Agriculture and Climate change: The use of ICT in new agriculture
The introduction of new technologies in agriculture must be accompanied by the development of new capabilities that are required by farmers for their management and the development of conditions that allow access to them, such as internet, broadband, cell phone or cloud computing .
In addition to training and access, the dissemination of experiences with successful results in the application of these new technologies should be improved. It is also important to strengthen cooperation to facilitate the transfer of knowledge regarding the use of these new technologies.
These new technologies can be fundamental in the knowledge of important dynamics for the mitigation and adaptation of agriculture to climate change; for example, relationship with associated crops; combined effects on the performance of the interaction between higher temperatures and higher atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide; dynamics of agro-ecosystem services; Prospective of future crops with potential for consumption, from products already consumed; Complementation of traditional knowledge in adapting varieties to different soil conditions, height and temperature; modeling scenarios of current and future productive potential in the face of different scenarios that combine climate and soil information; improve knowledge about the behavior of plants, animals, pests and diseases and how they react to climate change; among others.
What are the TIC?
Information and communication technologies, ICT, are developed from the scientific advances produced in the fields of information technology and telecommunications. Specifically, they are the set of technologies that allow access, production, treatment and communication of information presented in different codes, such as text, image or sound and its most representative elements are computing, cell phone and Internet.
ICTs are one of the pillars of the current agricultural and food revolution. Being a set of general-purpose technologies, its applications in agriculture and in the food industry are multiple and address a wide range of areas across all links in the food chains. As in other productive sectors, ICTs in agricultural and food activities are transforming production processes, business strategies, business models, business relationships with consumers and organizational patterns of food production in the world.
From an agricultural perspective, the World Bank points out the following major areas in which ICTs contribute to the development of agriculture, with a special focus on smallholder agriculture:
- Improvement of productivity and income of producers
- Strengthening markets and agricultural institutions
- Improvement of agricultural services
- Link building in agricultural, regional and global value chains
In more detailed terms, the following ICT contributions can be added:
- Improvement of agricultural business management
- Facilitation of the constitution and management of networks and alliances of different natures and purposes
- Risk management and natural resources, especially water
- Development of traceability and food safety
- Timely access to quality information of different types: agro meteorological, market, policy, among others.
From an perspective of the food industry, an area that widely uses ICT is that of sale and consumption. These technologies are increasingly applied in the management of supply chains, especially in large food distribution chains; in the delivery of information, not only nutritional and functional food, but also related to the ways in which they were produced; in the purchase and sale, through electronic commerce; in the interactivity of products with consumers through the development of intelligent packaging, which can indicate among other things the best moment of consumption in products such as fruits or vegetables; and in the management of the domestic food stock. The sensors and nanosensors play a very important role in several of the aforementioned applications, highlighting above all the above mentioned the great contribution of ICT to the traceability of products.
Source: Martín Carrillo O. - Blueberries Consulting
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