Information and Agricultural Progress

“Open Access” for Agricultural Research and Innovation for Development

2011-07-10T07:43:00.009+02:00

An interesting question has recently been asked in the Open Access Forum India. What is Open access and What is a policy for mandated open access?

There are excellent resources that explain the “Open Access” movement including Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_%28publishing%29).

Taking these explanations further, to me, open access for Agricultural Research and Innovation for Development (ARD) is more than being for published scientific journals. It is about all information generated by and for use in ARD. It is also about making information available, accessible, applicable by ensuring its validity, usefulness and relevance to the society and its appropriation by communities, through being able to learn from information and making its use for their own development. I call them the basic framework of 4 A’s for improving Information and Communications Management (ICM) for ARD and by ensuring their implementation effectively across an information chain, we can put information to use for agricultural progress.

I believe that information for ARD is not generated only by scientists and researchers but by all related in some way to agriculture, from input suppliers, farmers, producers, processors, market intermediaries, consumers, those who support agricultural innovation and those who decide on the progress and development of agriculture globally. They all are actors in a complex information chain for agricultural innovation that leads to progress and development.

Today, vast amounts of relevant and useful information lies hidden in Institutional vaults very much like the temple treasures in Kerala. Within the vaults of Scientific organizations, information is further stored in silos. The agronomist’s information is not available to the soil scientist. The plant pathologists information is not effectively used by the plant breeder. The case is no different in animal or fisheries related science. Further in the stream of agricultural innovation there is hardly any information that is generated and used for whole systems innovation. Scientists innovate seeds, fertilizer use, pest control but not the farming and production systems as relevant to agricultural development where it should matter most, the systems of resource poor small holder farmers and producers.

So, when I consider open access, I consider how we can open the access to information from within organizations, within communities and within societies so that this openness contributes to agricultural progress and development through research and innovation and the use of science and technology.

There are many barriers to open access as I believe it should be. These are technological, for example, the biased use of the Internet (only accessible in urban areas and for those who can use computers) and before that printing (cost, literacy), radio (cost, power supply), television(cost, content), Institutional including the lack of awareness of technological potential, policies, strategies, structures, investment and capacities and related to community participation, for example, the scientists and researchers who for some reason do not want to share their information and farmer innovators who cannot avail the critical information they require because they do not know whom to ask for it. We need to struggle against these barriers if we need to bring open access for ARD.

The struggle for lowering each of the barriers requires the entire community of agricultural stakeholders to act in their own way possible. Individually we can advocate, promote, contribute, support and participate in the dialogue on enabling access to information for all. Collectively we can act to make information available, accessible, applicable and be used by communities as today’s information and communication technologies have huge potentials never earlier known to human kind. At the Institutional level, we can develop policies and strategies that contribute to open access.

As an agricultural community member, I advocate and support open access in ARD. One of my activities is related to the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) movement (See http://www.ciard.net). In my organization (The Global Forum on Agricultural Research or GFAR; see http://www.egfar.org) we support CIARD and lead CIARD.RING (http://www.ciard.net/ring) for all CIARD partners.

At the Institutional level, we can develop policies and strategies that contribute to open access. And that is how, I have suggested that for national agricultural research and innovation systems in economically developing countries that urgently need innovation in agriculture for their development, we need open access to information policies. Agriculture is knowledge intensive and becoming even more so. New knowledge is a critical resource for innovation and for agricultural development and progress. And for resource poor small holder farmers and producers, information is a very scarce resource. Some part of the resource poverty is also information poverty - information about what to grow, how and when, where to market, how to market and who to market to.

The Indian national agricultural and innovation system has taken a progressive step to provide open access to some of the scientific journals it publishes. We have to recognize that it is exemplary for similar systems across the world. The question is: Is it enough? Especially for a country where 60 per cent of the rural population depends on agriculture and more than 80 per cent are of this population are small holders, a majority of them resource poor. I believe open information access as I define it can resolve their poverty significantly. I am suggesting that the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the State Agricultural Universities who are public Institutions in India and largely funded by public money and are also major generators of agricultural information, have as a mandate, policies that enable open access to agricultural innovation that contributes to research and innovation in agriculture. For example, a policy direction could be that all Institutions inform openly on their websites the experts with their expertise, projects and project outputs in a searchable form. Another could be that the ICAR / DARE mandates as a policy that all research outputs should not only be accessible but appropriately aggregated and amalgamated, such as through tools such as Wikis for effective use by agricultural communities.

At one end we have information poor small holder farmers and other users, at the other end publicly funded generators of agricultural information. Can we show to the World what we can do to share information more equitably and contribute to poverty alleviation? And, how we do it?

We need to discuss what we all can collectively do. We may start with a mandated policy for open access.

Information that farmers will need to generate and provide

2008-05-28T17:15:00.004+02:00

Market Related Information

Gooseberries (Amla) in an orchard in the Aravalli Hills of Rajasthan, India
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Information that farmers will need to generate and provide

In my last blog I discussed about information that small farmers and producers in the South needed. I now discuss the information these farmers will now need to generate and provide.

If small farmers and producers want to participate in markets which are rapidly becoming globalized, they will need to maintain information about their farms and farming operations so that they can be audited through Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and food safety standards set within their countries and countries where they may want their products to be traded. This entails that these farmers have a farm management information system. Farmers have to maintain information about their farm history, activities, workers health and welfare, waste and pollution management with recycling and reuse data, environment and conservation data and complaints.

