Two African Countries Among Those Partnering in Massive Agricultural Data Collection Project
Two countries in Sub-Saharan Africa will be among those that are to pilot a USD 15 million agreement between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and FAO aimed at boosting the capacity of developing countries to track key agricultural data -information that is essential to good policymaking and that will help track progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The USAID donation will cover the first phase of an FAO-led project that will run from 2016 to 2021.
The AGRIS methodology will not only capture improved annual data on agricultural production, but also broader and more detailed structural information relating to farms, including employment, machinery use, production costs, farming practices, and environmental impacts.
It will incorporate recent innovations like remote sensing, GPS, mobile technology and various uses of “big data.” These tools will introduce more objective approaches to measuring agricultural performance, in some cases replacing traditional, more expensive methods.
Neil Palmer/CIAT