Online forums to further develop the “ICT in Agriculture” Sourcebook

The World Bank and the e-Agriculture Community are collaborating in a series of online forums to further develop resources for the recently launched “ICT in Agriculture” Sourcebook (www.ictinagriculture.org).

These discussion forums, available to all e-Agriculture community members, will be vehicles to inform the World Bank of other projects/programmes that e-Agriculture members are carrying out and that could complement the research of the World Bank.

The ICT in Agriculture Sourcebook offers practical examples and case studies from around the world. A compilation of modules related to 14 agricultural subsectors, each module covers the challenges, lessons learned, and enabling factors associated with using ICT to improve smallholder livelihoods. Its aim is to support development practitioners in exploring the use of or designing, implementing, and investing in ICT enabled agriculture interventions.

Resources and the forum archives for these discussions are brought together in one convenient location.

A first discussion is ending today about Strengthening Agricultural Marketing with ICT

5-16 December 2011

This forum followed module 9, beginning with the need for and impact of ICT in agricultural marketing from the perspectives of producers, consumers, and traders. It continues to look at mobile phones as a marketing tool; evidence that ICT is changing logistics and transaction costs; the use of ICTs for market research (both for acquiring immediate market information and acquiring market intelligence over time); and the use of ICT to make input supply and use more effective. 

Nutrition Advocacy Landscape in Europe

In September 2010 the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation commissioned the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine to conduct a landscaping study focused on European stakeholders engaged in addressing undernutrition. Developing an understanding of the European donor and partner landscape for nutrition is needed to inform an evolving nutrition advocacy agenda and identify potential opportunities to scale investments and develop new and effective partnerships.

Project Aims

This report aims to map the landscape of European actors that are engaged in addressing undernutrition in low- and middle-income countries, and to provide a high-level roadmap for scaling-up advocacy activity around the issue. The research objectives of this project are:

• To understand how a range of European organisations/institutions address undernutrition;
• To assess the strengths and challenges facing organisations and sectors to address undernutrition;
• To assess stakeholder receptivity to engage, scale-up activities and work with others; and,
• To analyse the enablers and barriers to engagement across sectors and stakeholders.

Key Findings

• Multilateral Organisations are making nutrition a strategic priority. Many agencies are increasing their financial commitments and strategic focus on improved nutrition outcomes. There is also a growing emphasis on integration and understanding how food security and rural development initiatives can best support nutrition outcomes. The European Commission represents a significant source of funding and has been increasingly operational in its nutrition programming across development priorities, although there remains a need to increase and protect these investments within institutional policy. In general, there is still a need for stronger leadership and coordination across multilateral organisations and the wider nutrition community.

• Nutrition is becoming a more prominent focus on the European bilateral donor agenda. A common emerging pattern is the extent that bilateral donors are integrating nutrition across programmes and placing high priority on results-based frameworks. France, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom emerge as leaders in terms of strategic focus on nutrition. At present it is difficult to gain a clear picture of financial flows for nutrition given that nutrition funding sits within and across several development sectors. Mechanisms to maintain or increase nutrition programming and funding from bilaterals can come through harnessing existing high-level momentum around food security and maternal and child health and necessitates working within political parameters.

• NGOs are increasingly engaged in nutrition advocacy. NGOs have strong commitment to addressing undernutrition and bring valuable technical expertise and field knowledge into informing evidence-based policies at both national and international levels. NGOs can be constrained by funding parameters, which can deter collaboration and comprehensive strategic planning.

• Private sector industry is increasingly interested in its role in addressing undernutrition. Preferred mechanisms for engagement are through core business and expanded market presence and through public-private partnerships. The private sector brings a diversified functional and technical expertise and an inherently entrepreneurial approach. Private sector involvement in addressing undernutrition is enhanced if there is a sustainable business model which is often challenging given variable return on investment metrics. Although, broadly speaking, the private sector is aware and interested in solutions to undernutrition; there remains a level of distrust between private and public sectors and a sentiment that the private sector is often not considered as part of the response to undernutrition. There remains a need to clarify goals and understanding of where the private sector can add value and also a need for robust evaluation of health and nutrition impacts of private sector initiatives.

