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moans about need for training, ease of use and price, which have been replaced
by a more intelligent debate about value to the business and need for information.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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