For small holder producers this adds to the cost of their production. There is very little known about the costs to farmers to manage this information. My own guess is that it should be at the minimum around 5 per cent of the total cost of production. I guess this by considering that the farmer would need about 30 minutes to manage the records as required by EUREP GAP standards every day, the cost of transcribing and processing the records into a suitable format for audit and the cost of the audit. This estimate is much less than what a corporate body spends in managing its information for administrative and regulatory purposes. The cost of information may be higher if the farmer produces high value crops destined for export, if he/she cultivates more that one crop, uses genetically modified seeds or organisms or produces for the organic market. For small producers this cost reduces profit significantly. If the overall profit from farming is about 15 percent this cost is one third of the profits. For farmers in the South, where illiteracy is rampant, maintaining this information may need external services for information management and the costs may be even higher. Of course, it can add to employment potential of educated persons in rural areas.

Another type of information that will need to be provided by farmers is for traceability and labelling the product. As food safety standards become more stringent, traceability of the product to the farm rather than the processing plant is required. This would mean that farmers have to ensure that their produce is traceable to their farm. For small holder farmers with small amounts of marketable produce providing information for traceability and labelling will be prohibitively costly and the main reason for their not being able to participate in markets.

For small holder producers of the South, it is increasingly becoming important that they aggregate together to participate in markets. Aggregation will enable them to collectively reduce the cost of information management for participating in markets. This aggregation can be through forming farmer organization to have common production practices, cooperatives, farmer owned companies, contract farming etc. I classify aggregation from a farm information management perspective, as being at the production level such as the whole farming community aggregating their production system around land, a crop or commodity and having a common farm management information system, at the product level where the members of an agricultural community have independent production systems but aggregate at the product level; this means that the individual members maintain their own farm management information systems and aggregation at the processing level where the processor of the agricultural product maintains the farm management information system for labelling purposes. It is apparent that there will be a need for standards for farm management information systems. I see very little being done by agricultural research institutions in the South attempting to develop these information systems that may in the near future be vital for small holder producers they aim to serve.

It is well known from experiences in Soviet Russia and even China that when farming is practiced communally or cooperatively, productivity is seriously affected and the social and economic fabric of rural communities gets distorted in an undesirable way. Are there ways to use ICTs to aggregate small holder farmers virtually without them having to change the sovereignty of ownership of their farms? In my opinion, it is possible through use of appropriate farm management information systems linked to geographic information systems if need be to aggregate small holder producers in an agricultural community virtually. This would not disrupt the economic or social fabric of the community but benefit the whole community in farming that can meet the challenges of a globalized agriculture.

Information that farmers will need to generate and provide

2008-05-28T17:10:00.002+02:00

Market Related Information

Gooseberries in an Orchard in the Aravalli Hills of Rajasthan, India
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Information that farmers will need to generate and provide

In my last blog I discussed about information that small farmers and producers in the South needed. I now discuss the information these farmers will now need to generate and provide.

Another type of information that will need to be provided by farmers is for traceability and labeling the product. As food safety standards become more stringent, traceability of the product to the farm rather than the processing plant is required. This would mean that farmers have to ensure that their produce is traceable to their farm. For small holder farmers with small amounts of marketable produce providing information for traceability and labelling will be prohibitively costly and the main reason for their not being able to participate in markets.

Information that Small Farmers in the South need

2008-05-27T10:20:00.005+02:00

Market Related Information

A Date Market in Sanaa' Yemen

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Market related Information: Information that Small Farmers in the South need

Markets do not only enable trade in commodities. They also enable exchange of information about commodities. A perfect market is where there is total symmetry of information flows and equity of access to information for all actors about the marketed commodities. Market failures occur when there is asymmetry of information flows between actors in the market.

In my opinion, inequities in information access and asymmetric information flows related to agriculture have contributed significantly to the current soaring prices in food all over the world. At one hand, economically developing countries have neglected enabling agricultural market related information flows and improving information access for its farmers. At the other end, multinational corporations have huge capacities to monitor and make use of agricultural information for their own benefit. This asymmetry in information access has led to market failures for farmers, especially of the South and speculative trade at huge profits, already evidenced by the stupendous profits reported by Cargill and other multinationals trading in food in their current quarter of 2008.

It is also surprising to me that while a wide variety of causes have been attributed to increases in food prices, no one has pointed out the failure of international and national agricultural and trade agencies in bringing equity in access and greater transparency to agricultural market related information globally and especially farmers and producers of the South.

In this and following blogs, I wish to discuss market related information and how improving access and enabling its use by all involved in market chains can contribute to improved livelihoods of small producers, especially in the South. Whenever market related information issues come up for discussion among ICM managers and experts in agricultural research organizations, the usual contention is that it is not an issue for agricultural research. If the discussion is persisted upon, the focus becomes how to provide market prices to farmers. When I refer to market related information, I do not mean price alone. I mean all the information that is needed by producers and all actors in market chains to make these chains efficient and beneficial to all. For the producers this means what to grow and produce, when to grow, how to grow, where to grow, how to market, when to market, how to harvest and transport and where to get the inputs needed for production etc,. For the various intermediaries in the market chain a wide of information is needed. I illustrate this as a framework in the figure below.

If we follow the agricultural market chain, we can categorize information related to markets as as:

Production, Productivity and Profit enhancement information needed by the producer
Commodity Price Information
Food Quality and Safety Information
Labeling information

Production, Productivity and Profit Enhancement information

This type of information can be categorized further as:

Information related to availability and prices of inputs for farming such as seed, fertilizer, pesticide, feed, medicines, equipment and equipment spares, diesel or petrol etc
Information related to cultivating the crop or commodity such as time of cultivation, seed variety, potential yields, soil type needed, irrigation, pest and disease threats, prevention and control, harvesting, post harvest management etc
Information related to marketing of the crop such as forecasted price, production forecast in the local area, local processors and marketers etc
Rules, regulations and standards for cultivation including production quotas, subsidies or taxes, segregation, traceability and identity preservation for labeling requirements etc

From my experience in India, it is important not only to make farm inputs available in time for each phase in farming such as sowing, cultivation and harvesting but also to inform farmers of availability and price and financial arrangements such as for loans or subsidy for a successful harvest. Many a failures in an agricultural season could be attributed to mismanagement of this information. I have also observed cases of deliberate withholding of information to benefit speculators who black market farm inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and diesel during sowing season.

