Paris, 13 August 2007


EFITA newsletter / 323 / European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


EFITA Web site
The search engine only use "AND", no "OR" nor "NOR".
You can find all papers by e.g. Ehud Gelb or any other author. Titles, names of authors and summaries are indexed.
See: http://www.efita.net/?d=6146


About the Cross Compliance Network (EU supported project)
See:  http://www.ieep.eu/projectminisites/crosscompliancenetworkproj/index.php
Contact: Martin FARMER
E-mail: mfarmer(a)ieeplondon.org.uk


The 6th New Ag International conference and exhibition
Hundreds of people have already asked us about the time and venue of the next New Ag conference. We are pleased to announce that it will take place in INDIA early April 2008. Exact dates and venue will be announced shortly!
In the meantime, the September through December period is always a crucial time for important conferences and shows around the world.

>> Three important conferences
Early September (6-8), the ISHS symposium on growing media will take place in Nottingham, UK.
In October (4-6), Greensys2007, the major world conference on greenhouse technology and cropping, will take place in Naples, Italy.
In October again (22-23), the ABIM congress, the world leading event on biological crop protection, will take place in Lucern, Switzerland.
At all three events, New Ag International English & Spanish editions are the official & exclusive partner agriculture magazines and our English September issue will be inserted in the wallet of all delegates. Our November & December issues will report extensively on all three events.

>> Two major shows in Europe and North America, several shows in Latin America with New Ag International
- The Hortifair in Amsterdam, October 9-12
- World Irrigation Show in San Diego, California, December 9-11
…/…
E-mail: conferences(a)newaginternational.com


Over 3 million investment in DLG’s agricultural machinery Test Centre - First bioenergy results at Agritechnica
Highest-ever number of tests in a single year shows machinery producers, traders and farmers keep a close eye on results from this expanding DLG test facility with its new renewable energy sector.
See: http://www.agritechnica.com/index.php?struts=publicArtikelDetail.do&id=1592&artikelId=1207&kategorieId=10&spracheId=2&bereich=News
Contact: Malene CONLONG
Mél: m.conlong(a)dlg.org


The 6th EFITA Conference ICT Adoption - Constraints and Insights
Conference presentations elicited random discussions and evaluation of the ICT Adoption aspects of reported ICT programs and activities. The conference visit to the SAC (Scottish Agricultural College) farm in the highlands added an empirical ICT Adoption perspective to the Adoption constraints reviewed and discussed. Finally there were three specific ICT Adoption focused sessions. The conference concluded with a plenary dedicated to a summary of ICT Adoption constraints. Four significant insights emerged during the sessions and were prominently articulated and questioned in the plenary:

a. Should ICT be a source of innovation or remain mainly a tool to improve the efficiency of what we are doing anyway (better pencil and paper)?

b. Will ICT enable the evolution of a "new" unique social rural unit (an “ICT community”) - with the remote highland isolated farms being one illustrative model of the need and benefits from such a new entity, another being a common interest group spread out over several villages.

c. Should the F2F (Farm to Fork and/or Fork to Farm) chain as a whole be accepted and considered a viable and unique unit for agricultural and rural policy considerations, the basis for strategic decision making and a rationally justified subject of study?

d. The core constraints for ICT Adoption, even if masked by local particulars, share commonalities including issues of major strategic concern for all countries.


EFITA’s free e-Book "ICT Adoption: Perspectives of Technological Innovation" (http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/economics/gelb-main.html) remains a major EFITA accomplishment and a source of continued international interest. The accessing results from the first 5 months of 2007 were a monthly average of more than 3500 hits a month with repeat accessing from more than 80 countries.

The EFITA sponsored “ICT Adoption questionnaire”* gleaned in Glasgow 56 replies from 26 countries. The replies confirmed the conference consensus that ICT Adoption remains an issue of significant concern. The specific constraint trend results were consistent with replies from the last EFITA Conference in Portugal. “Training” as a major constraint has diminished slightly in importance. “Time” was mentioned (15% of the replies), “Cost” was not considered a constraint to Adoption.

See: http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/economics/gelb-efita-18.pdf
Contact: Ehud GELB
E-mail: gelb(a)agri.huji.ac.il


World's Shortest Fairy Tale
Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl "Will you marry me?" The girl said, "NO!" And the guy lived happily ever after and went fishing and hunting and played golf a lot and drank beer and left the toilet seat up and farted and watched TV whenever he wanted.
THE END
Contact: Israel KITRON
E-mail: kitron1(a)terra.com.br


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