Food security is a major global challenge. By 2030, the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers need to double, to achieve food security and promote sustainable agriculture. Using data and open data better is one way to improve agriculture and nutrition through better decision making, innovation and transparency.
The Open Data Institute, together with a group of partners, are working together in the (GODAN) Action project to enable data users and producers to engage effectively with open data and maximise its potential for impact in the agriculture and nutrition sectors.
The general objective is to help tackle food security and nutrition challenges using open data by improving nutrition for consumers and developing better policy and decision making. We are exploring how to give better access to and improve the use of open data, and especially focusing efforts in developing countries to increase farmers’ yields.
This project is funded by the UK Department for International Development, complementing the work done by the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) network.
GODAN Action is focusing on three key areas of work: facilitating the use of standards, researching the impact of open data, and building the capacity of a network of actors. The team has been working on three themes being: climate and weather data, land data and nutrition data.
Online resources and tools
Using standards makes it easier for people to publish and to use data, increasing interoperability for publishers and reusers. The project team has worked on standards mapping and recommendations around standards. Two online services are now live and accessible online for everyone:
- a standards-focused helpdesk to provide support to data publishers and consumers on the use of existing standards for the exchange of data on agriculture and nutrition
- a georeferencing service to upload, process and enrich your dataset with geospatial information.
When you talk about a topic that is still very technical and misunderstood, you need to make sure people own it, understand it and are able to spread the word. Our efforts have concentrated on developing a curriculum and making it accessible online through eLearning and webinars, as well as targeted towards specific regions through face to face training. You can join the online working group to receive news regarding the upcoming webinars and relevant training sessions.
Achieving impact is what we all want to do, but it can be hard to measure. We’d like to have the best tools and methodologies to measure open data impact in developing countries. The team has worked on this during the first half of the project, looking at the best methodologies to be used in the agriculture and nutrition sector
What's next?
The team will keep doing some research and delivering training, more specifically on land and nutrition data. Please visit the GODAN Action website to get access to the last updates and publications.
If you’d like to get more involved in the work or get more information, please get in touch with [email protected].