In the context of the South, the management of information related to availability and prices of inputs can be improved if Internet Websites and Cellular telephony are used to provide information and market the inputs. It is possible to make the process of purchasing inputs online if suppliers enter into e-marketing of their supplies and producers can be provided agricultural credit cards for purchase of inputs.

A significant change can occur in agriculture if rural banking in the South can be automated and made online. This banking can provide access to financial credit to farms. Credit is a critical input to market oriented agriculture as practiced by small holders. A major constraint in providing small farmers credit is the high transaction costs involved. By introducing ICTs, this transaction costs can be significantly reduced. With improved Internet and Cellular connectivity, it is not necessary for banks to open their branch offices in rural areas but provide automated teller machines (ATMs) and credit card readers to input providers. It is also possible that the ATMs be used as information kiosks. Similarly, cellular telephony, especially SMS, can also be used for financial transactions and purchase of inputs and access to financial credit.

Many a times the infusion of new agricultural technologies fails to take off in the South because the necessary infrastructure needed to support the use of these new technologies is not developed. A classical example is in Africa, where providing high input responsive seeds without making necessary arrangement to provide inputs like fertilizers have resulted in failures to yield benefits from the use of new seed technology. The use of ICTs can contribute significantly to improving the infrastructure needed for input supply.

As agriculture becomes market oriented, producers need information on consumer preferences to make decisions about what they would cultivate; linking consumer preferences information to farm input information becomes vital so as to make production profitable for producers. This information flows from consumers to producers through market intermediaries in the opposite direction to the flow of agricultural commodities from the farm to the consumer. When the markets for farmers are not local but national and global the flow of this information becomes more complex. It becomes imperative that market related information flows become organized and structured at the national and global levels. For producers in the South, this information flows through market actors across the chain. The process is slow. Further most market chains in the South are long with more than 7-8 intermediaries in the chain. This further slows down flow of information. In developed countries where agriculture is better organized, the private sector especially the Supermarkets and large processors, the Government and Farmer/Producer organizations as also marketing organizations all play a role in providing consumer related information to producers. Such structures do not exist for producers in the South. In some countries, commodity marketing boards have been setup but their role, from my experience in India, in providing relevant and useful information to producers have been limited. In my opinion, marketing boards should invest in providing this type of information along with other support they provide to producers. I also believe that farmer organizations are central and key to providing farmers with information on production, productivity and profit. I shall come to how information management to markets evolve with increasing capacities to produce and market of small holder producers.

As stated in a previous blog, farmers in the South need a basket of options as information for their farming. There are several ways in which this information is currently provided. In my opinion, the best way to provide this information is through farm models linked to real time, online databases. The farmer can input his farms details and the model, using weather and market forecasts, crop characteristics, inputs details etc can provide options to the farmer what his options are and what choices he/she can make. While large scale farmers in the North have access to these new precision farming technologies, small farmers in the South, who can benefit the most from this approach, are unfortunately left out as local agricultural research institutions do not take up research in developing suitable models and systems to implement precision farming technologies.

An emerging issue for small holder farmers for participating in markets is also about traceability and labeling of their produce. For the small producer, the cost of labeling products can be exorbitant and can eat away in the profits. This prevents small holders participate in markets. There is an urgent need to look at how costs of labeling for small holders can be reduced. There are technological solutions available such through use of radio frequency identification devices, aggregation at production and product level using ICTs etc. This is another area that has not really been researched upon.

In most market information systems, primary producers only get bulk market prices such as for a ton of produce. For small producers this information is useless. In case of vegetables and fruits, there is a wide variation of prices on day to day basis and the producer loses out as there are few means to verify the prices in remote locations. Here again, cellular telephony can contribute significantly to providing relevant market information.

The need for Institutional Innovation in Agricultural Extension and Education

2008-05-20T15:00:00.009+02:00

Infusing new information and knowledge in agricultural systems:

A small farmer ploughing his field in Rajasthan, India

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The need for Institutional Innovation in Agricultural Extension and Education

In my previous blog I referred to the need for change and innovation in agricultural education and extension organizations and Institutes if they are to continue to contribute to infuse information and knowledge meaningfully in agricultural systems.

Apparently conventional extension and education systems are already obsolete or will become so in the way they are contributing to and enabling information flows for farming and agricultural development.

My reasons for this contention are:

First of all the users of agricultural information are now not only farmers as these conventional systems were designed to target but now include a wide array of actors in agricultural production chains.

Second, the needs of information of these users have changed. The users need a broad spectrum of information related to agriculture to make decisions and they need it just in time and not as pre-planned packages that the conventional extension systems are designed to produce and deliver.

Third, the flow of information has changed. There are now pluralistic flows of information from several sources, many of them competing with each other in the information they provide and not uni-directional linear flows from research to extension agent to farmer.

Fourth, users can access information from a multiple of information channels that provide information through a wide range of media and not only face to face meetings and printed material and a single source, the extension agent.

Fifth, in many cases, users are both producers and consumers of information and new channels are needed for this duplex communication.

Sixth, the role of extension agents who at one time conveyed information as a package has changed. They are now to act as information and knowledge intermediaries who guide users to information and facilitate the user’s decision making through their knowledge. This requires new skills and change in educational systems that provide skills to extension agents.

