Plant clinic scheme of CABI recieves a boost from the UK and Swiss governments

The "plant clinic" scheme of CABI to improve food security in developing nations has received a £6.8m boost from the UK and Swiss governments.

The clinics, similar to human doctors' surgeries, offer local farmers advice on how to treat pests and diseases. Organisers hope to collate data from front-line "plant doctors" in order to provide an early warning system. It is hoped that more than 400 clinics will be established in 40 countries over the next five years.

Trevor Nicholls, CEO of Cabi (Centre for Agriculture Bioscience International) - a not-for-profit science body - said the investment of £1m from the UK government and £5.8m from Swiss ministers was a "significant endorsement for the initiative".

Trevor Nicholls, CEO, CABI discusses Plantwise. Plantwise is a global initiative aimed at reducing global crop losses and improving food security. This short video outlines the importance of tracking, monitoring and distributing information about plant pest and diseases; as well as delivering practical advice to smallholder farmers.


A demo of the new Plantwise Knowledge Bank, an online resource dedicated to improving food security worldwide through access to evidence-based plant health information. Diagnostic and treatment support is provided, along with access to region-specific extension materials. Pest distribution data is also provided, down to the most local levels possible. The Plantwise Knowledge Bank is a true partnership, with information coming from CABI and many other plant health initiatives.

17th CABI Review Conference

Celebrating 100 years of sharing knowledge and supporting agriculture

17th CABI Review Conference 15-16 February 2011

To coincide with CABI's 100 year anniversary, CABI held its 17th Review Conference in London. The event brought together environment and agriculture ministers from around the world and representatives from international development and major funding organizations. The event provided an opportunity for members to review the progress of CABI’s development and publishing initiatives, develop partnerships, and discuss ways in which CABI could work with member countries to address issues of concern in each region. 

Presentations related to Africa:
100 years of CABI: weevils, weeds and the world wide web
Regional breakout session: member country review and centre highlights Africa - presentation

CABI in actionCoffee revitalisation in Rwanda and Ethiopia, Charles Agwanda, Project Manager, CABI - presentation

Donor presentations: funding priorities in the international development arena
Pio Wennubst, Head Global Programme Food Security, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation- presentation
Philippe Petithuguenin, EIARD Executive Secretariat- presentation
Guy Sneyers, Chief Operations Officer, Common Fund for Commodities- presentation
Anton Mangstl, Director, Office of Knowledge Exchange, Research and Extension, FAO - presentation

Regional breakout session on Plantwise
Africa - feedback

CABI Global Summit: 'food security in a climate of change'

19-21 October, London. CABI Global Summit: 'food security in a climate of change' . Speaking at a global food summit, organised by the not-for-profit environmental research centre CABI, Professor Beddington - UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser, said science will be the only way to feed the world in the future. He said that by 2030 the world will have to produce 50 per cent more food and energy, together with 30 per cent more available fresh water, whilst adapting the floods and drought caused by climate change.

DFID's Chief Scientist Chris Whitty spoke frankly about the challenges and opportunities for food security over the coming decades. The issues surrounding food security are underpinned by a complex interaction of economic volatility, growing populations, and of course the impact of climate change. Linked to the issue of food security are rising food prices driven by the increasing demand for food, rising fuel prices, and inappropriate agricultural policies among other factors.

Reference

Visit the website for the CABI Global Summit for more information, including speaker biographies and abstracts.

Telegraph 20/10 Chief scientist says it would be 'unwise' not to develop GM crops in Britain

R4D 20/10 DFID's Chris Whitty Opens Global Summit: Food Security in a Climate of Change

CIARD Africa Advocacy Consultation

14th July 2009. The Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) initiative is working to make agricultural research information publicly available and accessible to all. This means working with organisations that hold information or that create new knowledge – to help them disseminate it more efficiently and make it easier to access. A consultation was organised at FARA on CIARD for the RAILS national learning teams which attended previously the RAILS side event at IAALD.

The purpose was the creation of a core group of African senior research information specialists at regional, sub-regional, and national level in Africa who are familiar with the CIARD manifesto and principles and understand the main implications/challenges of trying to achieve institutional change and implement the CIARD Checklist and actions.

The second purpose was to agree on an agenda for action to advocate the CIARD agenda amongst key audiences in African agricultural research, namely: (a) research managers and decision makers, (b) researchers and academics, (c) information specialists.

When the UK DFID (Department for International Development), aware of the value of putting research into use, commissioned FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) with the task of catalyzing efforts to ensure that agricultural research information and knowledge become public domain, it triggered the formation of a global partnership on Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD). The partnership includes FAO, EGFAR, the CGIAR, and others in the agricultural research community.

The partners in the CIARD initiative are committed to promoting the sharing of data, information and knowledge to empower the various stakeholders involved in agriculture. To begin with, CIARD outlined a checklist – the Triple A checklist that defines what is meant by ensuring your research outputs are Available, Accessible and Applicable.

CIARD pathways will help researchers identify a publisher who has more flexible policies on open access, so that they do not have to sign away all rights to their journal article. These pathways will also help a senior manager understand the value of institutional policies that enable sustainable development of repositories for their center. They will be brief and to the point. Where users like the IT unit and librarians, want more detail i.e. on Creative Commons, there would be linked resources on the web.

