Digital technologies are making a significant contribution to higher agricultural yields, sustainable development, the establishment of supply chain links, and irrigation, traceability and certification.
San Jose, 25 May 2021 (IICA) – The digital agriculture revolution that is transforming the agriculture sector is crucial to strengthening agrifood systems. Extending it to include smallholders and cooperatives calls for robust public policies that incorporate skills development, so that rural populations can tap all the advantages it offers.
These were some of the points on which the participants reached agreement in the forum “The digitalization of agriculture as a determining factor in the transformation of food systems: A perspective from the Americas.” Organized by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) in the run-up to the UN Food Systems Summit, the event brought together nearly one hundred experts.
“Digital agriculture strengthens agrifood systems and it is important to make its resources available to small farmers who are being bypassed by development, since almost 70% of rural inhabitants do not have adequate connectivity and fewer than 20% possess the basic skills required to use digital technologies,” commented IICA Director General Manuel Otero in his opening remarks to the forum.
The head of the international organization specializing in agriculture and rural development underscored digital agriculture’s potential for bridging gaps in productivity and achieving the inclusion of young people and women in rural areas. He cited data contained in recent studies carried out by IICA and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Microsoft, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Oxford University, which highlighted glaring gaps in rural connectivity in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the need for digital skills development.
In the same vein, IICA Digital Agriculture specialist Federico Bert explained the importance of introducing digitalization into agricultural production, suggesting that “all the potential benefits of applied digital technologies can facilitate integration, provided care is taken not to generate exclusion and inequalities.”
Bert, who prepared the introductory report that served as the basis for the discussions of the four working groups into which the forum was divided, emphasized the role played by digital technologies in increasing agricultural yields, in achieving sustainable development, in linking supply chains, and in irrigation, traceability and certification, among others.
“Digital agriculture, in a more general sense, can facilitate cooperation and interaction among farmers, and among different stakeholders in value chains, thereby contributing to the promotion of equitable livelihoods, and to all the platforms for coordinating cooperation”, he remarked.
However, he also suggested that integration and interaction processes of this kind “can become a real threat if farmers do not have access to, or are unable to make full use, of such technologies.”
For these reasons, he advocated working to overcome the limited access to technologies in rural areas, a task in which public policies have a key role to play, while continuing to help farmers acquire the skills and abilities they need if they are to take full advantage of digital technologies.
To ensure that the benefits of digital agriculture are spread more widely, Bert emphasized the need to “develop concrete agendas with concrete objectives designed to promote digitalization and training [for farmers] in generic and specific digital skills.”
The discussions in the working groups expanded upon these recommendations, and underlined the importance of creating simple digital tools that do not require very complex training for producers to be able to use them, said Jorge Cordone, manager of the Federation of Cooperatives of Paraguay, comprised of 35 cooperatives.
“Technological tools must be accessible, even designed so they can be used off line and then, when Internet access is available, all the files needed to use them can be downloaded,” he explained.
Other participants, such as Luis Marcano, of Venezuela’s Fundación Servicio para el Agricultor (Fusagri), also mentioned Internet connectivity as a priority.
“Strengthening agricultural extension systems could be a dynamic, inclusive way of advancing digitalization in agriculture, just as the pandemic has spurred global society to take ownership of digital technologies,” Marcano observed.
As well as other experts present, he emphasized the need to prioritize training in order to increase the areas where digital agriculture is carried out. That, in turn, would boost literacy programs in rural areas, and the public sector and international agencies should support those efforts, he added.
On the same subject, Gabriel Girghitella, of Argentina’s CREA -a not-for-profit organization comprised of, and run by, agricultural entrepreneurs who meet in groups to share experiences and knowledge-, drew attention to the existence of a “large number of producers who do not even know what digital solutions are available.”
“Hence the need to publicize the entire supply of digital solutions available, and focus on tried and tested solutions that can offer us something concrete, and carefully analyze the contexts in which those solutions are applied,” he remarked.
He also emphasized the role of training, in particular of young people, and the participation of women in the process of digitalizing agriculture, combining such tasks with the efforts to reclaim “the ancestral wisdom and knowledge found in many production systems and among communities of producers that must not be lost.”
Like Girghitella, Marcano and Cordone, who presented information for the discussions in their respective working groups, the Chilean consultant and specialist in small-scale agriculture, Lorena Romero, underscored the problem of insufficient Internet access or connectivity, which had to be overcome to make the development of digital agriculture possible.
Romero introduced the subject of the development of international e-commerce, as Bert had mentioned in his introduction, pointing out that it was a key element of the digital culture that must be developed in agrifood systems.
In winding up the event, IICA’s Director of Technical Cooperation, Federico Villarreal, summed up the conclusions regarding some of the topics addressed in the working groups.
Among others, he mentioned the need to make headway with digital literacy efforts, the inclusion of women, young people, and communities of ancestral peoples, in addition to the work with producers’ organizations to help develop technological devices for the advance of digital agriculture.
Villarreal stressed that clear communication of digital agriculture “is an equally important element in promoting the digitalization of rural cooperatives, something that was mentioned repeatedly in the discussions and which we consider fundamental.”
Institutional Communication Division
comunicacion.institucional@iica.int
