Based on concrete experiences of developing successful e-strategies, policies or plans for agriculture or any other sector, what do you think is the best process to develop the national e-Agriculture strategy and who should be involved?
I am concerned that many of us in this discussion equate an E-Agriculture strategy with the strategy of how ICTs can be used by farmers.
In all countries, agriculture is becoming market driven. Now agriculture is more about participating in markets than “farming” as only a food and other commodities production system. In the next 10-20 years, national agricultural strategies will be markets centric and aimed at satisfying the demands of participating effectively now rapidly globalized, highly competitive markets. National E-Agricultural strategies will need to be developed congruent to these market centric national strategies.
In market driven agriculture that is making efforts to balance sustainability around economic, social and environmental parameters an E-agricultural strategy has to focus on information needs of entire communities of actors and stakeholders. The use of new ICTs enables these communities to be defined beyond conventional livelihood related and geographic boundaries such as of farmers, rural people and villages.
The primary purpose of an E-agricultural strategy should be to improve appropriately the efficiency of using information in an Agri-food system. The vision many countries, such as in Europe, now have for Agri-food systems is that they sustainably produce and consume food, agro-industrial feedstock (conventional and new bio-based), energy, provide environmental, recreation services and maintaining cultural heritage.
In market driven agriculture each product emerges and feeds into a complex value addition chain many a times spanning several countries. The information needed for markets in an Agri-food system currently flows in three networks along with the individual commodity/product. These networks are those that provide information about the food and commodities production processes such as at input, farm, processor and consumer levels, the information that is needed to manage the flow of tangble resources, materials and commodities such as for transport, storage, wholesale and retail shelf level marketing and the information related to the flow of finance/money. The information about food and commodities production processes is to support decision making, education and learning of actors involved as also innovation in production. The flow of this information is as in a social network and complex. The information for flow of resources and commodities is usually temporal and geo-spatial information that enables reduction in cost and wastage of the commodity, management and assurance of quality and safety as reduce drudgery and human pain in the movement of the commodity. This flow is usually linear in a chain and flows from and between input supplier, farmers, processors, transporters, market intermediaries, consumers etc. The information flow for finance primarily aims to reduce the transaction cost in terms of time, money and resources along the market chain for a commodity. The flow of finance is usually between Financial Institutions and participants in Market Chains. This flow is also linear, in a chain but in the reverse direction of the flow of the commodity. At the moment in most countries, there is very little integration of all the three types of information flows and the networks though they have overlapping participants and notes in an Agri-food system and a huge potential of economic, social and environment gains lie in enabling integration of these flows. A critical component of an E-Agricultural strategy would be to bring efficiency in these flows of information holistically in an Agri-food system.
An E-Agriculture Strategy therefore has to consider many dimensions in addition to technological infrastructure, content, flow and channels for information. These include
The vision for developing agriculture in a country and the role of ICTs (along with other technologies) in contributing to this development. Along with this vision appropriate policies are needed to be considered for Institutions, Technologies to be to be used and developed and for participation with cooperation and collaboration of communities and the national society as a whole. The E-Agriculture strategy will also need to consider other national strategies such as for e-governance, e-health, e-education etc., and the state of the art in Institutions, Technologies and Community participation. The E-Agricultural strategy will also be a sub-strategy to enable the fruition of the national vision for developing agriculture and overall development as such and cannot be standalone.
A key issue for the E-Agriculture Strategy is in enabling mass innovation in agriculture. ICTs have democratized learning and is bringing more equity and participation for information management such as through social media. This has also democratized the learning of science. This is leading to mass innovation by individuals and communities in developing, adopting and adapting technologies. In agriculture, especially of developing countries, each producer has unique problems. The producer seeks customized solutions offered as options for implementation. This therefore brings new challenges to national systems supporting development of Agri-food systems.
The complexity of developing and implementing an E-Agriculture (and other E-services) strategy is in its rapid development that brings transformational change in Institutions and Community participation. It has now been experienced that the use of new ICTs with ubiquitous connectivity especially of cellular telephony, many Institutions in a country such as those related legislation, regulatory mechanisms, standards and norms, policies formulation, organizations that support the establishment of the vision for agriculture, for ICT related support structures such as for adopting and developing new hardware, software and storage applications, connectivity and skills development and enabling community participation now need to be either revamped or built afresh.
An E-Agriculture Strategy will need to consider all these issues also and not only how to implement ICTs use for farmers.
