The Africa Centre of Excellence in Agricultural Development and Sustainable Environment (CEADESE) of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State, recently organised a three-day capacity building workshop on Agricultural Information Systems Development, for students of the Centre.
In a keynote speech, Project Director of CAVA II (Cassava Adding Value for Africa), Professor Kolawole Adebayo, stated that there was a large body of data available to people in agriculture and agro-allied enterprises, on topics ranging from agricultural production to processing, marketing, logistics of managing the movement of goods and services in agriculture, exportation and international trading in agriculture, extension services as well as research. This data, which was in several distinct units, he said, needed to be processed into valuable information. He cautioned against scattering and abuse of data, to avoid sending incoherent messages.
Professor Adebayo congratulated participants for the opportunity to launch themselves into the emerging trend of modern agricultural enterprises management in an information era. He expressed pleasure at the Centre’s progress in incorporating information management into agriculture, adding that the present day agricultural value chain differed significantly from traditional agricultural practices because of the central role of information. According to him, “If you are able to transact e-businesses in agriculture, you are better off than those who can only do cash businesses.”
Professor Adebayo described the e-wallet as an Information and Communications Technology-based mechanism, which allows farmers to acquire inputs and governments to target subsidy end users. He noted that the agricultural value chain required information to function, as the emergence of ICT in the agricultural sector had created new actors in the chain. These new actors needed to be known to individuals, not only about agriculture and agricultural practices, but also about the use of information, to maximise opportunities that agriculture offered.
Delivering a paper titled, Introduction to Information Systems Development: Application to Agriculture, Professor Olusegun Folorunso of the University’s Department of Computer Science, stated that information services should be made available in all regional languages and at the farmers’ doorsteps. He stressed that there should be a change in mind-set, to motivate people towards the building of a comprehensive database and information systems for the farming community.
Professor Folorunso stated that the development and implementation of proper early warning systems, advisory services, as well as the development of expert systems on what to grow, when and where; would enhance agricultural productivity. He emphasised the need to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice, with the deployment of ICT, for sustainable use of natural resources and linkages between research, technology and production, adding that reliable and comprehensive information, should be easily accessible to everyone.
In another lecture titled, Ethical and Societal Issues in Agricultural Information Systems, Professor Folorunso described agricultural information systems as uniquely positioned to capture, store, process and communicate timely information to decision-makers, for better coordination of agricultural systems.
Earlier, in his remarks, the Centre Leader/Director of CEADESE, Professor Okanlawon Onagbesan, stated that the days were gone “when people simply sit in laboratories to formulate research and publish papers for promotion.” According to him, for research activities to have maximum impact, it was important to ascertain the needs of industry and, subsequently, channel research efforts to those needs, for maximum impact.
Professor Onagbesan disclosed that CEADESE was set up to bridge the gap between researchers and industry. The workshop, on the other hand, was aimed at exposing researchers to methodologies for data collection and processing, in order to make them more useful, not only to themselves, but also, to government and industry. He added that there would be four more workshops before the end of the year, which would be open to all CEADESE students. He wished the students a successful academic session.
The workshop was attended by 84 participants, 30 of who were female. Resource persons were drawn from the fields of Agriculture, Statistics, Computer Science and ICT and covered a wide spectrum of topics, such as Agricultural Systems; Introduction to Information Systems Development: Application to Agriculture; Principles of Data Manipulation & Information Analysis, using MS-Excel and Data Analysis, using R/SPSS with practical session. Other topics include, Information Storage and Retrieval on (DBMS) using MS Access with practical session, Principles of Information Dissemination and Feedback Mechanisms using ICT Resources (Network, Internet, Web 2.0, DropBox), Ethical and Societal Issues in Agricultural Information Systems Development in relation to security issues, copyright infringement, plagiarism, copyright transfer, etc.