By Wendella Davidson

WITH the combined food import bill in the Caribbean region continuing to skyrocket, President David Granger’s impassioned plea in his Emancipation message for the Guyanese populace to embrace agriculture, education and the community was timely.

In his call for people to go to the lands, he was reported as saying, “Our lives will be determined by how we make our living. If we make our living by hanging around the corner, liming by the Guinness Bar, we will forever be poor. But if we go into our farms, go into our workshops, into our schools, we will be able to have prosperity.” He also urged residents to venture into self-employment through agro-processing and growing and selling their own produce.

The President was at the time speaking during a cultural evening on July 31 at Beterverwagting, on the East Coast of Demerara, at an event organised by the Beterverwagting /Triumph 8th of May Movement to mark the 180th anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery.

His renewed call jolts to mind the recently held CTU/ICT Caribbean Roadshow presented by the Caribbean Telecommunication Union (CTU) from July 9-14, where “Agri-Man” a superhero created by an organisation in Trinidad sought to promote the benefits of e-agriculture and small-scale agriculture practices with the catchphrase, “Plant a tree, Live for free.”

The roadshow sought to show how ICT can be used to improve efficiency in Government, in business and in education and in agriculture.

It is no secret that the import bill for the Caribbean is astronomically high and E-Agriculture is emerging as the chief area of focus in strategic and economic planning in countries across the Caribbean. Pundits have concluded that there are numerous ways in which small and large-scale farmers could use ICT to increase produce yield and make the processes between planting and reaping more efficient.

Hence during the roadshow e-Agriculture was one of the main thrusts and fittingly the event culminated with a forum that saw farmers, businesspersons and other citizens of East Berbice- Corentyne (Region Six) turning out in their numbers at the forum.
A highlight of that event was a presentation by Trinidadian Alpha Sennon whose WHYFARM- “We Help Youth Farm” has been making inroads in Trinidad, also with the ever-popular agri superhero “Agriman” ably portrayed by George Caesar, a Trinidad-based Guyanese. The motto of that Trinidadian outfit is “to develop a new generation of food producers. We teach youths about food and nutrition security, creatively showing them how they can contribute to decreasing hunger and malnutrition.”

Minister of Public Telecommunications, Catherine Hughes said at the culmination of the roadshow that the forum had achieved its objective of opening the minds of the citizens, particularly farmers on the benefits of incorporating the use of ICTs in their activities.
“What we wanted to do was sit with farmers in communities and give them an idea of where the technology is going, what e-Agriculture is about and in a very practical way talk about some of the things that can help them, “she noted.

And, during her interaction with the farmers, Minister Hughes said e-Agriculture will change the way farming is done and will also attract the interest of young people to pursue this field, pointing to drone technology for pest control and crop monitoring.

She noted that the turnout was exceptional and the enthusiasm to learn more about the technology was overwhelming.

Meanwhile, Secretary-General of the CTU, Bernadette Lewis, encouraged farmers to use ICTs to add value to their produce. She also urged the older persons to educate themselves on the new and emerging technologies by visiting the ICT hubs in their communities.
Lewis said there are many creative ways of enhancing produce from new packaging ideas to finding non-traditional uses of particular items.

There were also presentations from representatives of the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) during the CTU/ICT event.

The 2018 Global Food Policy Report has emphasised the need for open access data in achieving food and nutrition security.

The report says reducing hunger and malnutrition requires evidence-based decision making, which in turn depends upon access to knowledge and data. Published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the report points out that accessible data are critical for decision making, from the farm to the retail level of food systems.
Key findings from the report show open data can improve the performance of food systems and help achieve global food and nutrition security. It can increase both the visibility and utility of research, allowing researchers to create more knowledge about products and support decision making. Open data allow governments to make evidence-based policy decisions and push governments toward increased accountability.

The report also lists some main challenges, that data quality and ease of use are essential for putting data to use, but datasets are often too large or complex to be easily handled. It says Inequality in access to knowledge is increasing. Data policies, commitments, and investments can improve access to and use of knowledge, but current commitment and action on open data are uneven.

The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) supports the proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the urgent challenge of ensuring world food security.

The report points out that:
“A cornerstone of open access must be reducing the knowledge inequality within and among societies that arises from both lack of access and lack of capacity to make use of the world’s growing store of knowledge and data.”

It recommends that data access must be democratised to improve livelihoods by putting data tools, such as mobile phone apps, into farmers’ hands; that the efficiency of knowledge transfers be increased to prevent loss of information and ensure uptake in the field, and that government “big data” be made public to in order to drive high-quality analysis of food systems, better policy and decision making.

Other recommendations include building open data initiatives to reduce inequality and address issues of data quality, use, storage, and dissemination; and increasing data quality and ease of use through better data collection, new tools, working groups, capacity building, and improvements in big data platforms. Empowering citizen stakeholders to demand open data through capacity building and access to data tools.