EFITA Newsletter 483

Paris, 18 October 2010

EFITA newsletter / 483 - European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment

To read this newsletter on the efita.net web site...
See: http://www.efita.net?d=6807

International conference GeoFARMatics 2010 (See you in Cologne!)
24 November (14h) - 26 November (14h) - COLOGNE (DE)
The EU-funded projects FutureFarm (www.futurefarm.eu) and agriXchange (www.agrixchange.eu) as well as the CAPIGI-network (www.capigi.eu) organise a joint conference from 24^th until 26^th November 2010 in Cologne (Germany). This public conference provides a unique opportunity to discuss the emerging ICT and geo-information business in agriculture.
See: http://www.geofarmatics2010.org/
Contact: Guy WAKSMAN
E-mail: waksman(a)acta.asso.fr

e-Conference: Quality Considerations for Learning Repositories and Portals related to Agriculture, Food and the Environment
The AgLR Task Force with support from the e-Agriculture Community is currently holding an English language online discussion “AgLR 2010 e-Conference: Quality Considerations for Learning Repositories and Portals related to Agriculture, Food and the Environment.”
All stakeholders involved in repositories and portals on agriculture, food and environment are invited to join this discussion and share guidance, standards, technologies, tools, recommendations, and good practices.
This e-Conference contributes to the creation of a common understanding of the quality considerations needed for all the stakeholders of repositories and portals on environmental issues in an upcoming face-to-face conference to be held 20 October 2010 in Barcelona, Spain.
Subject Moderators Include:

- Learning resources creation: What constitutes a quality learning resource? Christian M. Stracke (e-Learning & Quality Management Expert, University of Duisburg-Essen)

- Providing quality metadata: Is the gain worth the effort? Jacqueline Wickham (Centre for Research Communications, Open Access Adviser) and Stephanie Taylor (UKOLN, University of Bath)
- Populating a repository with resources and metadata: The quality versus quantity dilemma. Lisa McLaughlin (OER Commons Manager - Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education; ISKME)

- Managing a portal with thousands of resources and users: Are communities “attracted” to quality, like bees to honey? Featuring a special keynote by Amee Evans Godwin (Director, Strategic Initiatives - Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education; ISKME)

The discussion will run until 20 October 2010. To participate, simply visit www.e-agriculture.org. If you are not yet part of the e-Agriculture Community you can register here.

Common Conference on "ICT- technologies, equipment and know-how for integrated and sustainable land- and farm-management", a public AND private approach conducted by PROGIS, Adcon, forCert
16 – 17 November - ENTEBBE, Uganda
To realize a green revolution for Africa, experts mentioned the importance of TECHNOLOGY; further the must of more INTEGRATION and COOPERATION and better PLANNING together with increased ADVISORY SERVICES for a successful uptake. A group of European companies, highly dedicated to boost agricultural development, brought all these elements together and will introduce an integrated model for land-, farm- and forest management mid of November in Entebbe/Uganda. Integrated stands for technology cooperation, for farmers integration into cooperative tasks, for horizontal and vertical sector integration, the integration of advisory support and for the integration of financing institutes and insurance companies, which became possible with the help of sophisticated technology.

If you are farmer, belonging to a farm advisory group, or buyer of farm products , seller of machines, crops or chemicals to farmers, or if you are consultant, or forester, or working in the agro-finance sector (e.g. Micro-financing) or in the agro-insurance business, if you are working locally or if you are interested in business throughout regions or whole Africa, if you are researcher, NGO´s, expert, project developer, IT- or communication expert who wants to raise new business or if you are a governmental expert, or working with a chamber, for all of you it is a must to take part at this event - you will benefit, personally and for the farm, company or group you’re representing.
See: http://www.progis.com/events/uganda2010/index.html

8th EFITA conference
11th to 14th July 2011 - PRAGUE
The next EFITA conference will be held at the campus site of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, in a beautiful landlocked country in the heart of Europe, in the Czech Republic.
This conference is co-organized with the 8th ECPA, the 5th ECPLF conferences as there is an established tradition of bringing EFITA, ECPA and ECPLF together.