The pathways could broadly be clustered as:

• General – strategic and policy issues, organizational issues which need to be addressed in handling research outputs.
• Capture, Collection and Curation of research outputs – ensuring that all the outputs are described in a form that makes them available and accessible.
• Managing Web Presence – using the internet to make the information accessible to others.

Launch of the Kenya Agricultural Information Network

14th of May at the KICC, Nairobi, Kenya. The Kenya Agricultural Information Network (KAINet) was officially launched on 14th of May 2009. It was initiated in April 2006 in response to demand from the national and international community to promote information exchange and access among stakeholders in the agricultural sector. KAINet has evolved from the on-going Kenya Pilot AGRIS Project, which aims at building capacities in information management, dissemination and exchange in network members in Kenya.

For the National Agricultural Portal with a repository of agricultural research work under the unmbrella of KAINET, please visit http://www.kainet.or.ke/

In an effort to reach its partners and beneficiaries, KAINet has embarked on a mission to bring the latest information on the ongoing activities both in the field and at the KAINet offices highlighting important issues on agricultural information management in Kenya. The currently published publications can be downloaded through the links below : -

KAINet's ICM Strategies
Institional and National Setup Manual
KAINet's Poster
KAINet's Flyer
KAINet Policy Brief

Related FARA blogpost
13/02/2009 Institution-Based Information Systems Kenya Agricultural Information Network (KAINet) Planning and Strategy Building.

Background
The network was established with financial support from the Department of International Development (DFID) through Food and Agriculture organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and has been implemented through collaboration between the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), Association for Strengthening Research in Agriculture in East and Central Africa (ASARECA, CAB International and KARI.

The KAINet is currently hosted by KARI. Its initial participating institutions are universities, research institutions, and Government ministries represented by Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and Ministry of Agriculture (MoA). More institutions are expected join the network when KAINet is rolled out.

Institution-Based Information Systems Kenya Agricultural Information Network (KAINet) Planning and Strategy Building.

The organizers of the 2nd Expert Consultation on International Information System for Agricultural Sciences and Technology (IISAST) (September 2007) invited actors from the national level to document their experiences in developing information systems and institutional networks in the form of case studies.

The Kenya Agricultural Information Network (KAINet) was initiated in April 2006 in response to demand from the national and international community to promote information exchange and access among stakeholders in the agricultural sector. KAINet has evolved from the on-going Kenya Pilot AGRIS Project, which aims at building capacities in information management, dissemination and exchange in network members in Kenya.

The project's objectives include establishing institutional repositories of agricultural information, facilitating the development of institutional and national Information and Communication Management (ICM) strategies and policies as frameworks for addressing issues that are critical to content development and information exchange, and supporting development of human capacity in ICM through training programs for information managers.

The main stakeholders in the implementation of KAINet are five national institutions: the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), the Kenya National Agricultural Research Laboratories (KARI-NARL), the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and Jomo Kenya University of Agriculture and Forestry (JKUAT).

At the international level FAO, CABI Africa and the Regional Agricultural Information Network (RAIN) of the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa (ASARECA) participated in developing the project and are supporting its implementation through providing expertise in ICM. The project received financial support from the Department for International Development (DFID) of the UK Government through FAO. In addition, national and international project partners provide in-kind contributions.

Reference:

R4D posting of 28/01/09

Please check back to the CIARD website for updates to this document - 2008 7 pp.

Biofuel – the burning issues

The FARA bulletin of December-January 2008 - which will be shortly available on the FARA website - is dedicated to the issue of Biofuels.

The development of biofuel has been hailed as a sustainable way to combat dependency on declining oil reserves, but a new study suggests there are substantial obstacles to large-scale deployment of biofuels. It is still an open question whether biofuel can meet a significant proportion of the world’s energy needs, say John Fike and co-authors in a paper in CAB Reviews. There are numerous practical questions about biomass systems, from feedstocks to logistics to pretreatment/process technologies, to be addressed. While policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions may support biofuel, other environmental impacts are also of concern, say Fike and his colleagues at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

The cost of hauling the feedstock to the refinery is a key issue, and so a high proportion of farms within a given radius of the refinery would have to commit to producing the feedstock, as a need to transport the feedstock over long distances would make bioenergy production uneconomic. The distance of the refineries from the energy user is also an important factor. There are many logistic and socio-economic issues that will need to be resolved along with the purely technical issues, say the Virginia Tech team.

References:
Challenges for deploying dedicated, large-scale, bioenergy systems in the USA by John Fike, David Parrish, Jeffrey Alwang and John Cundiff appears in CAB Reviews: Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources2, December 2007, No. 064, 28 pp.

Biofuels - our future in the balance? interview with Trevor Nicholls, CEO CABI (Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau International - UK).

Posting of 11/01/2008 on the CABI blog

Dr. Mark Holderness appointed as GFAR Executive Secretary

Dr. Mark Holderness has been appointed as new Executive Secretary of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR).Dr. Holderness began his working career in Papua New Guinea and has worked in science related to international agricultural development for 20 years. A Council Member of several scientific societies, he is now also a Board Member of the World Vegetable Centre. Originally a plant pathologist, his interests cover a wide range of scientific areas and are particularly concerned with knowledge and innovation flows between science and society and their implications for institutional structures and rural development. He plays a leading role in the International Assessment of the Role of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology in Development. He has recently served as Director of Agriculture and is currently Director of Membership and Partnerships for CAB International.