Reflections on state of practices and challenges from the e-Agriculture Community on ICT and Agriculture in the Context of Green Growth (http://www.e-agriculture.org/content/policy-brief-ict-and-agriculture-context-green-growth-ict-agriculture-sourcebook-forum-2) presented by Gerard Sylvester at the Expert Consultation on Knowledge & Capacity Needs for Sustainable Development in Post-Rio+20 Era in Incheon, Republic of Korea. 6-8 March, 2013.

1. Climate Smart Agriculture
powered by ICT
Reflections on state of practices and
challenges from the e-Agriculture Community
Presented by Gerard Sylvester
Knowledge & Information Management www.e-agriculture.org
Officer, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
at #UNOSDKM
FM-MR
Presentation under CC License.

2. e-Agriculture
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
WSIS Plan of Action – November 2005 – Tunis
Action Line (C.7/21): ICT Applications: e-Agriculture
FAO was assigned lead responsibility for
facilitating follow up on e-Agriculture (Feb. 2006)
2

3. Founding Partners
These founding partners continue to support the Community
by providing subject matter experts, meeting venues, content
and other resources. 3

4. BACKGROUND
A global community
- >10 000 individuals
collaborating to improve the use of ICT in the agricultural sector.
- Facilitated by FAO and supported by other dev. org.
ICT in Agriculture Sourcebook
credit: World Bank
- Published by World Bank (2011)
To initiate further and better investment in this sector
E-discussion
- How ICT can support climate-smart agriculture
Experts + hundreds participants identified success and challenges
credit: FAO

5. Synthesis from the forum on ICT and
Agriculture in the Context of Green
Growth
www.e-agriculture.org

6. IMPROVE planning and consensus building
for land and water use
Support adaptation and resilience
Informs land reform/agrarian reform Credit: IAEA
Engages communities (social inclusion)
credit: FAO (F.Martin)
Improves information flows
“ICT has created unprecedented linkages
between public and private
institutions, governments, citizens and
corporations.”

7. SUPPORT
environmentally sustainable farming
Reduces negative environmental impact of inputs
Optimizes water management
Reduces production related costs
“An initiative by the Government of Turkey that provided higher granular-
ity of weather and pest information resulted in a dramatic reduction in
farming costs and in some cases a 50% reduction in pesticide use.”
ICT in Agriculture Sourcebook

8. ENHANCE
environmental and agricultural innovations
Enables real-time communications to/from farmers
Realizes “big-data” in the agricultural sector
Facilitates hyper-local information flows
Photo credit: FAO/IAEA
Photo credit: FAO
Photo credit: RML

9. REDUCES
risk and adverse effects
Identifies counterfeit crop production products
Mitigates through micro-insurance
Encourages more investment in the sector
Uganda pilot authenticates input products
using scratch-cards and text messages (SMS)
Photo credit: FAO

10. CHALLENGES
Analysis, specially complex climate data
Availability of hyper-local data
Local capacity to access and act upon information
Incentives for producers to participate
in information flows
Cost – related to both service/analysis
and telecom policies
Photo credit: FAO

11. THANK YOU
For more on
and Climate Smart Agriculture: www.e-agriculture.org
The ICT in Agriculture Sourcebook: www.ictinagriculture.org