Presented by Srikant Vasan (BMGF) at the CGIAR-CSI Annual Meeting 2009: Mapping Our Future. March 31 - April 4, 2009, ILRI Campus, Nairobi, Kenya

1. AGCommons Overview
Srikant Vasan
Agricultural Development
Global Development Program
April 2, 2009
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2. Our goals, beliefs and approach to reduce rural poverty
Our goals
• Triple the income of 90MM smallholder households in South Asia and 60MM smallholder households in sub-Saharan Africa by 2025
• Halve child (below 3 years) under-nutrition worldwide by 2025
We believe… Theory of change model: dynamics of system transformation
1 • On-farm income is the primary change
determinant for our target populations, and
Increased
will drive reduced hunger and improved
off-farm
nutrition Leverage science and technology income
2 • There are four main levers to impact on-farm
income Improve farmer
– Science and technology productivity
Reduced food
– Farmer productivity
prices
– Market access
– Policy, Statistics and Advocacy
3 • Intervention sequencing matters – e.g.,
Increased
– Market access and farmer productivity on-farm
income
need to be addressed simultaneously
– Enablers such as infrastructure and policy
progress can be preconditions for success
Enable market
4 • Sustainable transformation at scale depends access for surplus
upon changing farmers’, governments’, non-
production
profits’ and the private sector’s incentives
and abilities to behave differently Build the enabling environment
(e.g., policy, infrastructure, extension)
5 • This approach supports impact through
secondary pathways out of poverty,
including:
– Increased off-farm income
– Reduced food prices Improved on-farm
– Improved on-farm consumption consumption
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3. How ICTs can help connect and empower a small farmer
Find out which truck driver will drive by her
Receive daily local weather reports on
Ask her community knowledge village tomorrow to pick up her maize, and
her phone & radio, so she knows when
worker how to combat the latest what the market lady at Ndola market will pay
to plant
for it per kilo – arrange for and pay for these
outbreak of black rot affecting her
cotton roots – he doesn’t know transactions over her cell phone
the answer, so he takes a picture
of her plant and sends it on to the
expert in Lusaka (via his cell
phone), who responds with
specific suggestions on what to
do within 24 hours
Listen to a call-in radio show where she can
ask questions about what crop to grow in the
summer season so she can maximize profits
Learn about planting techniques for
the seed she’s about to purchase
by watching a short video on her
Answer some quick questions for Farm Input
agro-dealer’s MP3 player which
Promotions Africa to enable them to design
contains over 500 other ‘how-to’
better fertilizer products for your region
clips
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4. Motivation for AGCommons
 Many disparate activities and programs – within BMGF and outside
» Data tends to stay at the source
» One-off, vertically integrated point solutions – ‘reinventing the wheel’
» Limited sharing and ‘loose coupling’
 Key challenges
» Stakeholder engagement – CSI, USAID, NASA, FAO…
» Technical / Operational
• Accessibility – technical, political, cultural constraints
• Interoperability
• Affordability
» Focus
• Enabling the field role (dissemination and collection / two-way data flow)
• Primary focus on input / data (vs. output / analysis / customers’ needs)
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5. AGCommons – What it is…
 Common approaches that will help create stakeholder buy-in
» Data sharing – standards, behavior norms, tools, hosting, distribution
» Relevant terms for new grant agreements
» Approach to interact with other related projects (BMGF and outside)
 Commonly accessible Geo-ICT infrastructure to enable
interoperability and sharing of data and analyses
» Standards, hosting, services, tools, meta-data portal, integration with
mobile telephony
 Deployment of prioritized projects with greatest impact on small
farmers
» 3-5 quick wins: available by early 2010
» Phase 2 projects: available by 2011
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6. What AGCommons is not…
 Comprehensive
» Other projects will continue. Focus on few high value projects +
interoperability
 Single platform
» Need service-oriented ways to connect with other projects / data sources
 Technology only
» Deliver specific solutions (often combine tech, political, cultural factors)
 Design only
» Design + deployment
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7. What I’m hear to learn more about…
 How can we best achieve farmer impact quickly
 Where are the biggest needs and opportunities
 How can we best enable field interaction
 How can we engage other stakeholders to build a movement
 What business models will best sustain project investments
» What do plans of industry leaders (e.g. Google, ESRI, Microsoft) mean
for us – what is our unique role
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