Amon Sa­ba Saakana

Agri­cul­ture has long been spo­ken of as a top na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty. Yet, de­spite bil­lions of dol­lars in an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tions, the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor con­tributes a mere 0.5 per cent of the gross do­mes­tic prod­uct.On­go­ing ini­tia­tives to pro­mote sus­tain­abil­i­ty, boost yield, at­tract new busi­ness fo­cus, as well as to in­no­v­a­tive­ly ad­dress stor­age, pro­cess­ing, mar­ket­ing and trans­port are com­mend­able, in­deed nec­es­sary.

How­ev­er, there needs to be more strate­gic ap­pli­ca­tion of in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy to these pri­or­i­ties if we are to bridge the gap be­tween in­tent and re­al­i­ty. Tech­nol­o­gy is play­ing an in­creas­ing­ly crit­i­cal role in all as­pects of farm­ing and food pro­duc­tion.

These in­clude:

Ge­o­graph­ic da­ta, weath­er fore­casts

Ge­o­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion on veg­e­ta­tion, soil type, land­scape gra­di­ent, flood risks, avail­abil­i­ty of wa­ter, pes­ti­cide run-off, off­shore charts as well as im­me­di­ate and long-term weath­er pat­terns are fun­da­men­tal to farm­ing and fish­ing.Whether at a na­tion­al or sub­sis­tence lev­el, ac­cess to this in­for­ma­tion is vi­tal. Much of this da­ta al­ready ex­ists, whether locked up in gov­ern­ment records or in the long ex­pe­ri­ence of lo­cal farm­ers. Tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides new op­por­tu­ni­ty for the shar­ing of ge­o­graph­ic and his­tor­i­cal in­for­ma­tion through both open da­ta ini­tia­tives and dig­i­tal knowl­edge repos­i­to­ries.

Ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing

With­in the busi­ness of farm­ing or fish­ing, ed­u­cat­ing food pro­duc­ers on busi­ness is­sues such as ba­sic fi­nan­cial plan­ning, man­age­ment prac­tices and reg­u­la­to­ry changes is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant.In­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides en­hanced con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween food pro­duc­ers to in­for­ma­tion re­sources re­gard­ing im­prov­ing agri­cul­tur­al tech­niques, dis­ease pre­ven­tion, post-har­vest pro­cess­ing and trans­porta­tion. But tech­nol­o­gy alone is not enough.New ap­proach­es re­quire new men­tal­i­ties. Struc­tured and sus­tained ef­fort must be di­rect­ed to knowl­edge as well as skill en­hance­ment to take the agri­cul­ture sec­tor in­to the fu­ture.

Mar­ket­ing and sales

In food pro­duc­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly of time sen­si­tive pro­duce such as fresh meat, fish or eas­i­ly per­ish­able pro­duce, the abil­i­ty to ef­fi­cient­ly con­nect pro­duc­ers with cus­tomers in vi­tal. Whether it is just an ex­change of ba­sic in­for­ma­tion or a more so­phis­ti­cat­ed buy-and-sell In­ter­net-en­abled plat­form, tech­nol­o­gy can bring buy­ers and sell­ers to­geth­er in dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced time­frames. The ben­e­fits in terms of food spoilage, wast­ed trav­el time and re­duced "mid­dle-man" fees are ob­vi­ous.

Trans­ac­tions and in­ter­me­di­a­tion

From re­ceiv­ing pay­ment, to bor­row­ing mon­ey, to tak­ing out or claim­ing on in­sur­ance, IT can sub­stan­tial­ly re­duce the time and costs as­so­ci­at­ed with fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions. The growth of mo­bile pay­ments has per­haps one of the more sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments. It al­lows small-scale pro­duc­ers, many of whom can­not eas­i­ly ac­cess com­mer­cial bank­ing ser­vices, new op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage cus­tomers. Where the gov­ern­ment is the main cus­tomer, mo­bile pay­ments which go di­rect­ly to farm­ers can al­so re­duce cor­rup­tion and graft.

Mon­i­tor­ing, eval­u­a­tion

Sus­tain­able and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly food pro­duc­tion should be a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty. Find­ing cost-ef­fec­tive, yet ac­cu­rate ways to com­pile da­ta on what is be­ing pro­duced or caught, in what quan­ti­ties, where and by whom, is crit­i­cal. Tech­nol­o­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly mo­bile tech­nol­o­gy, al­lows for the cre­ation and man­age­ment of pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble agri­cul­ture da­ta sets.

Such datasets can help ad­dress grow­ing con­sumer con­cern about en­vi­ron­ment im­pact and an­i­mal wel­fare. The same da­ta which al­lows reg­u­la­tors to track food prod­ucts through the sys­tem can al­so al­low con­sumers to un­der­stand what they are eat­ing and who pro­duced it. It can help po­lice food pro­duc­er com­pli­ance with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards, such as "Fair­trade," "or­gan­ic" and "sus­tain­ably sourced," which com­mand high­er prices on lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

In­ter­net-en­abled tools

We have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate mo­bile and In­ter­net-en­abled tools to ad­dress some of the per­sis­tent and vex­ing chal­lenges of the sec­tor's de­vel­op­ment. Tech­nol­o­gy al­lows us to re­de­fine the busi­ness of food se­cu­ri­ty and break con­cept lim­i­ta­tions that have stymied pol­i­cy mak­ers and sec­tor stake­hold­ers for too long.Fo­cused at­ten­tion on strength­en­ing the pol­i­cy, plan­ning, re­search and im­ple­men­ta­tion ca­pac­i­ty of dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ty, na­tion­al and re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions work­ing to pro­mote food se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion is des­per­ate­ly need­ed.

Laud­able progress has been made lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly in ad­dress­ing some of these is­sues. How­ev­er, much work re­mains to be done in smart­ly ap­ply­ing ICT to crit­i­cal ar­eas, such as fore­cast­ing, pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion. Pri­or­i­ty must be placed on in­creas­ing tech­ni­cal sup­port and train­ing, as well as on de­vis­ing and sup­port­ing more in­dige­nous so­lu­tions. Greater tech­ni­cal and cre­ative fo­cus must be de­lib­er­ate­ly point­ed to se­cur­ing our re­gion's food pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

In­creas­ing aware­ness of the pri­or­i­ty of agri­cul­ture to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment re­quires pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion to go be­yond posters and jin­gle com­pe­ti­tions. Tech­nol­o­gy should play a key role in en­gag­ing com­mu­ni­ties and youth in rais­ing aware­ness.There is a wider so­ci­etal ben­e­fit in tak­ing a tech­nol­o­gy-cen­tric ap­proach to ad­dress­ing the needs of the agri­cul­ture sec­tor. We have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate sin­cer­i­ty of com­mit­ment to prin­ci­ples, such as trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion and in­no­va­tion in the stew­ard­ship of this crit­i­cal pil­lar of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Af­ter all, even in the dig­i­tal age, you reap what you sow.