I agree with you, Ajit, that any e-Agriculture strategy has to cover much more than just how farmers will use ICT. You've touched on many of the other factors that are important to be considered, all of which I think highlight the importance of having broad stakeholder engagement as part of the strategy development. That means relevant ministries and regulators, agribusinesses, farmer associations, financial institutions, telecom operators, technology service providers, content providers, researchers, NGOs, and so on. A more narrow process risks a resulting strategy that is completely divorced from reality, and will provide limited value to the progress of e-Ag in the country.
An e-agriculture strategy must consider all the stakeholders in the national value chains. In addition, as you state, such strategy should also consider integration with numerous other needs of rural society such as e-health, e-education, payments/finance, solar power/lanterns and more. I consider agriculture as the gateway to serving these other needs because agri is the most significant livelihood and generates the most significant streams of bi-directional payments (farmer inputs purchases and crop sales) in rural areas. This means that agriculture presents the greatest potential for design of commercially viable ICT platforms (e.g. click through rates, subscription fees, commissions, etc.) and mobile money platforms (e.g. reduced costs for large commodity buyers, transaction fees for MNOs, etc.). Once these platforms are stood up, we can then add these other societal needs that will increase uptake and the overall value/benefit of the platform because more people use it.
To borrow from author Thomas Friedman, and extend your own mention of ‘democratization of learning’, ICT also presents potential to democratize information and finance. You nicely portray this with your three informational networks; 1) for food/commodities production at input, farm, processor and consumer levels, 2) for transport, storage, wholesale, retail shelf level marketing and 3) for flow of money. Unfortunately, lacking an e-agriculture strategy in the past helps explain the chaotic, ad hoc nature of the institutional approach(es) to regulations, standards, policies, etc. that you point out in your third bullet. So it is not surprising that there has been “little integration of all three types of information flows and networks”.
In the same way the three most important words in real estate are ‘location, location, location’…..the three most important words in agriculture are ‘aggregation, aggregation, aggregation’. An e-agriculture strategy should create the enabling environment for ICT/mobile money commercial solutions that capture aggregated volume activity. While such strategy will consider all the stakeholders, the potential of ICT/mobile money to aggregate farmer activities – both directly (your networks 1 and 3) and indirectly (your network 2) -- will present the strongest economic value proposition(s) for the creation of networked, sustainable solutions.
Yes, aggregation is a must for smallholder farmers to operate with more equity in market driven agriculture. ICTs bring a huge potential in enabling "virtual" aggregation in which aggregation can be for input supply, farm throughput management, output logistics or at whole farms level without farmers giving up individual ownership or decision making. This, such as through creating data and information cooperatives, has not yet been explored significantly yet. The implications of farmers producing aggregated data of econoimc value to others in a market chain is another area not considered significantly. Aggregation should be a strategic objective of an e-agriculture strategy especially of economically developing countries.
For voice and data services to reach almost every corner of the world, resilient lastmile wireless and backhaul networks have been built and are being upgraded. An extraordinary zeal has been demonstrated by private players to license spectrum and finance infrastructure. Several Governments have successfully created national strategies and have provided incentives that have ensured that rural connectivity has kept up, at least for voice and data at yesteryear speeds; this is evident in India and Australia, two markets that I have some familiarlity with.
The provision of producer-aggregator discovery and linkages, inputs and produce availability by quality, price information, finance and warehouse services, to mention a few, over these networks, that Mr Maru is referring to, is more a matter of educating farmers about their options for finance and storage, including insurance, gaurantees and other Government schemes, the reliability of advice surrounding recommended testing, fertilizers and appropriate pesticide management, post-harvest handling and the like.
Often opportunities for contract farming, extension for exceeding produce quality miniumums against contracts or for export, are inadequately communicated to farmers and cooperatives have not spontaneously flourished. Any digital network can only hope to faciliate transmission of information, to inform, through intermediaries, as several farmers are unable to interpret written technical information.
Greater benefits from any e-agriculture strategy will result where actual data on actual farm conditions and crop health, adequately sampled to be representative and demonstrably so for individual farmers, are transmitted over network infrastructure that has been developed and is being maintained by others already, reaches providers of reliable advice, viz. procurers, Government and private extension providers, the latter incentivised by contract farming or informed by export criteria, for instance. In India, a reliable and acute post harvest slump in prices is ample evidence that producers are being short changed as such a predictable fall in prices can easily be off-set from staggered sales and better storage infrastructure as is evident in several other parts of the world.
