Call for Proposals: 14th World Congress of the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD)

The 14th IAALD World Congress programming committee is seeking proposals for papers, posters and interactive workshops. This year’s conference, Emerging Priorities for Scientific and Agricultural Information," will be held July 22-24, 2013 at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Submissions are due by December 1st, 2012.

Papers and Posters: Those wishing to present a paper or a poster should submit an abstract in English (maximum 300 words) online at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iaald13 (new users of the EasyChair software program will need to sign up for a free account).

Proposals should be tagged with at least two and up to five keywords from the provided tags. At least three additional author keywords are also required.

Interactive Workshops: The programming committee is also interested in hearing proposals for 2 hour hands-on workshops to be given at the conference. If you have expertise on a topic you think would benefit conference attendees and would like to lead a workshop, please submit a description in English (maximum 300 words) online at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iaald13 (new users of the EasyChair software program will need to sign up for a free account).

Authors will be informed of decisions on their proposals by January 15, 2013. All authors will be expected to give their papers, posters, and workshops in person at the IAALD World Congress. Scholarship information will be forthcoming.

Questions? Please email Jim Morris-Knower at iaald@cornell.edu

Plans progressing for next IAALD World Congress to be held in 2013

The XIVth IAALD World Congress will be held at Cornell University July 22-24, 2013 in Ithaca, New York USA.

Plans are progressing for the conference and registration information will be available by the end of the summer.  To follow the development of the conference go the the website . Questions can be directed to the conference committee.  Watch this interview with  Jaron Porciello, conference chair.

A more affordable Essential Electronic Agricultural Library

Speaking at the recent IAALD Africa conference, TEEAL Project Director Jaron Porciello explains the new pricing policy for TEEAL.

The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library - TEEAL - is a full-text digital library of 149 agricultural journals made available at low cost to universities, agricultural research organizations and government ministries in eligible low-income countries.

She also outlines a CTA-supported initiative to make TEEAL available to institutions in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

AgInfo systems as pathways out of rural poverty

Last year Cornell University and partners put together a 'WorldAginfo' Design Team to test the premise that "new collaborative information technologies offer an exciting opportunity to transform agricultural education and information systems in Asia and Africa."

The Team was charged by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to explore the landscape of agricultural education and information systems in Asia and Africa, and to come up with "a set of recommendations for areas of investment that have the potential to improve the lives of smallholders through better access to agricultural education, training and information."

The 300+ page report - entitled Building Pathways out of Rural Poverty through Investments in Agricultural Information Systems - is now available online. It provides a summary of the activities undertaken and recommendations for areas of investment.

As the report authors point out, the "scope of this project was vast, covering two continents, multiple stakeholders all along the agricultural information chain, and all aspects of agricultural information from soil fertility to marketing mangoes."

They conclude that "while many factors affect the productivity and overall success of smallholder farmers, it is clear that lack of access to agricultural information presents one of the important barriers. It is also clear that there are many creative and innovative initiatives already underway, so there is ample opportunity to have impact by building on ongoing success stories as well as experimenting with new approaches."

The wide ranging process - literature reviews, surveys, site visits, workshops - generated 12 main proposals. These have some common themes and principles:

• The content, value, and quality of information and knowledge are not improved just because information is offered in multimedia or over the Internet. The importance of quality control is almost more critical the more accessible and ubiquitous information becomes.


• Building in extensive feedback mechanisms at all levels from all sources is critical. This can help address the issue of quality control and strengthen the smallholder voice.


• It is important to enable smallholder access to a wide range of support systems so that as many men and women farmers as possible are reached.


• Many of the proposals cite programs that are already making a difference, and could offer a model or potential partner for future collaboration. Investments should capitalize on existing successful programs and innovative organizations, rather then reinventing the wheel.

It is not known whether the Gates Foundation will invest in these areas. Nevertheless the report brings together an immense amount of experience and information, and it highlights and examines many of the areas where ICTs can - and are - making a difference to small holder agriculture. Including, for example, market information systems, working with community knowledge workers, multimedia instruction, collaborative content generation, access to literature, mobile phones, and community radio.

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Pathways out of Poverty - WorldAgInfo Zambia workshop kicks off

Livingstone, Zambia, 12 November: The second workshop of the WorldAginfo Project (www.worldaginfo.org) began today with introductions to ‘new agriculture’ and initial discussions around the various project ideas developed in the earlier workshop at Cornell.

Drawing on the new World Development Report, John Staatz of Michigan State University started with an Africa-oriented analysis of potential ‘pathways out of poverty in the new agriculture.’ According to Staatz: “Done right, agriculture can play a very important role in reducing poverty” – by addressing the needs of the 75% of the world’s poor people who live in rural areas.

