Presented by Jennifer Barnes (CH2M Hill) at the CGIAR-CSI Annual Meeting 2009: Mapping Our Future. March 31 - April 4, 2009, ILRI Campus, Nairobi, Kenya

1. AGCommons
Phase 1
Learning/Consultation
Process
Results of Scan and West African Outreach
16-27 March 2009
Jennifer.barnes@ch2m.com
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2. Overview
 Outreach Approach
 What We Heard in West Africa
 Key Observations or Findings
 Potential Projects
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3. Outreach Objectives
 Understand existing information and
infrastructure
 ID farmers information needs
 Get to know potential partners
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4. Outreach Approach
 Scan of existing organizations and programs
 Individual meeting with stakeholders
 Mini-workshops
 Field visits
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5. Outreach Locations
 West Africa  East Africa
– Mali – Kenya
– Burkina Faso – Uganda
– Ghana – Rwanda
 CSI Meeting
 Rome
 Washington DC

6. West Africa Outreach Stakeholders
Government Ag Research/ NGOs/ Tech Farmers
Farmer
Agencies Finance Companies Associations
IGM IER Afribone APCAM
Ministry of Ag ICRISAT DNA AOPP
Univ. of Bamako IFDC SLM Project CNOP
IGB IFDC IABER ROPPA
SONAGESS DGPSE/MRA SIGET-A Pag-La-Yiri
DENAG FENOP
SISA
AP/CONEDD
Survey Dept IWMI CERSGIS FONG
CSIR ADB ADRA
Ministry of Ag TIPCEE
Cocoa Board MiDA
SRID esoko
NASRDA
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7. Individual Meetings
Types of Questions
 Existing agricultural data
 Current information provided
to farmers
 Current ICT infrastructure out
to farmers
 Similar programs and activities
 Other information that could
help farmers increase income
 Potential challenges
 Specific information needs and
challenges of female farmers
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8. Field visit to Reo Village area
Burkina Faso
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9. Mini-Workshop
 Introductions
 Presentation on
AGCommons
– Discussion
 Small Group
Exercise
– Identification of
potential projects
– Female Farmers
 Wrap up
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10. What We Heard – Sound bytes
 “Who would I need
information from, I am
the farmer here”
– Farmer in Reo village,
Burkina Faso
 “We have failed to
meet the needs of the
farmers by providing
location-specific
information”
– IER, Mali
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11. What We Heard – Sound bytes
 “We have not
discussed the aspect of
providing information
to women farmers”
– Pag-La-Yiri, Burkina Faso
 “Farmers need to see
proof that new
technologies work;
climate risk is so big
that trust is hard to
establish”
– Ministry of Agriculture,
Statistics, Burkina Faso
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12. What We Heard - Sound bytes
 “Location-specific pest monitoring could cut in half
the quantity of pesticides required to cotton crops
and directly impact farmer’s bottom line”
– Agriculture Development Bank (ADB), Ghana
 “Applying location intelligence to existing market
information systems, would reduce the length and
number of messages, thereby reducing costs for
farmers to access information”
– esoko, Ghana
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13. What We Heard - Sound bytes
 “An accurate calculation for the area of a farmer’s
plot can save them up to 40 percent on inputs”
– ADB and TIPCEE
 “The timeliness of information is critical to value it
can provide to farmers. They need market price
information at the moment of harvest. If there is
something that they want and need more than the
best price for their products, it is cash in hand.”
– TIPCEE
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14. Existing Information Dissemination
Structures
 Farmers’ organizations exist that link the farmer to
national government
 Value chain optimization focused on fertilizer inputs
 Examples where location-specific information
services have effectively supported a specific crop
or set of crops
 Market price dissemination networks (TV, Radio,
SMS, e-mail, community bulletin boards)
 Local mapping capacities