Broadcasts by SMS have engaged younger farmers for short durations but have not transformed reliable information delivery which continues to be multi-channel. Radio, television and newspapers remain important to rural farmers.
In the medium term, quantitative data on crop health, pest propogation and early warnings of disease incidence, must move from the field to lab, be diagnosed and a response coordinated, before advice and assistance flows back to the farmer. There is limited evidence of this happening in India at scale, often triggered by the Governement anticipating particularly severe losses, mobilising entire State extension systems with central coordination.
Only where farmers are involved in a quantitative data dialog with all other stakeholders in an environment of trust would the full potential of all extension infrastructure, the agricultural science establishments, multilateral cooperation, and market participants be realised. I believe a national e-Agriculture strategy should faciliate such a future. We are after all, all already connected.
I Think the best process to develop the national e-Agriculture strategy and who should be involved; is first to consider the factors influencing farming.
Farmers make decisions about what to grow, what animals to keep, the level and type of inputs and the methods they will use. Their decisions are based upon a range of social, economic and environmental factors. Based on some geographical factors which are:are 1. Natural Factors 2. Economic Factors 3. Social Factors 4. Political Factors! It could be good to have an national e- Agriculcure strategy focused to address the above factors due to the fact that it involved Multiples stakeholders in Local, National, Regional,and International level.
Most people will define e-agriculture based on their situations and their environments. Some people in this discussion have limited e-Agriculture to farmers and farming but but some have also defined it to deal with all actors in the agricultural sector. Many people see ICT in any field or sector as an enabler, hence ICT in agriculture is seen as a set of tools that enhances agricultural development. To such people, an e-Agriculture strategy will necessarily have to be based on an existing agricultural strategy. It has to address the vision and objectives of an existing agricultural policy and strategy. It is true that in our parts of the world (developing country) e-agriculture is sometimes reduced to the use of ICT tools and applications to improve on agriculture. This, I believe this is a developmental phenomenon. Agriculture in most developing countries is still in their early developing stages, bedevilled with many challenges – low productivity, incidence of pests and diseases, and most importantly, challenges with market access and inadequate information sharing. These challenges have therefore influenced direction of perceived solutions. My question however is that, is it possible to develop and e-agricultural strategy without basing it on an existing agricultural strategy? Can it be developed based on just the knowledge of the critical challenges facing agricultural development in the country?
It is in response to this that I believe Ajit Maru’s 3-point dimensions are very appropriate. To add to the discussions, I am of the opinion that if the agricultural vision and policies does not address the challenges of agriculture in the country, the e-Agriculture strategy cannot correct that. Innovations in ICT could influence and to a large extent push for the development of an e-Agriculture Strategy as it is happening in a number of African countries now. On the other hand, governments policies can also stimulate the development of the e-Agricultural Strategies. In both cases, as has already been mentioned, it is important that the relevant stakeholders are brought on board with clear roles and mandates.
I am concerned that many of us in this discussion equate an E-Agriculture strategy with the strategy of how ICTs can be used by farmers.
In all countries, agriculture is becoming market driven. Now agriculture is more about participating in markets than “farming” as only a food and other commodities production system. In the next 10-20 years, national agricultural strategies will be markets centric and aimed at satisfying the demands of participating effectively now rapidly globalized, highly competitive markets. National E-Agricultural strategies will need to be developed congruent to these market centric national strategies.
In market driven agriculture that is making efforts to balance sustainability around economic, social and environmental parameters an E-agricultural strategy has to focus on information needs of entire communities of actors and stakeholders. The use of new ICTs enables these communities to be defined beyond conventional livelihood related and geographic boundaries such as of farmers, rural people and villages.
The primary purpose of an E-agricultural strategy should be to improve appropriately the efficiency of using information in an Agri-food system. The vision many countries, such as in Europe, now have for Agri-food systems is that they sustainably produce and consume food, agro-industrial feedstock (conventional and new bio-based), energy, provide environmental, recreation services and maintaining cultural heritage.
