Articles
Blog articles
A declaration for the better use of West Africa’s agricultural open data
Government delegates from French-speaking African countries met to discuss the importance of open data in economic and social development.
Read MoreFarm data supports agricultural decision-making in Burundi
by Didier Muyiramye , Annick Sezibera and Chris Addison
The CTA-funded project, Monitoring Family Farms Within CAPAD Member Cooperatives, aims to improve agricultural product development and marketing activities through the trial and use of ICTs. These technical developments are intended to better support farmer members of the Confederation of Agricultural Producer Associations for Development (CAPAD), in Burundi.
Read MoreAccelerating open data policy formulation for agriculture’s transformation
by Chipo Msengezi , Jeanne Nel and Didier Muyiramye
Data is only be valuable if it can be accessed and used. Unfortunately, access to data is challenged in many countries by a lack of open data policies in many sectors of the economy – including agriculture.
Read MoreScaling up farmer organisation success
by Chris Addison , Isolina Boto and Jorge Chavez-Tafur
In September 2019, CTA held an experience capitalisation workshop around their partnership programme ‘Building the next generation of farmers in Africa’, highlighting four key areas of impact: advocacy, value chain, digitalisation and capitalisation.
Read MoreProfiling and drones for precise farming practices
by Didier Muyiramye , Athanase Birba , Chris Addison and Giacomo Rambaldi
CTA supports agricultural cooperatives and rural organisations in ACP countries, in conjunction with the Data4Ag project, in order to improve agricultural services by collecting and managing farming data. The AgriTIC project, along with the FEPA/B organisation in Burkina Faso, began in 2017 and has already profiled 2,000 farms.
Read MoreImpact Stories
Shaping agricultural policy and outcomes with open data
In collaboration with the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition project, CTA is identifying open data champions and enabling new policies on open data for agriculture and nutrition, with the aim of combatting global hunger.
Read MoreWomen-led agribusiness in Samoa reaches global markets
by Taaloga Apa , Isolina Boto , Chris Addison , Emil Jejov and Osseni Senou
Imagine a small women-led organisation in a remote Pacific island nation supplying products sold in more than 3,000 shops in 66 countries. Women in Business Development Incorporated (WIBDI), a non-profit organisation working with 1,000 farming families in Samoa is doing just that, and much more.
Read MoreAll Eyes on the Sky
Smallholders in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific are seeing their horizons broaden, as access to technology brings digital applications to agriculture. In Uganda, a project supported by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), has forged a partnership with Igara Tea Factory (IGTF) to transform cultivation through digital innovation.
Read MorePress release
EDD 2018: Panel highlights pathways to improve women’s access to ICT in agriculture
CTA leads debate at the European Development Days in Brussels
Read MoreICT Update
Data4Ag impacts for farmers and for policy
CTA’s Data4Ag project has introduced digital solutions in Africa to assist farmers’ organisations in registering their members to offer targeted agricultural services. Whilst impacts from the field have been impressive, questions have been raised around the collection and use of farmer data, and the need for policy development.
Read MoreThe impact of data collection for farmer organisations
by Martine Koopman and Claudia Ayim
In Uganda, CTA has been working with the Igara Tea Factory to digitally profile their farmer members and enhance their data management practices. In this piece, the impact of these activities for the individual farmers, and the cooperative as a whole, is assessed.
Read MoreWomen in business development in Samoa: Overcoming challenges by harnessing digital opportunities
Gillian Stewart of WIBDI shares how the organisation is leveraging ICTs to support an organic grower group of family farmers in Samoa, who rely on agricultural production to generate income and savings.
Read MoreCan access to data really transform agriculture for smallholders?
by Yanick Bakker , Jasmien Bronckaers , Fatma Ben Rejeb and Chris Addison
In order to feed 9 billion people by 2050, sustainable agricultural growth in needed, supporting an agricultural sector which produces enough food, which is inclusive and resilient, and which makes optimal use of innovation and digital solutions. Smallholder and family farmers must play a key role in achieving this. A 80% of the world’s food supply is produced by small-scale and family farmers, yet their full production potential is hardly reached.
Read MoreActions to turn the power of open data into real impact
by Sjoerd Croqué and Sander Janssen
At the third international workshop on the impact of open data for agriculture a new action agenda was discussed by a mix of organisations. They concluded that more focus is required on benefits for the less favoured actors, that open data should become a vehicle for multi-stakeholder collaborations, and that assessment of data driven organisational change is required.
Read MoreSpore
Profiling presents opportunities for smallholders

Aggregating information about farm location and production in farmer profiles helps companies to tailor their support for smallholders, but how can this data be securely managed and transferred to rural farmers for their benefit?
Read MorePublications
Data4Ag: Using data to transform smallholder farming
Digitalisation of agriculture is driving an exponential growth in the amount of data on agriculture being collected. This calls for new tools and approaches to gather, manage, analyse and use this data. CTA’s project, Data4Ag: Agricultural data systems to transform smallholder farming, focuses on transforming smallholder agriculture through the use of data management by agri-enterprises.
Read MoreLeveraging ICT innovations to support farmers and farmers’ organisations
by Stéphane Boyera and Chris Addison
The data revolution is helping us make better decisions in all areas of our lives, and farmers are no exception. However, the smallholder farmer is being left behind as more data applications are developed for commercial farming. There is a need to better empower smallholder farmers to leverage information and communications technology (ICT) innovations for greater productivity and efficiency.
Read MoreFarmer profiling: Making data work for smallholder farmers
by Stéphane Boyera , Chris Addison and Chipo Msengezi
The objective of this research is to understand the role of farmer organisations (FO) and cooperatives in the agriculture data ecosystem. It details for each stage of the crop cycle, the findings in terms of data use, needs, and challenges and contains a summary of the findings in the form of recommendations for farmer organisations and cooperatives in terms of farmer profiling activity.
Read MoreEvents
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Dec 3
Farmer Field School and digitalisation
Thirty years after the creation of Farmer Field School (FFS), the landscape of knowledge and information has changed dramatically. Challenges with infrastructure, digital literacy, gender-digital divide, cost of access and capacity development need to be addressed to promote sustainable use of ICTs in FFS. On this basis, the FFS team produced an initial report highlighting the trends in ICT an…Location:Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Roma RM, Italy
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Nov 26
DigiMetis Symposium
Wageningen Economic Research organises the next Digimetis symposium entitled "Digital agriculture and rural communities: current perspectives on the digita…Location:PD, Stippeneng 2, Wageningen, Netherlands
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Nov 12
"Modern technologies in agriculture: Adoption on farms and problems of data sharing"
The workshop is based on two current projects (EIT-Food project ‘Focus on Farmers’ and ICT-AGRI Era Net project ‘iFAROS’) and focuses on the challenges in adoption of modern technologies on European farms and issues associated with agricultural data sharing.
Location:Unnamed Road, 30521, Hannover, Germany
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Oct 14
Online course: Farm data management, sharing and services for agriculture development
The course aims to strengthen the capacity of farmers’ organisations, data producers and data consumers to manage, use and share data in agriculture. It aims to raise awareness of different types of data formats, data rights and applications, and to highlight how important it is for data to be reliable, accessible and transparent for innovation and development of agriculture.…
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Oct 14
Committee on World Food Security (CFS) - Side event
The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is the foremost inclusive international and intergovernmental platform for all stakeholders to work together to ensure food security and nutrition for all. The committee reports to the UN General Assembly through the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and to FAO Conference.Location:Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Roma RM, Italy