Finally, users have replaced Agricultural Universities and Research Institutes as being centres and being in control of agricultural information systems. Universities and Research Institutes generated new information and trained extension agents to convey it to farmers. Because of this they were at the centre and in control of conventional agricultural extension systems. Now these Institutions are only one of the many actors which include non government organizations, farmer organizations, agribusiness and trade organizations, the private sector especially farm input providers, processors, transporters and market intermediaries, consumer organizations and individuals with interests in agriculture who are sources of and provide information actively.

Agricultural Universities and Research Institutes now face active competition in their traditional role as generators and disseminators of agricultural information from other actors and this competition is increasingly becoming stiffer. To avoid being rendered irrelevant, these Institutions have to change to match and better the competition in providing information to agricultural communities for agricultural development.

Extension and education systems have to innovate their Institutional frameworks rapidly if they wish to significantly contribute to agricultural information flows and development. A major problem is in their vision and goals. The vision of these Institutions is primarily towards generation of agricultural graduates who would contribute to agricultural development when they work in the field as extension agents or research. Contributing directly to agricultural development through sharing information, knowledge and new skills is not the main goal for these Universities. The Universities are thus designed to provide on-campus, face-to-face education that is structured around static curricula and syllabi, text books and evaluation through examinations. The vision and goals of these Universities have to change if they are to contribute to learning for agricultural communities and not only produce agricultural graduates. These Universities have to become dual mode, offering both formal and informal, on and off campus learning through structured (with set curricula and syllabi) and unstructured programs. They have to cater to a wide range of learners from young farmers to students who will be researchers.

Another major issue in envisioning is the overt focus of agricultural universities on farming rather than on agribusiness. For example, in India, agriculture since late 1990s has moved towards agribusiness and has greater linkages with markets. Agriculture Universities have not been able to envision themselves towards this trend and change themselves to be in tune with the transformation of agriculture in the country. I believe that the rest of the developing world is also going through a similar experience.

Significant re-engineering is required in the design of agricultural universities to become dual mode. These Universities need to envision afresh and set new goals such as to contribute to human capacity for national agriculture and agribusiness development. This human capacity is not only graduates with degrees but also vocational training for youth to be farmers capable of participating in agribusiness and supporting the vast array of actors in agricultural production and value addition chains. These Universities will need to build close links with agribusiness through contributing to their innovation. I do not yet see these concepts and ideas being implemented in Agricultural Universities of the South.

To generate information and knowledge intermediaries who work with agricultural communities, as many of their graduates will fill this role, a significant change will also be required in their curricula, syllabi and skills base especially of the teachers. There will be a need to reformulate linkages between research, education and extension in the Universities and how they contribute to innovation for agricultural development.

In many countries, Agricultural Universities are under Education Ministries. This cuts them off from real agricultural issues. These countries therefore require significant changes in their policies and structures to bring agricultural education in line with the needs of their agriculture and its development.

A Generic Framework to enable ICT use for Agricultural Development

2008-05-20T14:38:00.009+02:00

Infusing new information and knowledge in agricultural systems:

A Generic Framework to enable ICT use for Agricultural Development

An experimental cactii field for livestock fodder in Oman

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I illustrate the generic framework of agricultural information systems below.

Each source of agricultural information, the agricultural information organization, has one or more platforms (telephone help desk, web site, e-discussion list) from where it communicates information to users. An information platform is linked to the user community through an information “bus” made up of the physical connection, channel and medium, through which the information travels. This physical link may be a telephone line, cellular network or the wireless Internet connection. The channel may be a help desk, a web site or a radio station. Communication may be through various channels available on the platform using one or more media (text, audio, photography, video, multi-media which may be analogical or digital). The information channel may have different cardinality such as being one to one (Unicasting) or one to many (multicasting, broadcasting). Some platforms use channels that offer many to many communications, for example, electronic discussion forums, teleconferences and video conferences. This is very useful for building social networks that are needed to share information and knowledge for innovation. The communication may be synchronous, communicating with the user simultaneously (such as through a telephone call) through a duplex channel or asynchronous (such as through e-mail). The user community may access information collectively or individually and, in some cases, through one or more information intermediaries. The role of intermediaries, as already indicated is to guide users to the relevant information and facilitate the user to make appropriate decisions.

Significant institutional innovations are needed for facilitating agricultural information access, sharing and exchange using new ICTs through the new, emerging framework of agricultural information systems. For the information organizations (those whose main output is information) that are the source of information, the first innovation is in its vision. Information is an intangible item. This makes designing appropriate processes for its most effective flow and measuring outputs from these processes difficult and complex. Since the information processes in organization are difficult and complex, the organizational structures needed for efficient information processes are equally difficult to design. In recent years, a lot of thought has gone into designing appropriate structures for information organizations. The best information organization is one where there is no hierarchy and is driven by common values of its members.

I illustrate some of the interventions needed for ICTs to be appropriately inducted and used for agricultural information systems in the illustration below. This is in addition to the need for new visions and goals for all agricultural information organizations.

See a video where I explain this model and what in my opinion needs to be done:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?warkmekmjto

This video is by Petr Kosina. I thank Petr for the effort.