In market driven agriculture each product emerges and feeds into a complex value addition chain many a times spanning several countries. The information needed for markets in an Agri-food system currently flows in three networks along with the individual commodity/product. These networks are those that provide information about the food and commodities production processes such as at input, farm, processor and consumer levels, the information that is needed to manage the flow of tangble resources, materials and commodities such as for transport, storage, wholesale and retail shelf level marketing and the information related to the flow of finance/money. The information about food and commodities production processes is to support decision making, education and learning of actors involved as also innovation in production. The flow of this information is as in a social network and complex. The information for flow of resources and commodities is usually temporal and geo-spatial information that enables reduction in cost and wastage of the commodity, management and assurance of quality and safety as reduce drudgery and human pain in the movement of the commodity. This flow is usually linear in a chain and flows from and between input supplier, farmers, processors, transporters, market intermediaries, consumers etc. The information flow for finance primarily aims to reduce the transaction cost in terms of time, money and resources along the market chain for a commodity. The flow of finance is usually between Financial Institutions and participants in Market Chains. This flow is also linear, in a chain but in the reverse direction of the flow of the commodity. At the moment in most countries, there is very little integration of all the three types of information flows and the networks though they have overlapping participants and notes in an Agri-food system and a huge potential of economic, social and environment gains lie in enabling integration of these flows. A critical component of an E-Agricultural strategy would be to bring efficiency in these flows of information holistically in an Agri-food system.
An E-Agriculture Strategy therefore has to consider many dimensions in addition to technological infrastructure, content, flow and channels for information. These include
An E-Agriculture Strategy will need to consider all these issues also and not only how to implement ICTs use for farmers.
Ajit Maru
GFAR
I agree with you, Ajit, that any e-Agriculture strategy has to cover much more than just how farmers will use ICT. You've touched on many of the other factors that are important to be considered, all of which I think highlight the importance of having broad stakeholder engagement as part of the strategy development. That means relevant ministries and regulators, agribusinesses, farmer associations, financial institutions, telecom operators, technology service providers, content providers, researchers, NGOs, and so on. A more narrow process risks a resulting strategy that is completely divorced from reality, and will provide limited value to the progress of e-Ag in the country.
Many thanks for this Ajit!
An e-agriculture strategy must consider all the stakeholders in the national value chains. In addition, as you state, such strategy should also consider integration with numerous other needs of rural society such as e-health, e-education, payments/finance, solar power/lanterns and more. I consider agriculture as the gateway to serving these other needs because agri is the most significant livelihood and generates the most significant streams of bi-directional payments (farmer inputs purchases and crop sales) in rural areas. This means that agriculture presents the greatest potential for design of commercially viable ICT platforms (e.g. click through rates, subscription fees, commissions, etc.) and mobile money platforms (e.g. reduced costs for large commodity buyers, transaction fees for MNOs, etc.). Once these platforms are stood up, we can then add these other societal needs that will increase uptake and the overall value/benefit of the platform because more people use it.
To borrow from author Thomas Friedman, and extend your own mention of ‘democratization of learning’, ICT also presents potential to democratize information and finance. You nicely portray this with your three informational networks; 1) for food/commodities production at input, farm, processor and consumer levels, 2) for transport, storage, wholesale, retail shelf level marketing and 3) for flow of money. Unfortunately, lacking an e-agriculture strategy in the past helps explain the chaotic, ad hoc nature of the institutional approach(es) to regulations, standards, policies, etc. that you point out in your third bullet. So it is not surprising that there has been “little integration of all three types of information flows and networks”.
In the same way the three most important words in real estate are ‘location, location, location’…..the three most important words in agriculture are ‘aggregation, aggregation, aggregation’. An e-agriculture strategy should create the enabling environment for ICT/mobile money commercial solutions that capture aggregated volume activity. While such strategy will consider all the stakeholders, the potential of ICT/mobile money to aggregate farmer activities – both directly (your networks 1 and 3) and indirectly (your network 2) -- will present the strongest economic value proposition(s) for the creation of networked, sustainable solutions.
Thanks , I m agree
e-agri ne restera pas dans le domaine agricole il va toucher le monde rural
Nivoniaina
Yes, aggregation is a must for smallholder farmers to operate with more equity in market driven agriculture. ICTs bring a huge potential in enabling "virtual" aggregation in which aggregation can be for input supply, farm throughput management, output logistics or at whole farms level without farmers giving up individual ownership or decision making. This, such as through creating data and information cooperatives, has not yet been explored significantly yet. The implications of farmers producing aggregated data of econoimc value to others in a market chain is another area not considered significantly. Aggregation should be a strategic objective of an e-agriculture strategy especially of economically developing countries.
