Advancing Agriculture In Developing Countries Through Knowledge And Innovation Synopsis Of An International Conference

"This book is a comprehensive collection of research on the emerging trends and advances in the global application of information and communication technology use in agriculture and rural development"--Provided by publisher.

This book—prepared by Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI), which is led by IFPRI—offers a comprehensive perspective on the evolution, current status, and future goals of agricultural research and development in Africa, including analyses of the complex underlying issues and challenges involved, as well as insights into how they might be overcome. Agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara is at a prospective tipping point. Growth has accelerated in the past decade, but is unsustainable given increasing use of finite resources. The yield gap in African agriculture is significant, and scenarios on feeding the world’s population into the future highlight the need for Africa to expand its agricultural production. Agricultural Research in Africa: Investing in Future Harvests discusses the need to shift to a growth path based on increased productivity—as in the rest of the developing world— which is essential if Africa is to increase rural incomes and compete in both domestic and international markets. Such a shift ultimately requires building on evolving improvements that collectively translate to deepening rural innovation capacity.

Due to such factors as poor economic conditions, climate change, and conflict, food security remains an issue around the world and especially in developing nations. Rapid changes in technology over the last decade has brought a renewed focus on how information and communication technologies (ICTs) and application systems are deployed to improve rural competitiveness. Unfortunately, agricultural stakeholders in developing countries, particularly in Africa, have not been able to reap comparable benefits from adopting agricultural information systems as compared to their counterparts in the developed economies. Understanding the challenges that hinder the effective adoption of agricultural information systems and identifying opportunities or innovations is imperative to improve the agricultural sectors and overcome the problems in these developing economies. Opportunities and Strategic Use of Agribusiness Information Systems is an essential reference book that examines the key challenges that hinder the effective adoption of agricultural information systems. Moreover, it identifies and evaluates opportunities for the strategic deployment of ICTs and information systems to drive agricultural development for the benefit of agricultural sector stakeholders in emerging countries. While highlighting such topics as agricultural entrepreneurship, food value chain, and innovation systems, it is intended to provide sound and relevant frameworks and tools that will aid agricultural industry practitioners, smallholder farmers, and managers of agricultural extension systems looking to make more effective and responsible decisions when selecting, planning, deploying, and managing agribusiness information systems. It is additionally targeted for agricultural funding organizations, government policymakers, academicians, researchers, and students concerned with exploiting the potential of a variety of ICTs and information systems in the quest to achieve food security and poverty reduction in emerging economies.

This conference proceedings from the OECD Conference on Agricultural Knowledge Systems (AKS), held in Paris inJune 2011, discusses experiences and approaches to AKS explores how to foster development and adoption of innovation to meet global food security and climate change challenges.