ICTs transforming Agricultural Extension and Education

2008-05-15T11:51:00.005+02:00

Infusing new information and knowledge in agricultural systems:

ICTs transforming Agricultural Extension and Education

Goats at a Livestock Research Station in Oman

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Agricultural extension and education was significantly transformed with the introduction of radio broadcasts aimed at rural communities in North America and Europe. During the 1950’s, several Asian countries experimented with radio for rural development. In India a network of medium wave (MW) stations for radio broadcasts were setup to cover almost the entire country. There were issues related to hardware (both for broadcast and reception including power supply for radio receivers), software especially content and its format, skills and connectivity. In India, capacity for generating radio programs was developed at Agricultural Universities and Research Institutes. The All India Radio’s network was linked to these Institutions. I, as an undergraduate student at an Indian agricultural university during my extension course, was trained to produce radio programs. The use of FM (Frequency Modulated) radio in rural areas as “Community” radio has significant value. In India, due to Government policies, this medium has been slow to be used for agricultural extension but is expected to pick up when the use of community radio is opened up for rural areas.

The introduction of television for agricultural extension was also attempted in several countries. In India, there were some remarkable firsts, including the use of television for farm related broadcasts around Delhi. The use of satellites to broadcast television programs across the country and especially to rural areas for agricultural development was also a significant innovation tried in India. The introduction of television also had issues similar related to hardware, software, skills, connectivity and content to that when radio broadcasting for agricultural extension was introduced. However, due to costs, in India, TV program generation was not really linked to agricultural universities and research institutes. This may have been one of the major reasons why TV did not really succeed as much as the radio had for agricultural extension. In theory TV would have had a much larger impact that radio. Unlike radio, lack of electricity in villages in India, lack of TV broadcast coverage in rural areas, a focus on TV for entertainment rather than education and cumbersome production technology were major constraints in the 1980s in India. By the time satellite linked cable TVs. low cost receivers and digital technology, especially cameras, arrived the TV had lost out as a major medium for agricultural extension. In the last five years, the private sector TV has reinvented the use of TV as an agricultural extension tool. In India, the Eenadu Group with their ETV Channel has used digital cameras and a business model of advertisements for farm inputs and rural retail to produce and sustain farm related broadcasts commercially. There still remains a significant potential for local cable based TV programming for rural areas which includes agricultural extension and education.

Computers, digital media such as CD-ROMs and DVDs, digital cameras and camcorders, CD and DVD players also have a significant potential for use in agricultural extension and education. They can be used to target specific local content economically. For example, in Junagadh District of Gujarat, India, a student from a University I used to teach in experimented, as a summer project, the use of CD-ROM based audio content that was a mix of education and entertainment. He generated programmes using a desk top computer with an MP3 recorder and editing software. He provided these CD-ROMs for use by tea-shops at bus stands. He had wanted to link up Tea Shop owners through cell phones with rural service providers and make these Tea shops information hubs for the village. Alas, it was only a summer project and he could not test all his innovative ideas. As I learn, in my opinion, these ICTs have not really been used to full potential, in spite of successful pilots, for agricultural extension and education. The major constraint I believe has been the lack of innovative approaches and the necessary Institutional support needed to generate content.

The Internet and Cellular Telephony as new ICTs have significant potential to be used for agricultural extension and education. At the moment the constraints of hardware, software, skills, connectivity and content, similar to problems faced with the use of radio and television, hamper the use of these new ICTs. However, lost cost computing devices and cell phones, wireless, especially WiMAX, Internet connectivity and WAP (Wireless access protocol) through 3G and 4G technologies will contribute significantly to improving access to information in rural areas. The major constraint will be relevant and useful content.

The use of ICTs, “old” (Radio, Television) and “new” (Computers, digital media, Internet and Cellular telephony) are transforming agricultural extension and education across the world. The old technologies were for broadcasting information and useful for transfer of technology in uniform packages as envisaged for the “green” revolution.

In the new agriculture emerging globally, farmers, especially small holder producers (which include homestead farming, pastoralists, fisher folk and forest dwellers), need a basket of options for their livelihoods. They need information on what to grow, how to grow, when to grow, when to harvest, how to market, what are weather and market forecasts and a host of other information to make farming decisions. They want this information just in time when they need it. The information model now no longer remains a linear model with information flowing from researchers to farmers through extension agents.

There is a new networked model emerging with pluralistic information flows using a wide variety of media, individually and as mixed (video on cell phone, radio through Internet). The channels are not only face to face contacts supplemented with pamphlets, brochures and similar documents but help lines and question and answer services that use cellular telephony with SMS and MMS, the Web and e-mail with audio and video. It is apparent that “new” ICTs will be more used by their unique capabilities to multicast and unicast agricultural information to agricultural communities and groups within the community or individual users respectively.

In my opinion, new ICTs will provide access to a wide variety of information to agricultural communities in new formats such as alerts e.g. for input availability, market prices and weather, answers to questions, “how-tos”, wikis, blogs, results from crop and farm models, diagnostics using expert systems, maps etc. Individual and agricultural communities will also generate and contribute data and information through datasets related to production and marketable produce, answers to queries, blogs etc.

New organizations and Institutions will emerge to manage these information flows. These will include farmer organizations, trade associations, NGOs, consumer organizations, financial institutions etc. The role of traditions organizations in agricultural extension and Institutions will change significantly. They may become organizations that add value to agricultural information flows through collecting, collating, processing and disseminating information using new ICTs as also producing information and knowledge intermediaries that add value in agricultural production chains. These Institutions will need to innovate significantly and rapidly as soon as possible to be useful to agricultural communities.

Agricultural Research Management Information

2008-05-06T15:03:00.006+02:00

Infusing new information and knowledge in agricultural systems:

A farm with Greenhouses, Open Fields and a small orchard in Jordan

Agricultural Research Management Information

Agricultural research in the South as an activity for development in the post colonial era was largely driven by donor, both private and foreign government, support. As these investments grew in the 1960s and 70’s, there was a need to channel resources appropriately in priority areas for agricultural development. The methodology to direct allocation of resources evolved around the “project” as a management concept to harness resources, financial and human, for development through activities implemented in a time bound manner.