Ajit
For voice and data services to reach almost every corner of the world, resilient lastmile wireless and backhaul networks have been built and are being upgraded. An extraordinary zeal has been demonstrated by private players to license spectrum and finance infrastructure. Several Governments have successfully created national strategies and have provided incentives that have ensured that rural connectivity has kept up, at least for voice and data at yesteryear speeds; this is evident in India and Australia, two markets that I have some familiarlity with.
The provision of producer-aggregator discovery and linkages, inputs and produce availability by quality, price information, finance and warehouse services, to mention a few, over these networks, that Mr Maru is referring to, is more a matter of educating farmers about their options for finance and storage, including insurance, gaurantees and other Government schemes, the reliability of advice surrounding recommended testing, fertilizers and appropriate pesticide management, post-harvest handling and the like.
Often opportunities for contract farming, extension for exceeding produce quality miniumums against contracts or for export, are inadequately communicated to farmers and cooperatives have not spontaneously flourished. Any digital network can only hope to faciliate transmission of information, to inform, through intermediaries, as several farmers are unable to interpret written technical information.
Greater benefits from any e-agriculture strategy will result where actual data on actual farm conditions and crop health, adequately sampled to be representative and demonstrably so for individual farmers, are transmitted over network infrastructure that has been developed and is being maintained by others already, reaches providers of reliable advice, viz. procurers, Government and private extension providers, the latter incentivised by contract farming or informed by export criteria, for instance. In India, a reliable and acute post harvest slump in prices is ample evidence that producers are being short changed as such a predictable fall in prices can easily be off-set from staggered sales and better storage infrastructure as is evident in several other parts of the world.
Broadcasts by SMS have engaged younger farmers for short durations but have not transformed reliable information delivery which continues to be multi-channel. Radio, television and newspapers remain important to rural farmers.
In the medium term, quantitative data on crop health, pest propogation and early warnings of disease incidence, must move from the field to lab, be diagnosed and a response coordinated, before advice and assistance flows back to the farmer. There is limited evidence of this happening in India at scale, often triggered by the Governement anticipating particularly severe losses, mobilising entire State extension systems with central coordination.
Only where farmers are involved in a quantitative data dialog with all other stakeholders in an environment of trust would the full potential of all extension infrastructure, the agricultural science establishments, multilateral cooperation, and market participants be realised. I believe a national e-Agriculture strategy should faciliate such a future. We are after all, all already connected.
I Think the best process to develop the national e-Agriculture strategy and who should be involved; is first to consider the factors influencing farming.
Farmers make decisions about what to grow, what animals to keep, the level and type of inputs and the methods they will use. Their decisions are based upon a range of social, economic and environmental factors. Based on some geographical factors which are:are 1. Natural Factors 2. Economic Factors 3. Social Factors 4. Political Factors! It could be good to have an national e- Agriculcure strategy focused to address the above factors due to the fact that it involved Multiples stakeholders in Local, National, Regional,and International level.
Most people will define e-agriculture based on their situations and their environments. Some people in this discussion have limited e-Agriculture to farmers and farming but but some have also defined it to deal with all actors in the agricultural sector. Many people see ICT in any field or sector as an enabler, hence ICT in agriculture is seen as a set of tools that enhances agricultural development. To such people, an e-Agriculture strategy will necessarily have to be based on an existing agricultural strategy. It has to address the vision and objectives of an existing agricultural policy and strategy. It is true that in our parts of the world (developing country) e-agriculture is sometimes reduced to the use of ICT tools and applications to improve on agriculture. This, I believe this is a developmental phenomenon. Agriculture in most developing countries is still in their early developing stages, bedevilled with many challenges – low productivity, incidence of pests and diseases, and most importantly, challenges with market access and inadequate information sharing. These challenges have therefore influenced direction of perceived solutions. My question however is that, is it possible to develop and e-agricultural strategy without basing it on an existing agricultural strategy? Can it be developed based on just the knowledge of the critical challenges facing agricultural development in the country?
It is in response to this that I believe Ajit Maru’s 3-point dimensions are very appropriate. To add to the discussions, I am of the opinion that if the agricultural vision and policies does not address the challenges of agriculture in the country, the e-Agriculture strategy cannot correct that. Innovations in ICT could influence and to a large extent push for the development of an e-Agriculture Strategy as it is happening in a number of African countries now. On the other hand, governments policies can also stimulate the development of the e-Agricultural Strategies. In both cases, as has already been mentioned, it is important that the relevant stakeholders are brought on board with clear roles and mandates.