>>> Registration
- From 15th September 2010 will be possible to submit full paper.
- From 1st October 2010 will be possible to registration for the 8th EFITA Conference.

>>> The main topics are as follows:
- Food quality
- SDI for Agriculture and Food industry
- Sensor technologies
- Future trends
- ICT Adoption
- Knowledge Management
- ebusiness
- Standardisation and Interoperability
- Rural development
- Nature protection

>>>Important dates
Paper submission: 15^th September – 31^st October 2010
Registrations: From 1^st October 2010
See: http://www.efita2011.cz
Contact: Eva CERVENKOVA
E-mail: conference2011(a)czu.cz

Invitation to contribute to the on-coming book: ICT for Agriculture and Environment (organized by CCSS)
We would like to address you with this attractive proposal. Czech Centre for Science and Society is going to set out a monograph on ICT for Agriculture and Environment. The book will be published with registered ISBN in electronic and paper version and it will be distributed free of charge in paper and electronic form.

Body of editors is now publishing call for contributors. We are very interested in new research results in this area. We would like to invite you to consider submitting a proposal for the chapter in this book. If you have an unpublished article on your hand or if you are able to prepare such article in a short time, please send electronic version of abstract of your paper to us (tentative title, abstract and contact details is enough according scheme below). From the offered articles will be selected contribution for monograph.

You can focus your submissions on following topics:
- Vision of future farming systems
- ICT- technologies, equipment and know-how for integrated and sustainable land- and farm-management
- ICT as enabler for future sustainable rural business
- How ICT could support environmentally friendly production
- New enabling technologies
- Sensors technologies
- Robotics
- Agriculture 2.0 Communities, Social Networks in Research and Practices
- Communities, Social Networks – State-of-the-Art and Future in Rural World

You are of course welcome to expand them or come up with your own topics related to ICT for Agriculture and Environment.

>>> Please use this form of abstract:
- Title
- Author(s)
- Affiliation
- Keywords (4-7)
- Abstract (200 - 300 words)

Please send us your abstract on October 31th 2010 at the latest by e-mail in any common format (e.g. DOC, ODT, PDF, RTF,..).

After acceptance of your contribution (November 6th 2010), you will receive a template for your chapter. Deadline for final version (10 pages max.) will be on November 30th 2010.

We will also be most grateful to you if you can further circulate this call for chapters amongst your friends/colleagues and help me post it on appropriate servers.
Contact: Karel CHARVAT Junior, Book Editor - Czech Centre for Science and Society
E-mail: charvat_junior(a)ccss.cz

The IMPACCT Software
The University of Hertfordshire and its partners are pleased to announce the first version of the IMPACCT (Integrated Management oPtions for Agricultural Climate Change miTigation) software can now be downloaded free-of-charge from the IMPACCT website at http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/aeru/impacct/. In the coming days you will also find a leaflet and a help video both which will help to explain the software package and its purpose.
IMPACCT is the main deliverable of a European Commission research project that aimed to develop a software tool to help European agriculture reduce its climate change impacts. The tool was designed to help farmers and growers to take action so as to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and improve carbon sequestration by modifying farming practices. It also supports policy makers in the development and improvement of climate change mitigation policies. Whilst it does calculate a full carbon balance for a farm taking far more detail into consideration than other carbon balance tools currently available, IMPACCT goes several steps further by looking at the farm profile and determining what mitigation options are available considering any potential environmental trade-offs and financial implications.
Contact: Dr John TZILIVAKIS
E-mail: j.tzilivakis(a)herts.ac.uk

Manic depression?
The psychology instructor had just finished a lecture on mental health and was giving an oral test.

Speaking specifically about manic depression, she asked, "How would you diagnose a patient who walks back and forth screaming at the top of his lungs one minute, then sits in a chair weeping uncontrollably the next?"

A young man in the rear raised his hand and answered, "A basketball coach?"

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