With successes of research contributing to increased food production in Asia, there were initiatives to set up research institutes and organize them into research systems in the economically developing world. These were largely public funded by national governments. The International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR) was set up to support agricultural research systems in developing countries in improving their research management. Along with other actors, mainly donor agencies, in agricultural research for development, ISNAR started evolving methodologies for managing projects, and later, programs (a set of projects with a common long term objective). Among these methods included defining what a project was, how it could be managed, monitored and assessed. ISNAR also looked at the issue of how to prioritize which project should be supported and how a National Agricultural Research System could develop a program and allocate resources appropriately to meet national agricultural development objectives. With the advent of affordable computers in the 1980s, ISNAR developed INFORM, a computer database system to maintain research related data and information. This system could record resources, financial and human, allocated and used for a research project and a research program and contribute to research planning, monitoring and evaluation. The FAO also developed CARIS as a system to maintain information on agricultural research projects and project outputs.

INFORM and INFORM-R, a relational database version of INFORM that could be used on personal computers, were implemented by more than 35 countries across the world at one time.

I attach a document I wrote on issues related to managing research management information (MIS_ISNAR.PDF). In 2005, I wrote a report on available research management sources, tools and applications(AIS_GFARSTUDY.PDF). These include information on Infosys +, Agricultural Research on the Web (AROW) and WISARD. Unfortunately AROW is now not available. Several donors including DFID maintain databases on research projects they support. These include those funded for agriculture.

The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) under its ICM4ARD program aims to develop as a part of a global ARD web ring global access to information on Institutes and Research Organizations, experts, projects and project outputs such as new information, skills and technology. This is because of GFAR’s mandate to contribute and facilitate collaborative action through partnerships in agricultural research for development. This information is crucial to facilitate partnership building. Along with FAO, GFAR has developed the AgriOrg initiative and is working on standardizing agricultural projects and experts data standards.

Over the years the perspective on research management related information such as on Institutes and Research Organizations, experts, projects and project outputs has grown from the information being used to manage the allocation of resources to agricultural research and priority setting to it being used to share and exchange information, knowledge, skills and technology. The trend appears also towards collecting and analysing this information for costing agricultural technology. This is because the international agricultural technology market is growing and agricultural research is increasingly becoming a private or public-private sector enterprise.

Research Data and Information

2008-04-30T10:44:00.005+02:00

An Olive Grove Near Appia Antica, Rome, Italy

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Infusing new information and knowledge in agricultural systems:

Research Data and Information

My own efforts in standardizing research data sets and trying to use computers to manage them started when I was a veterinary graduate student. In 1984, I standardized and used sheep flock and goat herd health data to plan flock and herd health interventions for the Central Sheep and Wool Research Institute at Avikanagar, India. By 1986, with help from my colleagues at the same Institute, I had standardized the entire data set for animal, especially sheep and goat, production and processing research for the Institute and All India Coordinated Research Projects for Sheep and Goats. Associated with the standardization was the development of an electronic database and development of personal computer tools to analyse and present this data. This included a computer simulation model of a sheep flock to predict financial returns under various production parameters and identify appropriate interventions to optimize productivity.

The online sharing of research data for use in agricultural decision making through the Internet is now emerging. The use of crop modelling and simulation such as CERES Wheat and Maize models and others also contributed significantly to standardization of collection of data related to cultivar, planting density, weather, soil water, nitrogen and other fertilizers on crop growth, development, and yield. Metbroker and similar application have brought use of weather data for agricultural decision making. Similarly application of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has enabled use of standardized land use data, poverty and food insecurity mapping etc. at the global level. The FAO has a collection of data sets and information in this area. Epiinfo and similar tools have helped standardize human and animal epidemiological information. There is a significant amount of global effort in organizing the documentation and access to plant germplasm data as indicated by Bioversity International. Efforts to standardize and share data related to the Rice Genome has led the way to similar efforts for other crops. As the application of biotechnology and nanotechnology in agriculture spreads, the need to share information at the gene and molecular level of crops and animals globally will also increase. This will require global standards in collecting, collating and accessing data, methods and tools to integrate and analyse them. New challenges in intellectual property rights to the data, information generated and use of information will emerge along with issues of data security and validation.

As I experienced in my efforts to collect research data electronically and share it with colleagues at the Institute and Research System, most efforts in collecting, collating and sharing data sets that contribute to decision making in agriculture include not only the data set but also data standards, data dictionaries, tools and applications to manage, analyse, interpret and present information from the data.

Hans Roslin’s methods of presenting data from public sources illustrate how data and information can contribute to understanding, learning and use of this data in decision making universally. In my opinion, he, in addition to his innovative presentation style, makes a strong case of a movement to standardize and make accessible data collected by public research institutions. Imagine how wonderful it would be to farmers if they are informed using an integrated set of data from crop, weather, pest and other models how their own crop and farm would function with current forecasts of weather, land conditions and cultivar used.

New ICTs, in the form of Internet2 which will improve connectivity and increase the speed of connectivity, data storage and warehousing technologies, computer processing for visualization of data etc. will contribute significantly to increasing global sharing of agricultural data. The critical issue for use of online data for agricultural decision making is in building capacity to enable use of the data and information effectively.

The future of using research data for agricultural decision making lies in creating global standards for agricultural data and its sharing and access, Institutional and National data repositories and data warehouses, appropriate tools and applications to integrate, analyse, interpret and present them. There is a need for National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS), regional and global agricultural research and development organizations to develop these standards and encourage and support the development of data warehouses, tools and applications for agricultural decision making using research data. The main global actors in agricultural research such as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and its International Agricultural Research Centres (IARCs) and FAO should take a lead in this area. The Global Forum on Agricultural Research has a critical role in awareness building, advocacy and investment in this area by all concerned.

