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Châtenay-Malabry (FR - 92290), 20 February 2012


EFITA newsletter / 554 - European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment

The distribution of this efita newsletter is sponsored by vitisphere.com
Please, contribute to the content of your efita newsletter, and advertise your events, new publications, new products and new project in this newsletter. Without your support, it will not survive!
Contact: Guy WAKSMAN
E-mail: guy.waksman(a)laposte.net



Bill Gates to speak at IFAD in Rome, February 23, 2012
On Thursday, February 23, 2012, Bill Gates will be speaking at IFAD’s Governing Council meeting in Rome. He will take center stage to share his perspective on how sustainable agriculture productivity improvements can reduce hunger and poverty. He will also challenge both global players and national governments to adopt a new approach to supporting small farmers.

Please join us in sharing the message – here are some easy ways for you to help:
1. Connect with us: If you are not already, follow the foundation’s @gatesag and @gatesfoundation for updates on our agriculture work and news you can share with your networks.

2. Follow Impatient Optimists: The agriculture section on our foundation blog is a resource for conversation and updates on our ag work and other issues. Feel free to reach out if you have an active blog and would be interested in cross-posting.

3. Send us your favorite “agfacts”: In the lead up to the speech, we will be tweeting agfacts to show the power of investing in agricultural development from @gatesag. We welcome you to send us your agfacts. Here are a couple of examples:
> gatesag FACT: #Agriculture provides 70 percent of employment and 30 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product.
> gatesag FACT: Developing #agriculture is 2-4 times more effective at reducing hunger and poverty than any other sector.

4. Promote the live stream: IFAD will be live streaming the event, which includes Bill’s speech at http://webcasting.ifad.org/gc2012. Bill’s session will be online on February 23 at:
> Seattle, 1 a.m.
> New York, 4 a.m.
> Rome, 10 a.m.
> Nairobi, 12 noon
> New Delhi, 2:30 p.m.
See: http://www.gatesfoundation.org
Contact: Diane SCOTT
E-Mail: diane.scott(a)gatesfoundation.org


"North America" Workshop: Information on the North American agricultural market and its unique features
13 March 2012 - FRANKFURT AM MAIN
DLG International, a subsidiary of DLG (Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft - German Agricultural Society), is inviting all interested to its "North America" Workshop in Frankfurt am Main on 13 March 2012. The event will focus on the North American agricultural market.
See: http://www.dlg.org/news_agriculture.html?detail/dlg.org/1/2/5119
Contact: Malene CONLONG
E-Mail: m.conlong(a)dlg.org


An international course on: Agricultural Engineering Technologies
23 October – 15 November - CINADCO's Training Centre, Volcani Agricultural
Complex, Israel
See: http://www.moag.gov.il/agri/English/Ministrys+Units/CINADCO/
Contact: Irit PRIGOJIN
E-mail: veirit(a)volcani.agri.gov.il


French ForumPhyto newsletter
See: http://www.forumphyto.fr/2012/02/14/infoflash-for-english-readers-1201/?lang=fr


Tesco sales slump part of consumer revolution changing the way we shop
See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/12/tesco-consumer-revolution-internet-shopping
The age of the fortnightly shop is disappearing as more people turn to mobile devices and internet when buying groceries…
Info provided by Sjaak WOLFERT
E-mail: sjaak.wolfert(a)wur.nl


Whole Chain Traceability: A Successful Research Funding Strategy
See: http://pardalis.squarespace.com/blog/2012/1/26/whole-chain-traceability-a-successful-research-funding-strat.html


The Whole Chain Traceability Consortium
See: http://pardalis.squarespace.com/
blog/2011/11/7/the-whole-chain-traceability-consortium.html



Wirelessinfo / COIN review presentation
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOh0MAuiwkY


International scientific open access electronic journal: Agris on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics
The AOL is international, scholarly open access, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary and fully refereed scientific journal. The journal covers all areas of agriculture and rural development (agricultural economics, agribusiness, agrarian policy, information and communication technology, information system, e-business, social economy and rural sociology). The Journal is indexed by SCOPUS and others db (VOA3R, EBSCO, DOAJ, ProQuest, CAB Abstract, etc.).
See: http://online.agris.cz
Contact : Pavel SIMEK
E-mail: simek(a)pef.czu.cz


The Organic.Balkanet LdV EU project is officially over
See: http://www.organic-balkanet.eu

During the two years of its operation (9/12/2009-9/12/2011), the project identified the training needs of the users in the countries involved in the project (Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia) and based on this feedback, developed and offered a blended learning based training curriculum aimed at organic agriculture trainers, advisors and farmers freely available online through a multilingual course management platform.
See: http://ob.moleportal.eu).

