How to build a fairer and more inclusive Digital Society?
How technologies could be applied in the Agricultural field and build a more inclusive and fairer Digital Society?
The virtual dimension is prevailing over the real one, determining vast effects on our daily life. Even the main socio-economical and governance structures are becoming obsolete, facing the challenges of the dramatic emergencies. Public and private institutions are massively mobilizing to find sustainable solutions empowered by new digital technologies. In this context, the acceleration of this innovation process imposes a strong integration among scientific disciplines and a sturdier interaction between the experts.
One of such application fields is agriculture; in certain regions of the world, the food that is produced can barely satisfy the needs of their populations. In the near future, this demand for nutritional values and for a greater quantity and variety of food will increase thus requiring new digital approaches.
Technology can integrate agricultural production from the paddock to the consumer by providing the agricultural industry with tools and information to make more informed decisions and improve productivity.
Digital agriculture is one of the topics addressed on December 3, 2021 during the 21st edition of the Infopoverty World Conference, an annual UN Flagship Event organized by OCCAM – the Observatory on Digital Communication affiliated with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Due to the pandemic, this year the Conference has been taken place online and worldwide live-streamed from the UN Webcast.
During the event, eminent experts have analyzed the potential digital applications in Agriculture and took the European H2020 EWA-BELT Project as an on-the-field example. Prof. Giovanna Seddaiu, Prof. Noel Makete, Prof. Bazoumana Koulibaly, Prof. Deodatus Kiriba, Prof. Joseph Adiebeng-Danquah, Prof. Joseph Tholley and Prof. Alemayehu Chala all convened on the relevance of learning-by-doing techniques, food diversification, sensibilization of community and systematic combination and interrelatedness.
A New Vision of agriculture will require an increase in investments and as well as an improved food production (+70%). To accomplish such goals, great skills and abilities, up-to-date strategic policies and collaboration between the various stakeholders must necessarily be put in place using local and global indicators.
One example is the promotion of food security, to be implemented through different techniques: reducing the actual vs potential gap – reducing the cost to harvest – digital agriculture – women empowerment – digitalization – Co2 monitoring.
“Attention should be devoted to the training of farmers and the potential of learning by doing: it is necessary to share the knowledge to make food system sustainable at every step of the food chain”
(Noel Makete, speaker at XXI Infopoverty World Conference)
Digital tools should also be applied in the agricultural field to reduce the effects of climate change that include land degradation, contamination, poor soils and low inputs or low crop yields.
Overall, establishing a new vision of agriculture means finding the right equilibrium between existing and new technological practices to increment food productivity while exhausting natural resources and mitigating Climate Change effects.
For more information on this topic visit: occam.org
Rewatch the 21st Infopoverty World Conference at UN Webcast.
Read the Official Report here: https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_FB_NewVisionAgriculture_HappeningTransformation_Report_2012.pdf.