The standards for agricultural data, in my opinion, should be developed by the scientific professional societies who will also create a validation system, maybe through peer evaluation, for the data. These societies will also have an important role to play in protecting intellectual property of data sources and managers.

Scientific and Technical information

2008-04-29T09:12:00.005+02:00

Cultivation of Cucumbers in a Greenhouse in Oman
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Infusing new information and knowledge in agricultural systems

Scientific and Technical information

There have been 3 distinct waves that have changed the flow of information and knowledge in human history and affected its course. The first was when human kind learned how to read and write through symbols, the second when printing was invented and the third was when text was made accessible universally through the Internet.

For agriculture, the first wave helped maintain records of farm produce and contributed to the formation of larger human societies. I am not sure how the invention of printing with movable type faces in its early stages contributed to the development of agriculture and progress in human society. It did bring greater access to information and there is evidence that agricultural processes and technologies were described in printed books of the medieval period. Apparently illiteracy among those who actually farmed was a constraint in spreading information through printed material. The western scientific revolution brought about the spread of information through printed letters, journals and books. Agriculture as a scientific discipline arose in the late 19^th century and the methods of sharing information and knowledge about this science were adapted without much distinction from those used in other sciences. It is how agricultural science now adapts to the Internet in sharing scientific and technical information that intrigues me.

The Internet, when it was developed, was primarily for scientific interaction. The first major change the use of computers and the Internet brought in sharing scientific information was through sharing documents electronically and the use of e-mail as a means of communication in scientific institutions. Associated with the sharing of documents electronically was the use of computers and tools in indexing and cataloguing information in the documents for easier and effective access.

In my opinion, the use of computers and the Internet in sharing agricultural science and technology information has lagged behind compared to its use, for example, for physics, mathematics, chemistry or even medical sciences. The reasons could be that investment in agricultural science was in the wane across the world and especially in the North when the use of Internet and computers was emerging in the 1990s. With reduced capacities and interest in agricultural science in Northern institutions of research and education, there was reduced interest to use the latest technologies to share information. It could also be that whenever there is a financial crunch, libraries and information management are among the first to face budgetary cuts. Agricultural science had severe financial investment reduction in the 1990s. It is also important to factor that the South, where agricultural research for development was targeted, had very poor computing infrastructure and even poorer Internet connectivity. There was little reason to invest in the use of the Internet in the South for science and technology especially agricultural science.

However, the electronic medium and use of the Internet in sharing agricultural science and technology has gradually increased. AGRIS, followed by a decentralized approach through WEBAGRIS by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), AGRICOLA by National Agricultural Library, United States of America are some of the prominent initiatives to enable access to agricultural science and technological information, especially peer reviewed scientific papers, electronically and through the Internet. AGORA and TEEAL are among initiatives to provide subsidized access to papers published in scientific journals online and through digital/electronic media to countries that cannot access scientific information due to its costs. Almost all major actors in agricultural research provide documents through their websites or what are called “Virtual Libraries”.

New trends observed in this area of agricultural information include the Open Archives Initiative which promotes publishing and access to scientific papers outside the conventional proprietary channels such as journals. At the FAO, this is planned under AGRIS. AGRIS is now much more than a catalogue, search engine and gateway to STI information. It also is active in facilitating application of norms and standards, providing tools, applications and agricultural ontology and thesauri.

To me the future sharing of scientific and technical information through the Internet will be through community of practices with list services, wikis and blogs. This may be in addition to the traditional scientific paper but I do not really see how the paper, which takes anywhere between 3 months to an year to publish, as a means to share STI information can survive in an age where information and data can be shared instantaneously among peer groups. This would have deep implications to information and communications management in this area. First of all the traditional librarians are a threatened species. Information specialists who can add value not only through collection, collation, cataloguing and indexing but also integrating information not only for scientists and teachers but a wide variety of actors in agricultural innovation will take their place. Scientists will need new skills to participate in online peer groups and communities of practices. They will need to have skills to partner and create trust among their peers online. They may have to expose their datasets and tools to their peers through the Internet. This will bring issues of safeguarding intellectual property, information systems security and coherence in sharing data. The information and communications management community in agriculture is not yet geared towards how they can support and facilitate these emerging trends in sharing agricultural and technical information.

Infusing new information and knowledge in agricultural systems

2008-04-24T11:26:00.004+02:00

Urban Agriculture at Sanaá, Yemen

Infusing new information and knowledge in agricultural systems:

1. A Framework to analyse and understand the process

We need a framework to analyze and understand the infusion of new information and knowledge in agricultural systems.

I use a framework based on identifying who generates the information, the channel and the media through which information flows, the user of the information and the manager of the flow of information between the generator and user. The typology I use for agricultural information is crude as clearly defining the types of this information is difficult.

For me:

Scientific and Technical information is information generated by scientists/researchers and technical experts. It is usually published as scientific and technical papers through journals either in print or electronically. It is mostly used by other scientists and technical experts, teachers, students and extension agents. Information flow of this information is usually managed by information specialists and librarians. It is a well organized system with significant proprietary and commercial interests.

Research Data and information is information generated through experiments, surveys etc by scientists/researchers. It is usually collated in diaries and databases. This data in its raw form is rarely available to those outside the scientific/research team and used only by the team. However, with advances in modelling, simulation, bio-informatics and geo-spatial applications in agriculture, there is an increasing call for access to this data and information. It is usually managed by the scientific/research team that generates the data and information.

