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

1. AGCommons
AGCommons Program
Why, what and when
Enrica M. Porcari
Chief Information Officer, CGIAR
Chair, AGCommons Steering committee
Nairobi, April 2nd 2009

2. AGCommons
Mission:
“Improve incomes of
mprove incomes of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa through location intelligence.quot;
Improveincomes of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa through location intelligence.quot;
smallholder farmers in
Sub-Saharan Africa
through location
intelligence”

3. AGCommons: why?
 Kenyan farmer Mary relies on her own instincts to decide
which crops to plant or when to harvest.
 A farm’s location greatly affects its chance for success and
productivity;
 Local farmers do not have access to location-specific
information about their farm’s area:
–soils
–the best crops
–the most appropriate farming techniques
–which markets are offering the most competitive prices
 Like more than 70 percent of rural Africans who live in
poverty, Mary depends on agriculture for her family’s food
and livelihood

4. Key Challenges to Success
 Key challenges to effectively reach farmer
Mary
– Accessibility – technical, political, cultural constraints
– Affordability
– Enabling the field role: dissemination and collection - two-
way data flow
– Change in focus from input / data to output / analysis /
users’ needs
– Engage key-user groups

5. AGCommons what?
“ensure availability of and access to relevant,
timely, and targeted knowledge that
leverages information about the “spatial”
context of agriculture “
So Mary can take more informed decisions…

6. AGCommons how?
Phase I (through end 2009):
 Engagement
– Engage a community of Stakeholder
– Focus on end-user requirements
– Ensure diversity of perspectives
– Cooperation and buy-in on program goals
 Outreach plan
– East and West Africa
– Nairobi meeting
– Workshop in Rome and Washington DC

7. AGCommons how?
Phase I (through end 2009):
 Contribute to commonly accessible Geo-ICT
infrastructure to enable interoperability and
sharing of data and analyses
– Service-oriented, not technology driven
 Scan environment: avoid duplications,
ensuring synergies (IWMI)

8. AGCommons how?
 QuickWin Projects:
– Nodes of growth: Improving legume seed networks in Kenya -
CIAT-Africa
– Seeing Is Believing: unlocking precision agriculture in West
African smallholder communities with very high resolution
imagery – ICRISAT
– Roads Data Development in Ethiopia - NASA (SEDAC)
– Community Level Crop Disease Surveillance - Grameen
Foundation
– Africa Trial Sites Catalogue: Reaching out to farmers,
agronomists and plant breeders with spatially efficient,
participatory testing networks - CGIAR

9. AGCommons who?
 Steering Committee
Enrica Porcari - Chair (CGIAR) Laurent Gouinde Sedogo, PhD
Minister of Agriculture, Water and
Srikant Vasan, BMGF
Fisheries of the Republic of Burkina
Stanley Wood, IFPRI/CGIAR
Faso
Kate Lance, NASA
Olajide Kufoniyi, PhD, Obafemi
Peter Ndunda, The Green Belt
Awolowo University in Nigeria
Movement
Jos Bakker, ARCADIS
Jeff Tschirley, FAO
 CGIAR, Program Coordinator
 CH2MHill and ITC, Implementation Team

10. What we’d like to hear…
 Your “big ideas” to design Phase II
– How to best achieve farmer impact quickly
– What can we contribute?
– Achieving sustained stakeholder engagement
(we cannot do this alone!)

11. Thank you!
www.agcommons.org