The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) shut down its activities in December 2020 at the end of its mandate. The administrative closure of the Centre was completed in November 2021.
Leading image

The impact of open data on smallholder farmers

Providing farmers with information from Datasets

Getting open data benefits to farmers will be crucial if the move towards open access is to have any real impact. There is a lot potential, but lack of reliable and contextualised data is currently working against smallholder farmers.

Open data could offer significant benefits for smallholder rural communities in developing countries. Advisories combining agricultural knowledge with data from remote sensing and mapping provide farmers with early warnings of adverse conditions. Such advice and warnings can be crucial for protecting crops from pests and extreme weather, for increasing yields, for monitoring water supplies and for anticipating changes brought on by climate change.

Data that is shared or reused can have a far greater value than if it were simply used for its original purpose, was one of the conclusions of CTA working paper Open Data and Smallholder Food and Nutrition Security. Potential benefits for smallholder farmers were identified in the paper as increased participation and self-empowerment, improved or new products such as logistical, extension, financial, input and trade services, more efficient value chains with better access to markets, higher and less perishable yields, greater availability of inputs and better pest control.

Hence, giving smallholder farmers access to reliable data can translate into higher productivity, greater access to markets and better nutrition. How to deliver on this opportunity for smallholder farmers? In general, the impact of open agricultural data in developing countries is still low, the working paper also revealed. Often, this is because the data needed to have local impact does not exist, or is not openly available. Smallholder farmers are far more practically interested in data. For example, they ask very practical questions. What crops I should grow? How do I grow these crops? Which inputs do I use and where can I get them? Where do I store my harvest? Where do I sell my crops and at what price?

Theo de Jager, president of the Pan African Farmers’ Organisation (PAFO): ‘On a farm, whether it is one thousand hectares or only one hectare, I need real-time information. What does the market want now? What’s the cost of my inputs now? What’s my soil like now? What’s the weather like now?’ Having better market information would help farmers to decide what to plant and where best to sell it. ‘That’s why open data is so extremely important. It must enable me as a farmer to make a decision here and now. It’s a tool to assist me to make the right decision, on the right day, in the right place,’ he says.

Satellite data

Meteorological data is one area where open data is starting to make a real contribution to smallholders. Better satellite data is available and more services are being created to send the most accurate information to farmers for a lower price. Where satellite imagery is still obstructed by resolution or clouds for the use for small-scale agricultural plots, drone technology is now the emerging solution to improve data.

For example, the Market-led, User-owned ICT4Ag-enabled Information Service (MUIIS) is a multi-stakeholder initiative that looks to provide smallholder farmers in Uganda with satellite-based crop advice. Satellite data will be acquired from a number of sources and data analytics will provide intelligent agronomic tips on amount of inputs to use, daily weather on timing and length of season, preventive practices or early warnings, responses to pest and disease attacks, financial and index-based insurance services, and market intelligence on where and when to sell.

Studies in India have shown that such satellite data-enabled extension and advisory services can lead to about 40% increase in farmers’ productivity. Examples of satellite-based crop monitoring services include Cropio, FarmSat, FieldLook and ClimatePro.

Momentum

For many years, precision agriculture was considered irrelevant to small-scale farmers in developing countries because of the coarse resolution and high cost of the images. This has changed. There is now a growing body of research to support the idea that small-scale farmers can benefit from precision agriculture. GPS-equipped sensors on tractors, for example, enable farmers to measure and respond to soil variability across vast tracts of land, and dispense the right amounts of fertiliser and water exactly where it’s needed.

Multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, have taken up a more focused approach towards use of spatial technologies and information for ensuring food security. The UN organisations are promoting Global Geospatial Information Management. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, created in 1985 by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), is a leading provider of early warning and analysis on acute food insecurity. The Dutch government, through the Netherlands Space Office, has started a programme called Geospatial for Agriculture and Water. This initiative uses satellite data to improve food security and has projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kenya, Mali, as well as Uganda. The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service also makes use of satellite and in situ data to provide regular geospatial information on the state of global vegetation and water cycle for spatial planning, forest management, water management, agriculture and food security.