Research Management information is that used to manage research projects and includes information on resources available and used for the research project and what were the outputs of the project. This information is generated by the research project manager. Information at the Research Institute level which has several research projects may include information on the scientific and technical personnel involved, their expertise, the resources in terms of time, financial and human capacity involved, the infrastructure such as scientific equipment, laboratories and agricultural land used and the outputs from the research projects such as data sets, reports and scientific publications. In some cases the technology developed, the outcomes of the research and impact assessment is also documented at the project level. At the country level, information about the Institute such as its contact address, domain / mandate of activities etc is included in this category of data. This information is published in Institute and Country reports. The information is used by scientists/researchers and research managers. It is managed by research managers.

Information used for Extension and Education includes information used by extension agents in the field, farmers and producers and sometimes by rural youth studying vocational agriculture. It is generated at the interface between scientist/researchers and technical experts who generate technology and solutions to agricultural problems and those who have expertise in extension and education. This information flows through various channels including pamphlets, brochures, charts, posters, handbooks, audio and video programs, etc, through face to face interactions, print, radio, television, digital media such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, the internet and cellular telephony. This information is usually managed by extension agents and agricultural communication managers.

Market related information is information generated and used to effectively produce and market an agricultural product till it is consumed. It includes a wide variety of information related to inputs needed for production of the commodity, information on what to grow, when, how, where, quality and safety standards, consumer preferences, how the produce is to be harvested, processed, packaged, transported and marketed, the potential yields and the financial returns, current and forecasted market prices. This is the most complex of information needed in agricultural systems and is generated by a vast array of actors in agricultural market and value addition chains. This information flows through a wide variety of channels and media including reports, bulletins, guides, web sites etc, through face to face interactions, mass media such as newspapers, radio and television, telephony and the Internet. This information is increasingly being managed by organizations in the public and private sector.

Infrastructure for information management and communications in agricultural systems is an important issue. For me, this infrastructure includes the hardware, the software such as tools and applications, the skills needed for information and communications management and the connectivity for information flows, which includes the availability of channels such as radio and television stations, websites and media.

In my future blogs, I shall try and use this framework to look at current and emerging issues related to each of these types of agricultural information.

Food, Agriculture and Information

2008-04-23T09:53:00.008+02:00

Food, Agriculture and Information

A Small Holder Farmer's Field in Aravalli Hills in Rajasthan India

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Steeply rising food prices have caused protests and riots in more than 30 countries in recent months. This has alarmed not only the world media but also national politicians and global leaders who all of a sudden talk in public about a topic they all shunned in the past, agriculture.

Various causes have been attributed for public consumption to the rise in food prices across the world. These include drought in Australia and North America, converting corn into bio-fuel for automobiles, rising consumption of growing populations, increase in incomes in countries with rapid economic growth for livestock products which are produced by feeding animals with food grain.

However these causes are not fully attributable to the food crises. Take rice for example. Drought may have affected rice production in Australia and, to some extent, global rice availability for export. Rice is still not a feedstock for Biofuels and the per capita consumption of rice cannot have doubled in the same time period that rice prices have doubled. Rice polish and bran are fed to animals, not rice grain.

Some agricultural experts have pointed out that agricultural productivity has not increased in rice producing areas. Some state that there is stagnation in agricultural productivity and some alarm us with statements about falling productivity. As data indicates, this may all be true.

We must try and look at the root causes of why global and national food availability is now in a crises. One of them could be that an agriculture that was high input based was brought about in the last century. This did result in high outputs and a sense of security regarding food availability but this approach may have been an unsustainable in the long run.

The rises in the cost of oil and fossil fuels in recent months have forced a rise in fertilizer, pesticide and energy costs for agriculture. For millions of small farmers in the main rice and wheat growing areas of Asia who have changed to the high input-high output systems it is just not economical now to cultivate these crops.

In the so called green revolution in agriculture in Asia, agricultural growth was supported through a policy of subsidized input of fertilizers, pesticides, water through irrigation or cheap energy for irrigation pumps, seeds, assured prices and free extension which provided new information and knowledge for the new high input-high output agriculture. This helped Asian farmers cope with the high cost of inputs and make farming a sustainable livelihood. In the 1990’s, under pressure from global policy institutions, this support structure for farmers was slowly dismantled. Among the earliest of the structures to deteriorate was the agricultural extension.

Global policy institutions also embarked on propagating more open global trade in agricultural commodities forcing a highly competitive, market oriented agriculture. This brought to the fore the need for new information to compete because markets are not only exchanges of commodities but also information about the commodities. Unfortunately for the millions of farmers, mostly small holders, in countries whose economies were largely agricultural and who had not invested in telecommunication and enabling access to information for farming, this was the initiation of a death knell for their livelihoods. Starved of the required information and knowledge to participate in a globally competitive agricultural market, these farmers have tried to adjust their productivity to what they could cope with and try and sustain their livelihoods and to some extent their own food needs. But this is a losing battle for them.

Stagnant and decreasing productivity is the first indicator of a global brewing storm or farm, rural and national food crises. In some countries, such as in India, large scale rural to urban migration with farmers opting out of agriculture, fallow lands and farmer suicides are symptoms to increasing magnitude of a highly diseased agriculture.

The healing of agriculture in my humble opinion has to include how new information and knowledge required to make agriculture sustainable in the broadest meaning of the word can be infused in agricultural systems across the world. I believe that agriculture development will continue in a path that is increasingly market oriented and globally competitive. And I also believe that agriculture will increasingly become, because of this market oriented path for its growth and development, knowledge intensive. Access to information and the ability to learn from it by those involved in agriculture and its progress and development has to be a part of the solution. In my future blogs, I shall try to relate my learning and experience on how new information and knowledge can be infused in agricultural systems so that they can be more productive and profitable to all involved in agriculture and food production.