Innovation and Technology Entrepreneurship (31/05/2011).The Information and Communication Technologies for Agriculture e-Sourcebook describes a wide variety of ICT innovations and discusses the potential they carry for stakeholders engaged in agricultural development. The overarching challenge for agriculture in the international development community is to make the sector fulfill its potential as an engine for a certain kind of economic growth—poverty-reducing economic growth. Source: http://www.infodev.org/en/Publication.1093.html BACKGROUND The program is creating two sourcebooks: one on ICT for Agriculture and another on Agricultural Innovation Systems, in collaboration with a wide range of authors and agencies.Both products are intended to offer agriculture and other development practitioners a set of tested solutions, good practices, and methodologies, along with promising applications, that enable them to leverage ICT and harness innovation for more effective agricultural and rural development outcomes. The sourcebooks bring together thematic notes and over 200 case studies from all over the world into a single easy-to-use compilation for those working in the agricultural sector. FORTHCOMING WEB PLATFORM The ICT for Agriculture e-Sourcebook is being designed as an electronic publication to maximize its outreach, with the intent of maintaining it as a “living” updatable document through the web. The website domain: www.ICTinagriculture.org, which is currently under construction, will include the full sourcebook text, as well as updates on projects, new tools and applications, user interface, and research focused on the impact of ICT. This e-strategy will improve global access to the sourcebook and foster a community of practice both inside and outside the World Bank. The website and sourcebook have an expected release date in autumn 2011.These are the modules featured in the ICT for Agriculture e-Sourcebook:
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New Book: "ICTs for Agricultural Extension"
Published on 21st Oct 2010
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FARA has Published an Inventry of Innovative Farmer Advisory Services using ICTs
Published on 11th Jan 2009
The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) has announced the publication of an Inventory of Innovative Farmer Advisory Services using ICTs. One of the co-authors. Francois Stepman, states that " entries include projects using ICT solutions or implementing ICT-based activities, institutions/groups providing services using ICTs as well as ICT solutions software providers, both at the national and regional level. While many of the entries are projects with a definitive beginning and end date providing one or two services, others are national or regional information systems providing many agricultural services using ICTs. The compilation of this inventory involved participation from many individuals/organizations. FARA would like to acknowledge the input from the RAILS e-discussion groups [Regional Agricultural Information and Learning Systems] and the Knowledge Management for Development [KM4Dev] e-discussion group who alerted us to projects that could be used in the inventory."