• Private funders for nutrition in Europe are few. Funders are generally inhibited by a perceived complexity of the nutrition problem and a lack of understanding of how and where their funds may achieve impact. There is potential to increase funding from this sector through developing targeted, clarified advocacy messages and utilising the convening power of membership bodies.

• Several interrelated themes are evident across sectors. These include an awareness of industry as an important partner coupled with simultaneous distrust between public and private sectors, a growing interest in integrating responses to undernutrition across the spectrum of agriculture, health, food security and direct nutrition interventions, an acknowledgement of the need for further impact evaluation and a broad sentiment that the nutrition agenda needs stronger messaging and goals.

Resources:
Click here to see the final public report
Click here to see the quantitative analysis of funding flows conducted by Development Initiatives
Click here to see a summary report of the joint European and LSHTM landscape prepared by LSHTM and CCS

Related:

Masset E, Haddad L, Cornelius A and Isaza-Castro J (2011),
A systematic review of agricultural interventions that aim to improve nutritional status of children. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London.

The review is based on a systematic search of the published and unpublished literature. The search was broken down by interventions of the following types: biofortification interventions; home gardens; aquaculture and small fisheries; dairy development; and animal source food promotion. During the search we found more than 7,000 studies, but only 23 qualified for final inclusion based on the exclusion criteria set.

For a summary in a policy brief, see: Evidence Matters

EFARD Steering Committee Meeting

8th December– 9th December 2011. Agropolis International. Montpellier, France. EFARD held it's Steering Committee Meeting during two days. EFARD’s main aim is to meet the following strategic objectives, referring to European, global and inter-regional perspectives:

1. To encourage dialogue between European ARD stakeholder groups promoting awareness, innovative approaches, and partnerships in order to build a more efficient and impact focused ARD.
2. To support global ARD initiatives within the framework of GFAR and the GCARD process
3. To promote inter-regional partnerships and collaborative ARD activities for joint research initiatives, capacity strengthening and greater impact, particularly in developing countries.

Action 1 Europe: Encourage dialogue between European ARD Stakeholder groups promoting awareness, innovative approaches and partnerships
a. Development of a new strategy
b. Development of a new EFARD Website
c. Development of publicity material
d. Broaden & strengthen EFARD’s stakeholder base

Action 2: Global. Support Global initiatives within the framework of GFAR and GCARD
a. Support the planning and implementation of GCARD II
b. Coherence in Information in ARD (CIARD & CIARD RING)
c. Strengthening RAIS/RAILS
d. Support the implementation of the GCARD Road Map
e. Support and participation to other initiatives e.g. European Rural Development Forum

Action 3 Inter-regional. Promote inter-regional partnerships and collaborative ARD activities for joint initiatives, capacity strengthening and greater impact
a. Partnership Platforms - PAEPARD
b. Partnership Platforms – FORAGRO and APAARI
c. Partnership Platforms - AARINENA
d. Partnership Platforms - CACAARI
e. Collective Foresight actions

Action 4 Management and Coordination. 
a. Management Team meetings
b. Steering Committee meetings
c. Maintenance of the new website
d. Advocacy

Action 5 Representation
a. GFAR activities
b. Representation at various meetings

PAEPARD 5th Management Team Meeting (MTM)

6 and 7th December 2011 in Montpellier (France). PAEPARD 5th Management Team Meeting (MTM)

The MTM was set up during the Brussels inception meeting of 11-12 February 2010 and is composed of work package leaders, co-leaders and the two co-managers. The periodicity of MTM meetings was fixed at six months with the possibility of extraordinary meetings whenever the need arose. So far, four MTMs have taken place.

• The first meeting was held in Accra 27-28 May 2010.
• The second (an extraordinary meeting) was held during the FARA General Assembly in Ouagadougou on 20 July 2010 to validate the Guidelines for Innovation Partnerships formation.
• The third meeting was held in Dakar 2-3 December 2010 to validate the first year report and plan for the Year 2 activities.
• The fourth meeting took place in Accra on 5-7 October 2011 to agree on the innovation partnerships process and other bottlenecks. The meeting did not deeply discuss the planning and financial issues. Members decided to call another meeting in December. Participants agreed on the dates of 6 and 7th December 2011 in Montpellier (France).

