Open data vital in alleviating agricultural challenges: CS Bett

Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Willy Bett in a past function. He called for opening up and availing useful data to assist in addressing recurrent agricultural challenges during the recently concluded Global open data for agriculture and nutrition forum. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Information ranging from climate and rainfall patterns, droughts, trends in crop pests and diseases to the number of farmers in a particular area should be put in the public domain so that it is easy to access.
  • Open data is crucial in modernising food systems and governments in particular should strive to make it accessible especially to the smallholder farmers.
  • Godan is an initiative that supports the proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the urgent challenge of ensuring world food security, focusing on building high-level support among governments, policy makers, international organisations and businesses.

CHALLENGES such as famine can be avoided if requisite data from the various government departments is made available to farmers, according to the Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Willy Bett.

Speaking during the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (Godan) forum at the Ministerial Conference on Agriculture and Nutrition Data and the Fourth Agritec Africa International Exhibition, Mr Bett said big volume of agriculture-worthy data sits idly in different forms and it is prudent that the information be transformed into usable form and disseminated to the public so that farmers can access and use it to make important agricultural decisions.

“Information ranging from climate and rainfall patterns, droughts, trends in crop pests and diseases to the number of farmers in a particular area should be put in the public domain so that it is easy to access it and facilitate decision-making,” he said, adding that as challenges become increase, there is an urgent need for more open data.

Speaking during the forum, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics director general David Bergvinson stressed the use of open data in strengthening resilience and food security for farming communities.

“Open data is crucial in modernising food systems and governments in particular should strive to make it accessible especially to the smallholder farmers,” he said.

Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Fisheries and Blue Economy Prof Ntiba Micheni called for the adoption of a culture of discussing issues and feeding it into ‘our resilience mechanisms’ and also investing more in capacity building, with emphasis on information gathering, analysing and sharing.

“Data and information are important aspects in agriculture and as a government, it is vital that we constitute a framework that will work between the researching bodies and the consumers, who include the farmers, to ensure that findings from researches are interpreted well in a simple language and made available for farmers’ use,” said prof Micheni.

Also present was André Laperrière, the CEO of Godan, who further drew attention towards the importance of open data accessible by majority of people to enable better decision-making and avert calamities propagated by lack of factual information.

Godan is an initiative that supports the proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the urgent challenge of ensuring world food security, focusing on building high-level support among governments, policy makers, international organisations and businesses.