He highlighted two sets of actions (pathways out of poverty): those leading to broad-based productivity increases; and productivity increases arising from the integration of farmers into broader economic systems and into broader (world) knowledge and information systems.

He emphasized that the pathways need to address the great diversity of smallholders. He distinguished between different categories of smallholders: those that are already commercial, those that are potentially commercial, and subsistence types who need to move out of farming to something else.

For the very smallest (those with less than two hectares) “it’s difficult to see how these smallholders will be able to farm their way out of poverty.” According to Staatz, they will need information on risk-reducing technologies, information on non-farm opportunities, and ‘education to escape.’

With these challenges in mind, participants in the ‘WorldAginfo’ workshop are meeting in Zambia to devise concrete projects that can help give voice and access to smallholder farmers and their support networks by designing community based agricultural education and information systems.

The World Agricultural Information Systems Project has been tasked by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to identify priority information needs of smallholders; explore the potential applications of new technologies to give access to up to date and relevant information to smallholders; and understand the context in which they operate. The Zambia workshop follows an earlier workshop at Cornell and site visits to India, Mali, Sri Lanka, and Zambia.

Participants are working in small groups to flesh out viable projects in a number of areas:

1. A ‘collaborative online massive agricultural information system to disperse information to different stakeholders.’

2. Market information systems

3. Access to scientific literature

4. Rebuilding agricultural universities for the 21st century

5. Radio as a tool for agricultural education

6. Beyond text based systems for information dissemination and exchange

7. Harvesting the potential of cell phones

8. Mobilising community knowledge workers

contributed by Peter Ballantyne

Tags: agricultural information africa ICT

WorldAgInfo 2007: International Symposium on Agricultural Education and Information Systems

The first of two workshops by the 'WorldAginfo' project was held at Cornell University from September 30-October 3, 2007.

The overall purpose is to explore and recommend support strategies (i.e. what can shift the system) for small-holder farmers in Africa and South Asia which may be funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others in the next decade. The first workshop focused on knowledge systems and included reports on site visits, background document literature reviews, short presentations followed by break-out group discussions, and fourpointer groups to synthesize learnings and suggest specific strategies while considering sustainability and scalability issues.

Suggestions included: developing radio programs using local people but associated with universities, strengthening farmer-to-farmer extension and training community knowledge workers, building national and regional market systems, training women as knowledge intermediaries, and supporting development of relevant local content for an “Ag Universe” repository.

Themes identified for further consideration were: (1) empowerment of village knowledge workers and women, (2) access and connectivity (radio and mobile phones); (3) information repositories (with local market and weather information); (4) a “new” agricultural university (with revamped curriculum, ability to respond rapidly to change, and close linkages with rural communities); (5) diversified and sustainable income models; (6) social network enhancement (cooperatives, radio forums, non-formal education); (7) global integration of knowledge and practice; (8) modular, real-time information; (9) new models of extension brokers linked to research/universities; and (10) digital knowledge access (capture of grey literature and local knowledge using Web 2.0 technologies).

A second workshop, to be held 11-16 November, will look at potential transformative delivery systems such as smart phones and PDAs, E-book devices, TV and radio broadcasts, and personal computers.

contributed by Barbara Hutchinson

Tags: agricultural information africa asia

World Aginfo Project examines agricultural knowledge development and sharing in Africa and Asia

Cornell University, on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is implementing a project to explore the potentially transformative benefit of developing more collaborative and community-based information systems to support African and Asian agricultural education and extension.

The World Ag Info Project comprises two inter-related workshops. The first, to be held October 2007 at Cornell University, will focus on content and will bring together agricultural researchers, educators, and practitioners to identify the information needs of African and Asian smallholder producers and those who support them. A second workshop, to be held in Zambia in November 2007, will bring together information/educational technology experts who will explore the possibility of using innovative new technologies to deliver an enhanced agricultural curriculum.

Workshop participants will determine how feasible it might be to establish coordinated, localized programs for the alternative generation and delivery of real-time information for the benefit of small-scale agriculture in Asia and Africa. The overarching goal of the project is to offer guidance to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in formulating a strategy for advancing agricultural knowledge development and sharing in Africa and Asia.

Tags: agricultural information africa asia

Creating a Virtual Life Sciences Community at Cornell

An article in the D-Lib Magazine introduces VIVO (http://vivo.library.cornell.edu) - a virtual life sciences community that organizes and presents information on people, research, and education activities at Cornell University.

Tags: agricultural information usa cornell