It is within this emerging and rapidly changing landscape in both the agricultural sector and agri-food focused institutions that this study will highlight what may currently be a “niche” role of educators and trainers in digital agriculture in British Columbia. Moreover, it is important to understand whether or not equity considerations and some of the concerns around the technology are being taken into account in digital agriculture education and training. 3Yet shifting relative resource endowments may raise the price of ignoring comparative advantage in trade, acting as a potent counteracting force. They include shifting water supplies due to climate change, urbanization and rising land prices.
Some of the most important conclusions of this analysis are discussed in this section. In 2011, global crop production amounted to nearly 12 billion tonnes using just over 1.5 billion hectares of land. This resulted in a global average yield of around 7.9 tonnes per hectare, though a significant portion of this figure consists of inedible fractions and fodder . Though different activities within the food system are highly dependent on local contextual factors and the severity of key impacts is likewise determined on different scales , the central drivers of the system’s behaviour are more centrally dependent on the dynamics of the global system.
21While not all off-grid farmers will adopt SWPs, with 67 million smallholder farmers worldwide off the grid , the potential SWP market is huge. There are six-and-a-half million smallholder farmers working in the dairy and horticulture sectors in SSA who are off-grid and in need of cooling technologies. The potential demand for solar mills and threshers in Sub-Saharan Africa is estimated at around 940,000 units . Second, the scope for iVCD to raise smallholder incomes and benefit the poor and women is greater for non-staples.
The decreasing national trend in the number of farms and an increasing average of farm operators are also reflected in the agricultural landscape of British Columbia . A rise in the adoption of precision and digital agriculture tools has also been observed among British Columbia’s farming population to modernize and boost farming operations while the number of people employed in the province’s agriculture and agri-food sector is on the decline . In some places, expansion of agricultural machinery services offers the possibility of increased mechanization on farms too small to justify the outlay to purchase machinery themselves. It is also observed in Africa and increasingly facilitated by digital platforms, such as Hello Tractor in Nigeria,19an app-based Uber connecting smallholder farmers to affordable tractor service providers. Nonetheless, many organizational hurdles to developing the integrated machinery chain needed to make it profitable remain (Diao et al., Forthcoming). Gulati et al. , for example, report low adoption of mechanical rice transplanters in India due to women’s weak bargaining position in the household decision making process.
Particulars on designing and developing a prototype irrigation controller and a laboratory test bed for experimenting with green roofs are presented. Experiments have been carried out and the which of the following statements is true regarding competitive marketing intelligence? experimental results are discussed in order to analyze the performance of the proposed system. However, as noted previously, farmers may also have concerns around government surveillance.
These are just a few examples of the conditions which indicate that current fishing and aquaculture practices negatively influence animal welfare (Bergqvist & Gunnarsson, 2011). Demographic changes, such as a larger participation of women in the workforce, a larger percentage of elderly population, and higher numbers of immunosuppressed people contribute to the increased the incidence of foodborne illness events. Additional factors include the consumption of minimally packaged, poorly processed or cooked food, and lack of hygiene knowledge (Hotchkiss, 1997; Seaman & Eves, 2006). The stability of food access and availability remains a challenge, especially in regions that rely heavily on international markets and are characterized by low domestic food availability. Import dependency makes these regions vulnerable in the face of price or supply volatilities on the global market. These issues are especially relevant in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle-East, North Africa and the Caribbean (FAO et al., 2015).
Where schooling is available, it is often in very poor quality or unaffordable to most. High quality teachers are in short supply, and equipment and buildings are in a poor condition . This ongoing lack of opportunity and access make it extremely difficult to provide early skills that can be fundamental in maneuvering into greater economic opportunity later in life. Biospheric integrity is the most severely transgressed of all planetary boundaries identified by the Stockholm Resilience Centre (Steffen et al., 2015). The food system is the largest single contributor to biodiversity loss out of all human activities, while at the same time being highly dependent on the maintenance of biodiversity for its continued functioning.
This approach can be helpful for targeting the soil-borne pathogens to maximize soil benefits. Proper irrigation system also another agricultural approach for enriching the ecosystem. It enables the original crop to strike again after harvesting and to raise another crop. Plants grown in in the hydroponic system shows high growth as compared to the conventionally field-grown plants also increase the chances of sustainable agricultural development through green technology where large number of plants can be grown in the nutrient medium. Cropping patterns to make farming more efficient that can be helpful to irrigate crops and more disease resistant varieties. It was also clear from the findings that current digital agriculture training and education lacked deep insights around social equity and food sovereignty .
Because of globalized food chains and the pressure from lead firms in these chains (e.g. large retailers or food processors; Ahold, Nestlé) suppliers demand lower prices for food products delivered by farmers. Coffee growers in Uganda were found to earn just 0.5% of the retail price of coffee sold in London (International Fund for Agricultural Development , 2015). While it is understandable that parties along the value chain are entitled to their fraction of added value, it is well documented that farmers do not receive adequate compensation, and often depend on subsidies to make up a large part of their annual revenues . By mass, food waste is the largest source of solid waste in the global food system. Along the entire production chain, 1.3 billion tonnes of food suitable for human consumption is wasted annually (Gustavsson et al., 2011).