ICT tools

Success depends on the number of mobile platforms that have been taken to market with users willing to pay for agricultural and financial information services. The mobile and ICT service operators are developing and hosting agricultural advice services on mobile platforms, providing information as text messages, structured menus, voice messages. Farmers provide information about themselves and their environment through these services. Opening up these data streams will provide the opportunity to better understand smallholders and therefore the world at large, enabling better progress in terms of development and governance.

For example, Cropster, is an app that helps farmers customise and collect the data they want to help them make more informed decisions. The data can be exchanged between producer groups, NGOs and commercial partners, promoting the sharing of real-time information and decentralising monitoring to support sustainable agriculture.

Open data that is accessible to producers should make it easier for smallholder farmers in developing countries to overcome one of their biggest problems – access to financing, since it will provide greater assurances to banks and other lenders, if information is readily available on crop performance, inputs and other critical points. The first steps have now been set to create the enabling environment on which initiatives can flourish with the aim to impact smallholder farmers by providing them with targeted information based on reliable open data.

This article is compiled from resources of CTA, GODAN and PAFO.

Related links

More information on MUIIS

CTA working paper Open Data and Smallholder Food and Nutrition Security

Read More

by and

In September 2016, the first Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) summit took place in New York. And in February 2017, the third international workshop on impacts with open data in agriculture and nutrition was held in The Hague, the Netherlands.

by and

At the third international workshop on the impact of open data for agriculture a new action agenda was discussed by a mix of organisations. They concluded that more focus is required on benefits for the less favoured actors, that open data should become a vehicle for multi-stakeholder collaborations, and that assessment of data driven organisational change is required.

Innovators, programmers, and application developers are at the forefront of a movement that combines big data, open data, and the internet of things to create new marketable products and services for the agricultural sector. Events, like hackathons, pitching and networking gatherings, are important for these young innovators to improve and exchange ideas, get technological advice, connect to investors and marketers.

Demand is growing for gender data and targeted solutions for challenges unique to women, men, girls or boys. In Kenya, a community gathers and discusses gender citizen-generated data, which are uploaded to mobile phones and distributed to women leaders.

There is much potential for open data to positively affect the future of agriculture. But without a proactive, responsible approach, there is a very real risk of these changes benefiting only the most powerful actors within the sector.

Getting open data benefits to farmers will be crucial if the move towards open access is to have any real impact. There is a lot potential, but lack of reliable and contextualised data is currently working against smallholder farmers.

by

Open data research can significantly help to stimulate changes in practices and organisation of the public and private sector actors in agriculture and food supply chains, but it cannot force those changes. Crucial are the researchers themselves, who need to interact to ensure their knowledge and expertise is used and useful.

Increasing the open access to nutrition and food data for ICT developers has resulted in a surge in applications for a healthier food intake and better fitness.

by

It sounds simple, open data is there for anyone to access. However, not all journalists are aware of the open data available to them or how to use it when writing about food security or the critical challenges facing agriculture. Good journalism is not based on opinions, it relies on evidence-based information.

The Kenya government initiated the Open Data Initiative in 2011 on the idea that Kenya's information is a national asset. Agriculture is one of the main pillars, because food security and economic development can only move forward if decisions on agriculture are evidence-based. To be successful, data needs to be available, accurate, and open for all.

Wouldn’t it be handy if you could just switch on that app and see the agricultural (or any other) sector through a gender lens? And what if everyone else also working in the agricultural sector just magically started to use it? Would it make us do things differently, collect different data, push for the release and visualisation of other types of datasets, or would we make sure the data were more equally accessed and used?

Partners

  • Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition
  • e-Agriculture
Location:

Past issues

ICT Update N. 91

Next-generation ACP agriculture - innovations that work

ICT Update N. 90

Women and Digitalisation in Agriculture

ICT Update N. 89

Data4Ag: New opportunities for organised smallholder farmers

ICT Update N. 88

Unlocking the potential of blockchain for agriculture

View all