Workshop description
Agriculture is the main pillar for food security. Disequilibrium in farming productions in term of yield and quality will have large influence on our economy and social life. Scientists have been investigating and applying techniques and methods for improving soil quality, irrigation, water management, fertilisation, pesticides treatment, post-harvest techniques, transformation process, etc. This created a modern agronomy that sharply increased yields and quality of production and enhanced the financial benefit of the growers. However, at the same time, this created an intensiveagriculture which has caused extensive ecological and environmental damage and affected food safety and human health. Currently, with the increase in the population at this time of globalization, there is a large demand for crops productions and drive to produce more and more in order to assume foodsecurity and autonomy. This has an environmental and health cost. The global warming issue and health problems such as cancers, allergies, cardiovascular diseases, etc. push governments, NGOs and companies to be concerned by the reduction of chemicals input in agriculture and food chain (pesticides, chemical fertilizers, energy, gas emission…). This, of course, is required without affecting largely the productions.
In this context, and in order to understand how these factors affect all aspects of agriculture, such as plant physiology, animal behaviour, microclimate, soil microbiology, etc. continuous and global data must be collected, stored, shared, analysed and interpreted. These digital data are necessary in order to make up rapid decisions. These Scientific and technological advances are opening up new possibilities for farmers around the world. Networking farms and production with digital tools could make agriculture and surrounded environment more efficient, healthy and sustainable. This communication between farms and computers within using a digital language could solve many issues of agriculture, environment, ecology and health and answer well the challenge of sustainability.
These new ICT technologies are changing the world and many problems today can find solutions thanks to new digital low cost applications able to face the challenge of environmental and sustainable development. The arising of the global connectivity, made possible by the spreading use of mobile and smartphones, computers and high speed internet, allows the exchange of information and the provision of services able to empower people skills and capabilities, including in agriculture. National digital platforms can be envisaged to work as a hub able to store big data and monitor climatic and environmental variables important for food security, achieving better capability to manage all phenomena related to the global warming or desertification risk to improve the human life conditions and reinforce the poverty eradication.
The main objectives of the proposed workshop is to (1) Discuss on translating agriculture and food security on digital numbers and (2) illustrate the technical platform of this approach of “digital for agriculture”.
Technical Presentation
Date: Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Time: 2:00 PM – 5:30 PM (GMT)
Venue: Novotel Casablanca, Morocco
Chairs
Contact
Pr. Kamal Aberkani
kamalaberkani@gmail.com
GSM: 212 (0) 613 59 17 45
