Harnessing the Potential of It toward Sustainable Agriculture in Asia
Challenges and opportunities of the information technology (IT) revolution
This is where the Food and Fertilizer Technology Center (FFTC) hopes to make a difference. As a regional agricultural information center, FFTC will remain steadfast in its commitment to help promote sustainable agricultural development within the region, continuously evolving and reinventing itself to take advantage of the opportunities and challenges of the technology and information revolution, to benefit the small-scale farmers and the disadvantaged sectors of the society.
Under this premise, the Center organized an Information Technology Forum during its 17th Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Meeting held in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines in June 2004. Distinguished resource speakers were invited to share their rich knowledge and experience on the use of IT in agriculture. The productive sharing and deliberations during the forum proved to be vital, not only for the Center's future direction setting in this area, but also in laying the foundation for a rapid narrowing of the knowledge and information gap among nations in Asia.
Application of It in Agriculture
Today, a new paradigm in agricultural development is fast emerging. The stage appears to be set toward the achievement of sustainable agricultural development and food security in the 21st century through the wide use of IT. Many examples exist to illustrate this observation, such as, use of IT to reduce agricultural losses, forecast productivity, and enhance production with proper vertical integration of the production centers and the markets. The exploitation of the technology revolution has likewise made information on agriculture available worldwide and on demand. In most developed countries, IT is intensively used in agricultural administration, research and development, extension, marketing, and managing farmers' organizations.
Use of IT in agricultural extension. Through IT, agricultural extension can be more diversified, more knowledge-intensive, more demand-driven, and thus more effective in meeting farmers' information needs. It can bring new information services to rural areas where farmers, as users, will have much greater control over current information channels.
Some uses of IT in meeting the farmers' needs for information are: timely dissemination of agricultural information through online information services, education and training, monitoring and consultation, and transaction and processing; farmers' access to agricultural information through databases established by government and farmers' organizations; facilitation of interaction among researchers, extension workers, and farmers; question-and-answer services where experts respond to queries on specialized subjects for greater efficiency in delivering services for overall agricultural development; providing up-to-date information about subjects useful to farmers, such as, packages of production techniques/practices, management skills, market information, weather forecasting, input supplies, credit availability, agricultural statistics, and agricultural policy and programs; and providing early warning signs about crop and livestock disease/pest problems, natural disasters, and mitigation measures.
Use of IT in agricultural marketing. Efforts should be made to incorporate IT in the following areas to facilitate agricultural marketing: collection of a large body of marketing information for various commodities and markets, and enabling the farmers to find the marketing information they need; use of IT in wholesale markets and distribution centers of farm products; services providing information to farmers regarding farm business and management; and expansion of the use of e-commerce for direct linkages between producers, traders, retailers, and suppliers.
Application of IT in farmers' organizations. IT can also help farmers' organizations in re-orienting themselves toward the overall agricultural development of small-scale producers. With the appropriate information, organized small-scale producers can even have a competitive edge over larger operations. The expanding uses of IT by farmers' organizations worldwide are as follows: use of IT to supply farms with commercial inputs, farm credit, marketing, and other support services; computerization and application of IT in improving the efficiency of these organizations; dissemination of technical information to members, thereby improving the extension function and information service of these organizations; and provision of access to computers and the Internet to cooperative members.
Integration of It in Agriculture: Country Experiences
In Indonesia, an agricultural information management and networking system covering research centers and institutes is now connected to national and global networks to enhance research management functions, programming, communication of research results, and access to national and worldwide scientific and technical information. This information network has greatly helped the scientific community in their research and development (R&D) activities.
IT and its practical contributions to agriculture and rural development in Japan have been instrumental in providing emerging solutions to many agricultural issues. These include systems applications/services such as: efficient and low-cost field data acquisition; case-based knowledge management and decision support; geographical information system; distributed system and grid technology (grid-based decision support system, data mediation and broker); multilingual information exchange; e-agribusiness and traceability; easy user interface; and data-mining tools.
In Korea, the development and use of information technology in agriculture is quite advanced, compared with other Asian countries. IT is widely used in e-business or e-commerce; education and training programs for elite farmers, which have contributed much to the enhancement of value-added agriculture; precision agriculture through informatization of plant and animal technologies; utilization of IT for agricultural environment management; and internet consultation via cyber dissemination of agro-technologies.
In the Philippines, different IT modalities have been developed to strengthen agricultural extension. These include various information systems and services that institutionalize data and information gathering, processing, synthesis, and integration in support of the implementation of national and regional R&D and technology management programs.
In Taiwan, under its agricultural knowledge information system which forms an integrated agricultural information community, various data and knowledge banks on agricultural production, marketing, and human resources development will be consolidated.
The importance of international collaboration, particularly in knowledge and technologies that could be commonly shared among Asian countries, considering their similarities in terms of small-scale farming and cropping systems, was also emphasized. The knowledge and information shared by the five countries point to the need for every nation to take on the challenge of emerging trends in information technology (IT) with a view to promote sustainable agricultural development. The five country cases also showed that while advances in IT have dramatically transformed the way in which people live, work, learn, and communicate, the level of use among developed and developing countries varies considerably. In Japan and Korea, advancement in the use of IT in agriculture has now been overcoming the limitations of paper-based dissemination programs, rendering the application of IT in agriculture boundless.
Prospects of It in Asian Agriculture
In general, the future directions in the use of IT in agriculture point to the need to enhance human resources, equipment/facilities, infrastructure, and policy support system. The most pressing concerns are the lack of trained personnel on IT; poor network connectivity and network infrastructure in rural areas limiting the use of IT in extension; complex and dynamic nature of agriculture which requires continuous assessment of data fields for decision support systems (DSS); limited computer literacy by farmers, making it difficult to convince them of the benefits of IT; and the lack of policy environment/support for better information network management.
The challenge ahead is for every country in the Asian and Pacific region to explore the uncommon opportunities presented by the information technology revolution, to ensure a vibrant, responsive, sustainable, and productive agriculture toward the attainment of food security and a broad-based economic growth.
Index of Images
Figure 1 In Agriculture, the World Wide Web Holds the Promise of Reducing the Barrier of Distance and Time, Improving Access to Information and Facilitating Transaction and Integration among Research, Education, Extension, Agribusiness, Farming and Rural Development.
Figure 2 Web Marketing with Remote Camera
Figure 3 Remote Consultation Network of Rda
Figure 4 Farmers' Information and Technology Service (Fits) Information System
