The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), together with support from partners including the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), have developed the E-agriculture Strategy Guide. The guide provides a framework for countries to develop their national e-agriculture strategy, or master plan.
To support the use of proven e-agriculture solutions and services, FAO-ITU conducted a three-day E-agriculture Solutions Forum on 29-31 August 2016 in Nonthaburi, Thailand. A two-day training of trainers on developing e-agriculture strategy followed the forum on 1-2 September 2016. The Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Institutions (APAARI) provided administrative and logistical support for the event.
The objective of the forum was to: (i) bring together proven e-agriculture solutions that will benefit various stakeholders; (ii) share knowledge on successful e-agriculture solutions and identify ways of scaling up implementations at national level; (iii) establish a Community-of-Practice (CoP) among e-agriculture solution providers; (iv) build capacity in Asia-Pacific through Training-of-Trainers (ToT) in developing national strategies based on FAO-ITU e-agriculture strategy guide; and (v) share experience in implementing e-agriculture solutions.
About 120 participants from 29 countries attended the forum. This included: e-agriculture solution providers; infrastructure and service providers from sectors critical for e-agriculture (telecom, IT, agricultural machinery, banking, insurance and governance); country representatives from Asia-Pacific (senior and middle management from ministry of agriculture and ICT); international, regional, national organizations working in agriculture and rural development; experts involved in implementing e-agriculture strategies in Asia-Pacific countries; farmer, fisher and pastorals and their organizations; food manufacturing and their organizations; agricultural cooperatives and agriculture research institutes\academia.
The content of the forum, including all presentations, can be downloaded by clicking here.
