Châtenay-Malabry (FR - 92290), 11 June 2012


EFITA newsletter / 566 - European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


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Contact: Guy WAKSMAN
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2 jokes
Last week, I was stressed by the new system that vitisphere.com offered me to use. I forgot the joke at the end of the efita newsletter… So you will have two jokes this time.
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Contact: Guy WAKSMAN
Mail: guy.waksman(a)laposte.net


Summer School 2012 on "Experimental Auctions: Theory and Applications in Food Marketing and Consumer Preferences Analysis"
3 – 8 September - University of Bologna teaching centre, IMOLA
The summer school is aimed at learning the fundamentals and the recent advances of experimental auctions. It will provide the appropriate techniques to construct an experimental design, with software applications and workshops regarding specific problems in the fields of food market valuation. It...
See: http://experimentalauctions.jimdo.com


Consulting opportunity related to weather, agriculture and ICT
>>> Background
The Fostering Agricultural Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies(FACET) project is managed by FHI 360 and funded by USAID/AFR/SD/EGEA, the team that oversees the design and implementation of USAID’s Feed the Future (FTF) Initiative for sub-Saharan Africa. FACET is designed to support USAID Africa Bureau Missions and USAID implementing partners in the use of information and communications technologies (ICT) to increase the impact of agriculture sector development projects.

To achieve its objectives, FACET has two components:
- Knowledge sharing across Missions regarding sustainable and scalable approaches to using ICT to increase the success of agriculture development activities; and
- Short term technical assistance to projects to improve agriculture through the use of ICT.

>>> Description of Work
FACET is currently looking for a qualified consultant to lead the research, analysis, writing, and editing of a 4-6 page briefing paper for agriculture development practitioners (USAID, NGOs and private sector) focused on recent innovations that take advantage of information and communications technologies to provide smallholder farmers with information on weather, including in remote and micro-climate areas where reliable weather forecasts have traditionally been difficult to obtain. The paper should also mention innovations in weather index insurance services targeting smallholder farmers as a result of more accurate weather prediction. In addition to the briefing paper, the consultant will be expected to facilitate a webinar on the topic. Field experience in sub-Saharan Africa is preferred.

The paper will be similar in scope and format to previously released FACET briefing papers, which can be found here: https://communities.usaidallnet.gov/ictforag/document-library/briefing-papers Note from these examples, that the papers are brief; practical; cite many current examples; and include a short but useful reference list.

Prior to writing each paper, the selected consultant will be required to submit a substantive outline to FHI 360 for feedback and approval. Selected consultants will be expected to work closely with FHI 360 and USAID staff at all points in the process.

If interested, please email jwoodard(a)fhi360.organd jzoltner(a)fhi360.orgwith a brief proposed approach to this paper, your resume, a writing sample, your expected timeframe, and your established rate.


Now available: Video toolkit for agricultural projects
>>> Making Sense of Low-Cost Video: New Toolkit Details Best Practices for Agricultural Projects
Face-to-face training between farmers and agricultural practitioners is effective but can be costly. Other approaches, like the training of “expert” farmers, carry the risk of diluting your message. Modern communications technology provides promising options to projects looking to leverage local expertise and scale up their activities.

Today, the USAID-funded FACET project announces the publication of a toolkit that will demystify cost-effective video tools.

Integrating Low-Cost Video into Agricultural Development Projects: A Toolkit for Practitioners is a practical guide to using low-cost video - providing an up-to-date summary of everything you’ll need to consider - from messaging to production and dissemination. The toolkit will help you answer a number of important questions, including:
- When is video a viable option for my project team?
- How can we make a good video – and what separates it from a low quality one?
- How will we know if our videos are effective – and how do we capture that impact?

The toolkit will help you use low-cost video to better achieve your development objectives by providing farmers with improved access to agricultural information. Empowered with some basic knowledge, video can be a powerful complementary tool supporting your overall project strategy.

In addition, you can view a recent webinar highlighting the toolkit here.
Contact: Josh WOODARD
E-mail: Woodard(a)fhi360.org


Who you gonna call?
The green revolution was all about sharing knowledge and using new technologies. Thomas Corser investigates how CABI is linking its agricultural knowledge with suppliers of value added services in the mobile industry in India.
See: http://cabi-mail.org/VZZ-T77G-4AY51M-BBD4R-1/c.aspx


Mobile Devices and In-Field Data Capture by Rezare Systems Limited in New Zealand
See: http://www.rezare.co.nz/mobile-devices-and-data-capture-for-farming


I love history when it explains things!

>>> Ancient History lesson #1

>> Railroad tracks
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.

That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels

Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's arse came up with this?', you may be exactly right.

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' arses

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's arse. And you thought being a horse's arse wasn't important? Ancient horse's arses control almost everything...and CURRENT Horses? Arses in Parliament are controlling everything else.*

Is everybody clear on that now?


How The Internet Was Started?

In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she was often called Amazon Dot Com.

And she said unto Abraham, her husband, "Why dost thou travel so far from town to town with thy goods when thou canst trade without ever leaving thy tent?

And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, "How, dear?"

And Dot replied, "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale, and they will reply telling you who hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)."

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever having to move from his tent. To prevent neighboring countries from overhearing what the drums were saying, Dot devised a system that only she and the drummers knew. It was known as Must Send Drum Over Sound (MSDOS), and she also developed a language to transmit ideas and pictures - Hebrew To The People (HTTP).

And the young men did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Sybarites, or NERDS.

And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to that enterprising drum dealer, Brother William of Gates, who bought off every drum maker in the land. And indeed did insist on drums to be made that would work only with Brother Gates' drum heads and drumsticks.

And Dot did say, "Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others." And Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or eBay as it came to be known. He said, "We need a name that reflects what we are."

And Dot replied, "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators." "YAHOO," said Abraham. And because it was Dot's idea, they named it YAHOO Dot Com.

Abraham's cousin, Joshua, being the young Gregarious Energetic Educated Kid (GEEK) that he was, soon started using Dot's drums to locate things around the countryside. It soon became known as God's Own Official Guide to Locating Everything (GOOGLE).

That is how it all began. And that's the truth!


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