Openness and visibility

This issue's guest editor, Stephen Rudgard from FAO, is a major actor in opening agricultural knowledge online. He has asked a number of experts from different backgrounds to provide their perspective on various aspects of opening access to conten

IT in Rural Areas

Many agree that knowledge is central to development, and that there are considerable resources of knowledge and information that could be made available to assist poor people deal more effectively with the root causes of their poverty. The new information and communications technologies (ICT), and increased priority and resources for information exchange, have the potential to improve the access to, and benefits from, this accumulated knowledge for the rural poor, as well as creating a more informed policy environment. However, a “digital divide” separates those most in need from the world’s information and knowledge resources. The “Programme for Bridging the Rural Digital Divide to reduce Food Insecurity and Poverty” makes the case for a new strategic Programme through which FAO would facilitate a global partnership to address the rural digital divide. The Programme would strengthen human and institutional capacities to harness information and knowledge more effectively for agricultural and rural development. The proposal responds to a real gap, not yet addressed in a cohesive way by the international development community. The rural digital divide is not only a problem of infrastructure and connectivity, but a multi-faceted problem of ineffective knowledge exchange and management of content, lack of human resources and institutional capacity, compounded by an acute scarcity of financial resources

Towards a harmonization of metadata application profiles for agricultural learning repositories

Metadata interoperability allows the exchange and preservation of crucial learning and teaching information, as well as its future reuse among a large number of different systems and repositories. This paper introduces work around metadata interoperability that has taken place in the context of the Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force (AgLR-TF), an international community of the stakeholders that are involved in agricultural learning repositories. It particularly focuses on a review and assessment of metadata application profiles that are currently implemented in agricultural learning repositories. The results of this study can be found useful by who are designing, implementing and operating agricultural learning repositories, facilitating thus metadata interoperability in this application field

Metadata application profile for agricultural learning resources

Capacity and institution building is a core function of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). FAO has recently started the “Capacity and Institution Building Portal” to provide structured access to information on FAO’s capacity and institution building services and learning resources. To ensure that the Portal can be searched by users and to enable interoperability with other recognized educational repositories, an Application Profile (AP) was created conforming to available and commonly used standards, to describe agricultural learning resources. This article presents the AP, provides an example of an FAO learning resource described and displayed using FAO Learning Resource AP, and presents the lessons learned

Analysis of e-agriculture survey

In late 2006, an online global survey to determine the scope and priorities for the WSIS Action line on e-Agriculture was conducted by an inter-agency Working Group. Most of the over 3400 respondents were unfamiliar with the term ‘e-Agriculture,’ but nearly all respondents had suggestions on potential definition and benefits, as well as on priority areas for action. Perceptions of e-Agriculture focused on information and communication processes more than on technologies and tools. Subject areas mentioned included farming practices, market information, training, statistics, and science/research. Stakeholder groups identified included producers, rural service providers, scientists, and policy-makers. Benefits included both generally enhanced information exchange and communication processes and specifically agriculture-related benefits such as market access and food security. e-Agriculture was also seen to contribute to broader development goals. Future priorities included developing virtual communities and networks, capacity building in the use and application of ICT, and defining and advocating e-Agriculture initiatives

IAALD 2013 World Congress Post Conference Presentations

IAALD 2013 World Congress post conference presentations

Distance Learning for Food Security and Rural Development: A Perspective from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

This article introduces the work of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and describes its interest in the application of distance learning strategies pertinent to the challenges of food security and rural development around the world. The article briefly reviews pertinent examples of distance learning, both from the experience of FAO and elsewhere, and summarises a complex debate about the potential of distance learning in developing countries. The paper elaborates five practical suggestions for applying distance learning strategies to the challenges of food security and rural development. The purpose of publishing this article is both to disseminate our ideas about distance learning to interested professional and scholarly audiences around the world, and to seek feedback from those audiences

FAO’s Capacity-Building Initiatives in Accessing, Documenting, Communicating and Managing Agricultural Information

The new information and communication technologies (ICT) and the growing wealth of digital information have the potential to improve access to and benefits from development activities for the rural poor, as well as facilitate policy-making. In this regard, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is involved in various initiatives aimed at building human and institutional capacities in documenting and communicating agricultural information. The paper presents a brief overview of three initiatives, which together form the basis of a coordinated effort by FAO with a wide range of partners to improve access to information on agricultural science and technology. The initiatives are: Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), and Mobilizing Agricultural Science and Technology Information. The paper also highlights some of the capacity-building activities involving the above three initiatives that have taken place in Africa