15. Lack of information scaled and
distributed to the farmer level
Information being produced at
the national and regional level
Government
Agencies
Donors/
Research
NGOs
organizations
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16. AGCommons will provide location-
specific information to the farmer
Inputs
Market
Climate
Farmers
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17. Farmer Value/Information Chain
Harvesting/
Deciding Planting Growing Selling
Transport
Information Needs Information Needs Information Needs
Information Needs Information Needs
• Price
• Sowing date • Pest and disease • Price
• Price
• Availability
• Preparation advice mitigation advice • Market/trader
• Storage cost and
• Suitability
• • Crop management
Soil fertility advice location
availability
• Credit
• advice
Pest and disease • Travel cost and
• Transport cost
Data Sources • Irrigation advice
management availability
and availability
• Market intelligence advice
Data Sources Data Sources
• Soils , water and Data Sources
Data Sources
climate data • Pest and disease • Storage, market • Market prices by
• Rainfall forecasts
• Credit offers monitoring and and trade hub location and
• Cultivation best forecasts locations
Providers product
practices • Rainfall forecasts • Market prices and
• Agric Ministry • Travel cost
• Soil information storage costs
• Other Gov surface
service Providers
• Farmer’s Assoc. Providers
Providers • Farmer’s
• Ag Research Providers
• Financial
associations
• Agric Ministry
• Local NGOs
•
• Other Gov institutions Extension workers
• Farmer’s
• Intl Dev Orgs
• Farmer’s Assoc. •
• Ag Research Other Gov
Association
• Financial
• Ag Research •
• Local NGOs
• Ag Research Local NGOs
institutions
• Local NGOs •
• Extension
• Extension
• Extension Financial
• Extension workers
Workers Institutions
Workers
Workers
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18. Information that helps smallholder
farmers
 Strengthening agriculture value chains
– Inputs (seed, fertilizer and pesticide)
– Market intelligence
 Selection of appropriate crops
– Soil data
– Rainfall
 Support for crop management
– Location and crop specific cultivation advice
– Early warning systems for pests and disease
– Climate change and rainfall predictability
Building trust with farmers is critical to their
acceptance of information
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19. Challenges exist to provide
information to help farmers
 Current data is not provided in map- or time-scales
that are relevant to farmer
 Lack of effective networks and channels to
disseminate information to farmers
– Government extension agents are not working
 Land tenure issues make it difficult for farmers to
invest in their land
– Electricity for charging cell phones in rural areas
needs to be provided for (solar solutions)
 Many past efforts didn’t last past project funding
 Local languages
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20. Challenges for Women Farmers
 Providing information to women farmers is
difficult and requires special focus
– Men own the radios and the cell phones
– Men attend the farmers meetings
– Most women farmers are illiterate
 Cultural aspects of engaging women
farmers, especially in Mali and Burkina Faso
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21. How AGCommons will help address
these challenges
 Build shared platform
– Hosting for data dissemination
– Core location services
– Access to low-cost and high-resolution imagery for a
variety of applications
 Develop dissemination channels
– Build upon existing information networks and
infrastructure
– Spatially enable information dissemination
– Create SMS interfaces for information delivery and
collection to and from farmers
 Specific Projects
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22. Potential AGCommons projects
 Convening on market intelligence
– Adding location intelligence to existing systems
– Scaling out and replicating local successes
regionally
 Plot level mapping
– Using imagery and GPS to map specific
cropping systems critical for food security or
highly susceptible to climate stress
– Direct reduction of farmers’ costs by knowing
accurate acreage for services they paid for
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23. Potential AGCommons projects
 Land use map at a scale relevant to farmers
to help manage conflicts at the national level
 Agricultural atlas
– Assemble layers specifically relevant to
farmer decision-making
– Identify and prioritize gaps for further data
development
 Potential site-specific projects
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24. Rehabilitation of cocoa farms in
eastern region of Ghana
Information Communication Channels
 Farm location  Extension services
– spatial analysis to
 Area under cultivation
reinvigorate extension
 No of trees per farm resources
 Soil information  FM radio station
 Age class of trees  Farmer field schools
 Location of marketing  Video viewing centers
centers (depots)
 Location of social
amenities
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25. Support for women Fisher-woman
in coastal Ghana
Information Communication Channels
 Market information  Farmers associations
– Where to sell/buy  SMS through mobile
– Price in various markets phones
(major)
 Farmer representatives
– Market demand
 Location of storage
facilities
– Distance to nearest facility
– Charges
– Conditions
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26. Develop a women’s producer
association in Nyamina, Mali
Rationale: women farmers lack information on choice
of seeds / varieties and on fruit / vegetable storage
methods
Information Communication Channels
 Transportation  Develop local
networks information centers
 Location of  Monthly meetings
microfinance
institutions
 Location of storage
facilities

27. Discussion
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28. Mapping Parties
 Mapping Parties and Crowdsource Capacity
Building
– Organize 3-5 informal mapping parties
representing West, East and Southern
Africa to map roads and agriculture
features
– Build capacity and act as catalyst to
dormant GIS communities across Africa.
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29. Hosting Extensions
 Develop Extensions into Shared Hosting
– Read/Write capabilities from international
SMS shortcodes
– Develop repository for crowd mapping and
other location based data.
– Publish shared web services
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30. Geospatial Interoperability
 Develop geospatial publishing
– Write data directly from GIS clients (ESRI,
uDig, Other) to Geonetwork metadata portal.
– Publish and read directly to GIEWS
Workstation
– Publish and read directly from AgroMaps
– Publish and read directly from shared hosting
environment
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31. Agriculture Mobile Services
 Agriculture Geospatial Information Services for SSA
– Develop “location intelligence” services and APIs that
provide core functions for location referencing and
spatial analyses
– Create SMS interface to services both for information
delivery to farmers and information collection from
farmers
– Provide localized versions of products in national
languages
– Distribution of datasets and training at CLICs and
ABIPs
– Capacity building and training programs to support
use and maintenance.
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