FAO chief urges emphasizes need for inclusive digital innovation

It’s time to accelerate innovation in agriculture and to do so in a way that aspires to make a difference to hundreds of millions of people who produce the bulk of the world’s food on family farms, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said.

“FAO is working with digital innovations, providing new inputs for farmers in rural areas. We need good governance and the right policies to support that, therefore FAO also helps countries access these new technologies to foster digitalization in agriculture,” he told agriculture ministers from more than 70 countries and officials from organizations including the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the African Development Bank, gathered for a high-level meeting in Berlin.

Assuring that transformative digital technologies leave no one behind means finding ways to allow rural smallholders, including young people, to tap into them, boost their productivity and improve their market access, he told the officials attending the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture, which this year focused on the potential of digital technology’s contributing to the future of farming.

Digital technologies allow “scale without mass”, which can enhance smallholders’ access to markets, which is fundamental, he said.

FAO has been promoting the development of digital solutions that can be easily, cheaply and sustainably localized, and in particular is focused on areas such as extension services, meteorological information, pest and disease control, market information, insurance, natural resource management and social protection programmes. Investments that involve youth – as engaged actors rather than only as beneficiaries – is essential, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where population and food needs are growing fast, Graziano da Silva added.

FAO’s Director-General also announced that FAO, with the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Bank, will start preparing a technical impact assessment on what countries are doing in digitalization, to inform policymakers of the task ahead.

Original source: FAO
Published on 19 January 2019