The study presented in this report was commissioned by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) as a member of the Global Open Data for Agriculture & Nutrition (GODAN) initiative, and was conducted by SB Consulting (SBC4D). The objective of the research is to understand the role of farmer organisations (FO) and cooperatives in the agriculture data ecosystem. These organisations have long been recognised to play an important role in society that translates into the improvement of living conditions of their members, particularly the low-income earning population. More than 40% of households in Africa are member of a cooperative society ([ILO-2000]) and the cooperative movement is Africa’s biggest nongovernmental organisation. The key question this report explores is the role of these organisations in the emergent “data revolution.” How can they ensure that this data revolution benefits their members and the smallholder farmers in general, and at the same time contribute to the revolution by providing valuable information to policy makers or other stakeholders of the ecosystem?

More than 500 million smallholder farms worldwide play a significant role in food production and the genetic diversity of the food supply. Until now, it has been difficult to get information to or from smallholder farmers, compounding basic infrastructural problems such as access to inputs, markets, financing, and training. The spread of mobile technology, remote-sensing data, and distributed computing and storage capabilities are opening new opportunities to integrate smallholder farmers into the broader agri-food system. The scale of these changes holds out the potential for another agricultural revolution.

This book aims to strengthen the skills of professionals who use, manage data for the benefit of farmers and farmers organizations by exposing them to the topics of importance of data in the agriculture value chain and how new and existing technologies, products and services can leverage farm level and global data to improve yield, reduce loss, add value and increase profitability and resilience.

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is recognized as critically important for tracking progress, whether it serves the purpose of accountability to donors, informs future improvements to CSA practices, or contributes to the aggregate global progress toward meeting the SDGs or the global stocktake under the Paris Agreement. There has been a growing chorus acknowledging the need to align the indicators and M&E frameworks of major donors with those of the three global agreements. Monitoring and reporting has begun on the SDGs, although the development of methodologies for various indicators is an evolving process. The development of specific indicators for the agriculture sector is also well underway for the Sendai Framework. The organizations conducting this work have recognized the need to streamline these processes. For example, they have already attempted to align several of the indicators between the SDGs and the Sendai Framework.These operational guidelines aim to address the core constraints and needs of FAO Member States on both the design and implementation of M&E systems that can simultaneously address CSA and sector reporting requirements for the 2030 Agenda, the Sendai Framework and the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. First and foremost, the guidelines acknowledge the principal need expressed by Member States that M&E systems and indicators be simple and not onerous. The challenges that have always existed with regard to M&E for CSA are still present, and are particularly pronounced for pillar 2, adaptation and resilience. These challenges to the development of indicators for pillar 2 have exhibited the greatest need for attention.

Abstract: Food and agriculture is Ohio' most important industry and at the heart of that industry is the business of cattle farming. While the size of this industry in Ohio is large, a significant percentage of the farms are small family-owned and run. These farms typically hover closely around the line that separates profitable farms from those that lose money. Using principles from the Balanced Scorecard, a management technique new to the farming industry, and the appropriate use of technology, we seek to assist farmers in making better day-to-day management decisions for their farms with the expectation that this micro-level approach to managing will tip the balance towards profitability. Inherent to management is the process of data collection. Farmers need to collect data while they work, and to do that, data collection software must be intuitive, user friendly, and fit into the process of the workflow. Further, farming is a technology-unfriendly environment. In response to these requirements, we have built a Personal Data Assistant (PDA)-based mobile, handheld application specifically designed for farm management. This technology will facilitate the process of collecting and analyzing data for farmers. Consequently, they will be able to make more accurate management decisions about the farm in real-time as they work. The application has been designed for easy use and is unobtrusively integrated into the farmer' environment and workflow. In addition to considering usability and human-computing interface issues with such a management application, the overall architecture, was also considered. Recognizing that management is a common function across the domain of small farms, the objective was to design an extensible architecture that would lend itself to building micro-management applications for other farm operations.

A joint FAO and World Bank study which shows how the farming systems approach can be used to identify priorities for the reduction of hunger and poverty in the main farming systems of the six major developing regions of the world.