Efficiency, sustainable and viable rural economy, and supportive governance are main impacts of open data in agriculture and nutrition

On 10th and 11th of November, the Government of The Netherlands, Ministry of Economic Affairs hosted the 2nd International Workshop ‘Creating Impact with Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition,’ which was well attended by about 75 representatives from government, private sector, research institutions and non-governmental organizations from mainly Europe and Africa.

Following the highly successful first workshop in January of this year, the Ministry organised the second international workshop jointly with GODAN and Wageningen University and Research. Find the edited Summary Report here (NEW).

Open data offers great opportunities for informed and transparent decision making and for developing a data driven economy

Participants worked intensively together in sessions unpacking the impacts of open data, supporting business innovation, and the priorities needed for action for the coming period for the broader community of open data in agriculture and nutrition.

Workshop Conclusions Impacts are best viewed  from the different points of views afforded to those in government, private sector, and civil society.

• For governments, the most desirable impacts lead to increased innovation in society, and governments are keen to see where they where it can be seen that  governments have played a demonstrable role in making this happen.

• For the private sector, open data is a way to operate in a more cost-efficient manner, either by reducing internal transaction cost of working with data or by improving decision making based on data.

• For civil society, impacts can take many forms, and mainly depend on the specific context in which open data has the opportunity to play a significant role; notably impacts are seen to arise from promoting a sustainable living environment for citizens and a viable rural economy.

Roads to success Participants also keenly discussed the roads to achieve these impacts from a range of  other perspectives: technology; best practices & organizational issues; and business innovation. There are very promising technological developments , which can be deployed in the sector for example, remote sensing, drones, semantic interoperability and data sharing agreements. Participants thought that these technologies are ready to be deployed, but in many cases require a thorough assessment to understand their market readiness. With respect to business innovations, participants proposed development of an innovation matrix of promising applications, either by applying existing solutions to new clients, or by developing more solutions for existing clients for open data. Such solutions need to be specifically scoped for open data in agriculture and nutrition.

From the perspective of best practices and organization, an assessment is needed of the current organizational capabilities within the community, and of the ways needed to fund organizsations in order to enhance their learning capacity and deal with (open) data in agriculture and nutrition. The need for more data scientists strongly emerged across discussions in the different working sessions.

Commitments Achieved:

Derek Scuffell from Syngenta announced an effort to scope the data ecosystem ahead of the GODAN Summit 2016 in September next year, through development of a discussion paper led by Syngenta and GODAN.

Malick Tapsoba from Burkina Faso Open data Initiative announced a workshop on 7 & 8 of December in Burkina Faso on impact of open data for agriculture and water. Finally, Francois van Schalkwyk of the World Wide Web Foundation announced an effort to open data on so called ‘wet mills’ for coffee and their locations to enable more efficiency in the value chain.

The workshop was closed by Andre Laperriere, Executive Director of the GODAN Secretariat and Ineke Lemmen from the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

They concluded the workshop had brought together a rich understanding of the next steps on the way to impact with open data in agriculture and nutrition, providing many relevant steps for the community. A full workshop report and the presentations will be available shortly online.

Go directly to the social media coverage on Storify, to the presentations or to additional images from the workshop. A report will be made available here soon.

Click here further information about the 1st workshop on ‘Creating Impact with Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition,’ from January 2015.

Storify:

Overview of presentations:

Day 1:

• Ben Schaap, GODAN Secretariat – Introduction: 2nd International Workshop ‘Creating Impact with Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition’
• Derek Scuffell, Syngenta – The Good Growth Plan and open data: an industry perspective
• Casper Sitemba, Government of Kenya – Creating impact with open data in agriculture and nutrition (Kenya)
• Stacie Irwin, VOTO Mobile (Ghana) – VOTO: making a case for mobiles
• Ben Schaap, GODAN Secretariat and Jacques Jansen, Wageningen UR – Framework for open data and impacts in agriculture and nutrition
• Carla Grashof, Wageningen UR – Set up and tasks for parallel workshops
• Eric Kumah-Baku, Ghana Open Data Initiative (GODI) – Open data in Ghana
• Mary Nakirya & Ednah Karamagi, BROSDI – Open data in Uganda
• Ramon de Louw, Ministry of Economic Affairs – The Dutch approach to open data
• Francois van Schalkwijk, World Wide Web Foundation – Open data: value chains and intermediaries
• Anne Bruinsma, HackwerkAdvies – Boer & Bunder
• Marieke de Ruyter de Wildt, AgriPlace – Introduction to AgriPlace
• Frido Hamoen, CRV – Dutch dairy sector and expectations from open data

Day 2:

• Sander Janssen, Wageningen UR – 2nd International Workshop: reflections from Day 1 and objectives for Day 2
• Adri Bakker, Netherlands Space Office – Bridging the last mile to  smallholder farmers
• Andre Laperriere, GODAN Secretariat – Reflections on open data in agriculture and nutrition
• Carla Grashof, Wageningen UR –  Set up and tasks for workshops
• Richard Finkers, Wageningen UR – Creating impact with accessible data in agriculture and nutrition: sharing data pre-competitive in public private partnerships
• Ruud van der Lem, Drone-Solutions – Advanced Precision Farming using modular remote sensing
• Nienke Beintema, IFPRI – Developing open data tools and portals: experiences with impact delivery
• Fiona Smith, Open Data Institute – Tools for improving data publication and use
• Juma Ngomuo, AgrInfo Tanzania – Google for agriculture information in Tanzania
• Jan Willem van Eck, ESRI Netherlands – Breaking barriers for open data
• Frans Lips, Ministry of Economic Affairs – Innovation with remote sensing data in The Netherlands