Blog

Anyone who has read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel will know of innumerable examples where societies have refused innovation in crops, livestock, or other potentially productive advancements. During the last century, the fact that technology innovation has played a major role in the rural development strategies of developing countries is not new. Nor is it unique that technology innovation as strategy is as significant for its failures as its successes in countries that usually rely on either technology imported from the developed world or technology transfer.

So, why would TGRI subscribe to the potential fallacy that technology fitting the Web 2.0 meme will actually make the difference we seek? Within the agriculture sector, the needs are significant and culturally diverse, ranging from access to educational resources to logistics and supply-demand information, to early warning, environmental monitoring and eradication of disease. The Systemwide Livestock Programme (SLP) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) reports:

…in recent years, attempts to deal with the shortcomings of a technology-led approach to innovation have led to the emergence of a number of principles on how to move forward: the need to recognise the complexity of farming as part of a wider system of social and economic activity; the need to create patterns of interaction between different sources of agricultural knowledge; the need to change the working practices of pivotal organisations, particularly agricultural research organisations, but also others in the development sector; and the need to create an enabling policy environment for technical change. These ideas have led to an increasing focus in rural development policy on innovation rather than research.

Is it some kind of agri-technology revolution we require, a so-called Agriculture 2.0? Those who have been around long enough know that we are quick to label any new idea that moves across the blogosphere (and increasingly the Twittersphere) with a famous “2.0” extension; I’m keen on version control. Recently, I appreciated Alanna Shaikh’s post on Development 2.0 is more than just jargon, where she describes how new technology and methods are innovated to share information and improve practice within development organizations.

But, “Agriculture 2.0”? I don’t know.

Carlos Seré, the Director General of International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) recently stated:

Rural Africa remains largely hungry and poor despite decades of improved agricultural technologies, crop varieties and management and policy options generated by agricultural science to help solve the continent’s special agricultural challenges.
What’s been missing is an integrated approach to African agriculture that is radically collaborative, holistic and futuristic—an approach that embraces rather than ignores the complexity of small-scale African farming and marketing and the continent’s special agro-ecological and cultural diversity.

Maybe the “radically collaborative, holistic and futuristic” approach Seles describes can be aided through the use of social technology? Reading on, I attempt to capture just how these technologies are already being used toward “Agriculture 2.0”.

The Default Device?
My colleague, Erik Hersman, calls the mobile phone “the default device” and says, “if it works in Africa, it will work anywhere”. Erik is not alone. Experts like Jeffrey Sachs tell us that the barriers of the digital divide for the impoverished are lowering as mobile subscription soars. Regarding agritech, Sachs goes on to state that “strengthening of the value chain not only raises farmers’ incomes, but also empowers crop diversification and farm upgrading more generally.” A great example of local information sharing is found in Tradenet, a west African eBay-like system for agricultural products that allows users to share market information via mobile networks and the web.

In the First Mile Project, which is supported by the Government of Switzerland and is implemented in collaboration with the Agricultural Marketing Systems Development Programme (AMSDP) of the government of Tanzania, we see how the mobile phone can change the agricultural landscape. We see how awareness of agricultural best practices can have substantial influence on the livelihoods of Ugandan farmers in this Business Africa/CTA video documenting the use of Web 2.0 applications in the development sector (see SMS usage at around the 5:15 mark).

Further, we see the successes of crisis monitoring through SMS-based tools like Ken Banks’ Frontline SMS. Search Ken Banks’ kiwanja.net Mobile Database and you will see a wealth of information about where he has implemented \o/ in Africa, Asia, and Europe (some with a specific focus on agriculture health). You will find examples of the benefit for using SMS in a agriculture network, including the movement of goods to market in South Africa to the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences study on Agricultural Information and Decision Support by SMS. Other well known capabilities that could be adapted include (of course) Ushahidi and InSTEDD’s SMS geochat, who are “crowdsourcing crisis information” around the world from Vietnam to Kenya. Like many, I am anticipating the release of the Nokia Data Gathering platform. There are those with a specific focus on mobile health applications like Episurveyor and Clickdiagnostics, and those with interest in tracking and conserving wild animal populations.

Our partners at Development Seed are continuing to innovate around a Drupal-USB stick two way SMS gateway – I am excited to work with Eric Gundersen and his team on testing this capability in Tanzania along with a custom version of their 8 Trees for distributed network collaboration.

Obviously, we have our work cut out for us. However, planning for a user experience that includes web and mobile, developing standards, and ensuring scalability across platforms, should improve our user participation, content, and metadata. But our success will be determined on our ability to sustain tangible results.