Transcript Slide 1

The e-Agriculture Initiative: Sharing of
Innovative Experiences
www.e-agriculture.org
Stephen Rudgard
Knowledge Exchange and Capacity Building Division
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
February 2008
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
WSIS Plan of Action – November 2005 – Tunis
Action Line (C.7/21): ICT Applications: e-Agriculture
FAO assigned responsibility for facilitating follow-up on eAgriculture (Feb. 2006)
About e-Agriculture
• e-Agriculture is an emerging field focusing on the
enhancement of agricultural and rural development
through improved information and communication
processes.
• e-Agriculture involves the conceptualization, design,
development, evaluation and application of innovative
ways to use information and communication
technologies (ICT) in the rural domain, with a primary
focus on agriculture.
The WSIS E-Agriculture Working Group (EAWG)
Goal:
to create multi-stakeholder, people-centred, crosssectoral platform(s) that will bring together
stakeholders representing relevant constituencies of
e-Agriculture.
June 2006 : 1st EAWG meeting
hosted at FAO
The e-Agriculture Community of Expertise
A global initiative that aims at reinforcing the value of
global dialogue and cooperation to address emerging
issues around the role of ICT as an instrument of
sustainable agricultural development.
The E-Agriculture Community of Expertise comprises of 3 components:
• Web-based platform (www.e-agriculture.org)
• Face-to-face meetings and events
• In-country interventions
The e-Agriculture Community of Expertise
The Community includes
• policy makers
• rural service providers
• development practitioners
• farmers
• researchers
• information and communication specialists
in agriculture and rural development.
Community members interact with each other and contribute a range of
resources in the form of case studies, success stories and lessons learned,
documents, publications, links, learning resources, news. and
announcements of events.
Activities May-September 2007-2008
• Web platform
– May 2007 - Pilot launch
– Jul/Aug 2007 - Virtual Forums on “Responding to Demand: the
focus on e-Agriculture” (English and Spanish)
– Sep 2007 – Main launch
– Feb 2008 – 3,000 community members and over 10,000 visitors
to www.e-agriculture.org
• Meetings
– Sep 2007 - “e-Agriculture Week” – Italy
– Dec 2007 - GK3 (Global Knowledge Partnership) – Malaysia
The Community of Expertise - Future Perspectives
• Web platform
– New components for collaboration
– Policy Wiki – InfoDev
– Expanded personal profiles
• Meetings
– Congress on E-Agriculture – Japan, August 2008
• In-country interventions - reports from
stakeholders