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Fertile Ground - Opportunities for greater coherence in agricultural information systems
| Source: | Hugo Besemer, Chris Addison, Julie Ferguson |
| Sector: | | |
This study examines the current landscape of Internet-based agricultural information services, to identify gaps and inconsistancies, and to suggest avenues for bringing greater coherence to the system as a whole.
This report looks at the issue of coherence among agricultural
information services from three perspectives:
- Service providers - institutions providing development-oriented
information services in the agriculture sector;
- Agriculture stakeholders in the South - information workers
addressing the needs of the main clients for the services provided,
such as extension workers, researchers and policymakers;
- Donors - providing financial support to many of the major agricultural information services and systems.
What emerges is a picture of an overall system in which there are striking gaps, areas of inefficiency, and duplications, as well as a certain mismatch between the information needs of the South and what is being provided by the current donor-supported services. To address these issues, the authors suggest both practical and policy-oriented actions that all three stakeholder groups can take to ensure a more coherent approach to matching supply and demand. Technical options for ensuring greater flexibility in mixing and matching information from different sources are explored in some detail.
The survey and analysis as well as the recommendations presented in this report were verified in a stakeholder workshop hosted by the United Kingdom Department for International Development in London, June 2003.