The main objective of the MTM is to validate a common planning for year3 and the related budget of the Project. This comprises:
• Administrative issues
- Implementation of the Year 3 work plan and the budget
- Amendment/revision of the budget
- The reports for year2 (deadline for report and supporting documents)
• Next Steering Committee meeting: time and venue?
• AOB

AGRICULTURAL R&D: INVESTING IN AFRICA’S FUTURE

05-Dec-2011 to 07-Dec-2011. ASTI, together with the International Food Policy Report Institute (IFPRI), where ASTI is based, and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), convened a conference on agricultural R&D in Africa.

The conference focused on the following themes:

• Theme 1. Why do African Governments Underinvest in Agricultural R&D?
• Theme 2. Human Resource Development for Agricultural R&D
• Theme 3. Measuring and Improving the Effectiveness of R&D Systems
• Theme 4. Aligning and Rationalizing Institutional Structures of Agricultural R&D

Conference Objectives: Agricultural R&D: Investing in Africa’s Future 5-7 December 2011

View more presentations from ASTI

Brussels Briefing: Food price volatility

30 November 2011. CTA in partnership with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the European Commission (DG DEVCO) the ACP Secretariat, Concord and various other partners discussed the main challenges in food price volatility and give a summary of the key policy issues discussed at the G20 meeting which have implications for ACP countries.

It focused on the effects of food price volatility on the ground by bringing various experiences from different actors. The new Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) was one of the key items discussed

Among the speakers were Hafez Ghanem, deputy director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Máximo Torero, Director of the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division in the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Mamadou Cissokho from the Réseau des Organisations paysannes et de Producteurs de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (ROPPA), Chris Moore from United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), representatives of the French and Mexican governments and others.

Tutorial Letak Facebook Like Badge Masa Blog Dibuka

Facebook dan blogger adalah kombinasi yang agak bagus. Dengan adanya facebook page, blogger dapat berinteraksi dengan pengunjung. Salah satu penggunaan yang cool adalah dengan meletakkan facebook like badge semasa blog anda dibuka.

Secara tidak langsung dapat menggalakkan pengunjung blog anda untuk pada masa yang sama 'like' pada page anda.

Contoh seperti dibawah

Anda juga boleh melihat demo di test blog ini.

Tutorial letak facebook like badge semasa blog dibuka seperti dibawah.

1. Dari dashboard > design > edit HTML

2. Backup template blog sebagai langkah berjaga²

3. Dengan menggunakan fungsi find (ctrl + F), cari kod <body>
3.1 Jika anda tidak jumpa code <body>, cari kod ini
<body expr:class='&quot;loading&quot; + data:blog.mobileClass'>

4. Copy dan paste code di bawah selepas kod yang anda jumpa di langkah 3 atau 3.1

<!-- KakiNetwork.Com Likebox Pro FBFan Code Start -->
<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
KNFBFansPRO='OhBest'
//]]>
</script>
<link href='http://kakinetwork.com/sources/fbfans-pro/kakinetwork.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>
<script src='https://sites.google.com/site/unwanted86/javascript/jquery.js' type='text/javascript'/>
<script src='http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1' type='text/javascript'/>
<script src='https://sites.google.com/site/unwanted86/javascript/kakinetwork.js' type='text/javascript'/>
<script language='javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
$(document).ready(function(){
$().KNFBFansPRO({
timeout: 15,
wait: 0,
url: 'http://www.facebook.com/OhBest',
closeable: true,
});
});
//]]>
</script>
<div id='fbtpdiv'/>
<!-- KakiNetwork.Com Likebox Pro FBFan Code End -->

Contoh:




NOTA:
i) Gantikan 'OhBest' pada row KNFBFansPRO='OhBest' dengan nama yang anda mahu.
ii)Gantikan '15' pada row 'timeout: 15,' dengan masa paparan yang anda mahu semasa blog dibuka
iii) Gantikan dengan url page anda pada row url: 'http://www.facebook.com/OhBest',

5. Save dah lihat hasilnya.:)


Kredit: Terima kasih kepada kakinetwork.com untuk code yang sungguh cool ini.