2. Community Level Crop Disease Surveillance Project Objective: Assess the feasibility of a participatory GIS-enabled plant diagnostics network (and the potential of mobile technologies) to provide a blueprint for how a range of agriculture-focused field organizations can collect data, explain events, predict outcomes, and adapt and refine strategies with more accurate, cost-efficient, and timely information.
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4. Three banana disease pose a serious threat to food security and the livelihoods of millions of farmers in East Africa:
10. When: GF: Brings network of village-level intermediaries (CKWs) + mobile technologies (GPS units and handsets with the capacity to gather real-time data) and disseminate results and recommendations in rural areas. IITA: Brings expert advice on banana disease identification, prevention, and control to farmers, gives trainings and does GIS analysis that illustrates how disease characteristics and farmer behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge interact.
24. Achievements: Wealth of validated and geo-referenced data (2991 surveys) 38 CKWs comprehensively trained Awareness of +3000 farmers increased through CKW training via manual Adoption of ‘new’ technology and demonstrated its effectiveness Proposal to scale out this pilot to a greater area and incorporate coffee and cassava
Editor's Notes
By combining the power of mobile tools, a centralized database, and GIS mapping, field surveillance can be directly linked to the research community to overcome the current gap in timely and comprehensive communication. Such a network of real-time information exchange can:• Enhance scientists’ ability to monitor crop disease outbreaks and disseminate information to farmers in remote areas where regular visits by extension agents and agricultural scientists may not be possible• Decrease the spread of crop disease, especially in high-risk areas affected by endemic and emerging diseases• Empower smallholder farmers to halt crop disease spread through access to timely information• Enable agricultural experts to plan preventative measures in a cost and time-effective manner• Permit scientists to target where to collect plant samples of new or suspicious disease reports (for subsequent confirmatory diagnosis in the laboratory)• Enable scientists and extension agencies to determine the efficacy of recommended control measures• Enable scientists to identify new variants of disease that may be resistant to existing control methods• Enable scientists to prioritize research investment• Provide policy makers and researchers direct information from smallholder farmers (SHF) to prioritize future investments and interventions based on quantified demand
Talking Point 1): Bananas provide permanent food and a modest, but continuous cash flow throughout the year, whereas coffee can give a cash boom twice a year, helping farmers pay for larger expenditures such as school fees and farm expenses. Talking Point 2): The IITA-APEP project (2006-08) showed there is a strong need to develop site-specific recommendations in Uganda that address constraints specific to agro-ecology. “Economic evaluations “-- {by IITA and NARO }In sub-Saharan Africa, bananas provide more than 25% of food energy requirements for 100 million+ people.
