Paris, 2 October 2006


EFITA newsletter / 277 / European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


Next EFITA congress in 2007 in Glasgow
2 - 5 July 2007 - Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, UK
See: http://www.efitaglasgow.org/
Contact: Caroline PARKER
Email: c.g.parker(a)gcal.ac.uk



French Agricultural ICT
- There are around 620000 farmers in France.
- 1/3 of French farmers have a computer used or not for professional purposes
- Half of them are connected to the Internet
- Around 15 to 20 % of French farmers use a computer for professional purposes (Accounting, Production management, etc.).
Contact: Guy WAKSMAN
Email: waksman(a)acta-informatique.fr


UK Agricultural ICT: ADAS uncovers the facts about IT use within farm businesses
A recent survey by ADAS has shown that UK farmers are using IT to support and run their businesses more than ever before. The study, which saw over two thousand farmers across England and Wales participate, has shone new light into this subject revealing some surprising statistics:
- Over three quarters of farmers now use the web to find information
- 73% of farmers use email
- Half of internet connected farmers are on broadband

Andy Offer, ADAS IT Business Manager, said of the survey results “We are often given the impression that farmers are behind the rest of the community when it comes to technology but these results suggest that this is not so; farmers have caught up fast in the last few years."
"What is especially encouraging is the huge increase in internet use reported" said Andy. "There is now a higher percentage of farmers using the web for their business than actually own a business computer. This means that for the first time we see a separation from the 'office based' computer doing the accounts and the information sourcing, which indicates that the ‘business’ computer could just as easily be in the kid's bedroom.” 
Another telling statistic is that 73% of farmers with computers are using email - a huge jump from the last time the survey was conducted, 5 years ago, when the figure was just over 40%.

Other notable trends are the increasing value farmers are applying to legislative advice via the web and a better understanding of how the technology can help their businesses survive and thrive in these tough times.  Gone are the general moans about need for training, ease of use and price, which have been replaced by a more intelligent debate about value to the business and need for information.  That said, over half of the farmers not using the web said they found it easier to find the information they needed by other means.

New information this year includes data on computer age and upgrade plans and on attitudes to newer applications like computerised decision support tools.

The survey contains a wealth of information of computer and internet use by region and by sector and with a sample size of over 2000 farms, the results are a reliable indication of the current state of IT within UK farming.  Furthermore, since the questions are part of a much larger survey about farmer's attitudes and intentions, there is a great deal of scope to look at relationships between the nature of farming businesses and their use and attitude to IT.

Contact: Andy OFFER
Email: andy.offer(a)adas.co.uk


AGROVOC Thesaurus available through Web services
AGROVOC is a multilingual structured thesaurus of all subject fields in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food and related domains (e.g. environment). It consists of words or expressions (terms), in different languages and organized in relationships (e.g. "broader", "narrower", and "related"), used to identify or search resources. Its main role is to standardize the indexing process in order to make searching simpler and more efficient, and to provide the user with the most relevant resources.

The AGROVOC Thesaurus was developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Commission of the European Communities, in the early 1980s. It is updated by FAO roughly every three months, and the users are informed of the changes via mailing list and the Web site. AGROVOC is available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Czech, Japanese, Thai and Slovak.

AGROVOC is now accessible via Web services, which can be called from any client application. With Web Services, updates to the thesaurus are immediately available, reducing the time and effort necessary to regularly download and incorporate the latest version of the thesaurus into applications. The web services are realized on Apache Axis running on Tomcat and are invoked via standard SOAP calls, returning a standard SOAP response.

For more information on the used technology, visit:
http://www.fao.org/aims/ag_webservices.jsp
For more on Agricultural Information Management Standards, visit:
http://www.fao.org/agris/aims/
Download a leaflet on AGROVOC from:
ftp://ext-ftp.fao.org/GI/Agris/aims/references/flyers/
To join the AGROVOC discussion group, visit: http://www.dgroups.org/groups/

Contact: Gauri SALOKHE
Email: Gauri.Salokhe(a)fao.org


Survivor
At the site, one lone survivor sat with his back against a tree, chewing on a bone. As he tossed the bone onto a huge pile of bones, he noticed the rescue team.
"Thank God", he cried out in relief. "I am saved!"
The rescue team did not move, as they were in shock, seeing the pile of human bones beside the lone survivor. Obviously he had eaten his comrades. The survivor saw the horror on their faces and hung his own head in shame.
"You can't judge me for this," he insisted. "I had to survive. Is it so wrong to want to live?"
The leader of the rescue team stepped forward, shaking his head in disbelief. "I won't judge you for doing what was necessary to survive, but my God man, your plane only went down yesterday!"
Contact: I. KITRON
E-mail: kitron1(a)terra.com.br


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