This curriculum is further supported by a set of training scenarios included in the training curriculum, a training scenarios handbook adapted to fit the specific needs of the project's users as well as additional resources from previous initiatives and projects, carefully selected and adapted. Regarding the training curriculum and content, the following outcomes of the project should be noted:

1. Organic.Balkanet training curriculum: a set of 26 training units organized in 8 modules are available to all stakeholders. This material is supported by additional training material identified and selected by the corresponding provider of the course. All these are freely available to all stakeholders through the Organic.Balkanet Course Management Platform
See: http://ob.moleportal.eu

2. Organic.Balkanet Training Scenarios Handbook. A handbook providing the methodology, implementation and examples of training scenarios has been developed in order to support the development of new training scenarios as well as the adaptation of existing ones.

3. Organic.Balkanet Course Management Platform
See: http://ob.moleportal.eu
The multilingual platform is populated with the training curriculum of the project and is freely accessible by anyone, after a free registration (in order to avoid misuse by the visitors). It includes the content developed by the project partners supported by additional related training material, the handbooks and a number of communication tools.

4. Organic.Balkanet Course Management Platform User Guides: Two guides for the use of the Organic.Balkanet Course Management Platform were developed, for trainers and trainees respectively. The guides provide detailed information about the use of the platform both from the aspect of the course administrator and from the aspect of the trainee.

The results of the project have been and still are disseminated through a variety of Web2.0 tools such as:
a. Facebook Group
See: www.facebook.com/groups/organic.balkanet
It was and still is used to disseminate the project and its outcomes to a younger audience which is using Facebook intensively. The group managed to have more than 50 members at all times and has been really active and constantly updated.

b. Flickr photostream
See: www.flickr.com/photos/balkanet
It was used for uploading, storing and presenting photos from all the project meetings and related events. More than 100 photos have been uploaded and arranged in sets, according to the event.

c. Twitter
See: https://twitter.com/OrganicBalkanet
It has been used for providing short and instant information about news and events related to the project. About 40 tweets were circulated to about 15 followers and then some of them reached an even broader audience.

d. YouTube Channel
See: http://www.youtube.com/user/organicbalkanet
It has been used for sharing videos related to the objectives of the project, as well as some videos from events related to the project.

e. Online networking community
See: http://voa3r.cc.uah.es/index.php/groups/viewgroup/17-Balkan+Organic+Agriculture+Researchers
An online networking community has been created in order to provide a virtual space for researchers, practitioners and other stakeholders of the organic agriculture area of the Balkan countries to discuss, share and communicate. This community aims to keep the Organic.Balkanet consortium members and other stakeholders from Balkan countries connected even after the end of the project.

Contact : Vassilis PROTONOTARIOS
Mél : vprot(a)agroknow.gr


OpenAGRIS and agINFRA presented at AOS 2011 in Bangkok (from the AIMS newsletter)
The Joint International Symposium on Natural Language Processing and Agriculture Ontology Service (SNLP-AOS) 2011 [1]is taking place in Bangkok (Thailand) from the 9th–10th of February, 2012.
This was already the 9th AOS workshop (first one took place in 2001). The AOS workshops serve as occasions for researchers and practitioners in the area of semantically-driven information management in agriculture to meet and exchange experiences.

>>> OpenAGRIS and agINFRA presented at AOS workshop
The AIMS team held two presentations during the Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) workshop.

 * Johannes Keizer held the presentation entitled: "agINFRA, a multilingual infrastructure for information on agricultural
 Innovation"
 * Caterina Caracciolo held for the AGRIS team the presentation entitled: "OpenAGRIS: using bibliographical data for linking into the agricultural knowledge web"

See: http://www.snlp.in.th/index.php
See: http://aims.fao.org/aos-workshop


European Soil Portal
See: http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu
Contact: Panos PANAGOS
E-mail: panos.panagos(a)jrc.ec.europa.eu


Twitter
Did you hear that they had to cancel the big mob scene in the new Twitter movie?

They were limited to 140 characters.


And another short one
« The Artist », the mute movie captures 10 nominations at the Oscars, a première for a French movie!

That confirms that when the French keep their traps shut, everyone enjoy them!!!


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