The archives of this newsletter
See: http://www.informatique-agricole.org/category/gazette-efita/


Jokes, Quotes and Anecdotes... an Anatomy of Wit
Mick Harkin, ex Secretary of EFITA, who has kept us amused with his Friday Jokes over the years, has published a book on Amazon entitled "Jokes, Quotes and Anecdotes... an Anatomy of Wit".
See: http://www.jokesquotesandanecdotes.com
Contact: Mick HARKIN
E-mail: harkin(a)iol.ie


A point of view: Cooperation with commercial companies (GW)
In the last issues of this newsletter, I discussed: Open Archives, Open Data, the generalized ICT adopation by farmers and advisors (as well as by our societies), the interest of modelling activities even when these activities do not always meet real needs of farmers.
See (in French): http://www.modelia.org/moodle/
Today I would like to underline the interest of cooperation with producers of real agri-software products (and not the generalists that usally benefit from generous help from EU and who do not know anythings about farmers' needs).
Small companies have been able to produce interesting apps.
See (in French): http://www.journalduwebagricole.fr/
archive/2012/09/14/au-space-les-versions-mobiles-font-une-percee.html

And we should not forget that, e.g. in France, Isagri is one of the biggest farming software providers in the world.
See: http://www.isagri.com/frontoffice/about-isagri/key-figures-247.aspx


Food, Forests, and Landscapes: Solutions for Sustainable Development
24 June 2013 - 12:15 pm – 1:45 pm – Washington (GMT -4 hours)
As the world faces a population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, global leaders are searching for policies to feed a growing population, boost nutrition, raise incomes, and improve equity while being mindful of sustainable landscapes, protecting biodiversity, and combating climate change. As you know, more than 50 percent of the earth’s forests have now disappeared, creating an array of environmental and social problems. Yet more than one third of the food produced worldwide is going to waste.

The panel discussion will discuss landscape approaches, which look at combined land-use solutions in a holistic manner, assessing geographical spaces of interest and the impacts of interventions into these spaces.

Our guest speakers include Shenggen Fan, director general of IFPRI; Peter Holmgren, director general of the Center for International Forestry Research; and Rachel Kyte, vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank.
See: http://www.ifpri.org/event/food-forests-and-landscapes


Identified user requirements for precision farming in Germany, Finland and Denmark
As a part of the ICT-AGRI project, GeoWebAgri, an internet based questionnaire was conducted among farmers, contractors, agricultural advisors, machine and equipment manufactures and researchers in Germany, Finland and Denmark from June 2012 to September 2012.

A total of 257 respondents completed the questionnaire. 194 of these were farmers. 55% of the respondent farmers were already using desktop farm management systems, and 36% of the respondent farmers also had previous experiences in using precision farming technique. 28% of the respondents with previous experiences in precision farming had ‘often’ or ‘always’ experienced difficulties due to ‘language problems’ between different farm equipment or between their farm equipment and a software program. 59% of the farmers had ‘often’ or ‘always’ a reliable mobile internet access in the field, whereas 12% did not know the answer to that question.

If the internet access is not improved, then all future systems should be able to work both online and off line. Among the presented precision farming techniques auto steering and automatic boom section control on sprayers both had 50 % or more ratings as ‘very important’ or ’necessary’ techniques. Overall, the ratings of a number of different precision farming techniques were however, surprisingly similar.

Finally, no more than 18 % of the farmers were willing to spend more than 3 minutes extra per field task, e.g. for typing in information or waiting for GPS-signal. This demonstrated that highly time efficient and reliable semi-automatic or fully automatic systems with a minimum of manual input will be required, if precision farming should achieve a high penetration in future farming.
See: https://www.landbrugsinfo.dk/Planteavl/Praecisionsjordbrug-og-GIS/Sider/identified-user-requirements-for-precision-farming_pl_13_1369.aspx

Contact: Jens BLIGAARD, Knowledge Centre for Agriculture, Denmark
E-mail:jeb(a)vfl.dk


Latest newsletter for the agINFRA project
See: https://smore.com/kyvq


The social network of scientific and technical information on biodiversity and ecosystem services for Africa AfriBes is on, open to all biodiversity stakelholders and free of charge
Afribes is the place is a place to develop cooperation, collaboration and exchange of knowledge and scientific information on biodiversity for Africa.

Based on Web 2.0 technologies, Afribes is characterized by user participation, openness, interconnectivity and interactivity of web-delivered content.

>>> Afribes proposed:
- A voluntary directory,
- A portal to drop and share references of publications, books, articles, conference proceedings, job and research opportunities
- A search engine that will provide access to local and international databases, websites, scientific documents
- Project rooms of discussion with cooperative tools for you and your community on your specific projects on biodiversity (survey, education, research, answer for call of offers etc…)

See: http://www.afribes.net/


Ag modelling in France (in French)
See: http://www.modelia.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=35


G8 leaders signed the Open Data Charter on 18 June 2013
See: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-data-charter


Pan-European Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) stock of agricultural soils
The future EU policy in agriculture will utilized SOC as indicator, both as a main parameter of soil quality and as a strategy to offset CO2 emission by C sequestration. However a consistent picture of agricultural SOC stock is missing as well as tools to orient the future policymaker decisions.
We estimated a current top SOC stock of 17.63 Gt in EU agricultural soils, by an unprecedented model application running about 164,000 combination of climate, soil and land use/management. A comprehensive model platform was established at a pan-European scale (EU + Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Norway) using the agro-ecosystem SOC model CENTURY. The model was implemented with the main management practices (e.g. irrigation, mineral and organic fertilization, tillage, etc.) derived from official statistics.
The model results were tested against inventories from the European Environment and Observation Network (EIONET) and approximately 20,000 soil samples from the 2009 LUCAS survey, a monitoring project aiming at producing the first
coherent, comprehensive and harmonized top-soil dataset of the EU based on harmonized sampling and analytical methods. A detailed explanation of the methodology and the platform of simulation developed could be found in: Lugato E., Panagos P., Bampa, F., Jones A., Montanarella L. (2013). A new baseline of organic carbon stock in European agricultural soils using a modelling approach. Global change biology. In Press

The dataset will be available soon: http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/library/Themes/SOC/CAPRESE/
Contact: Panos PANAGOS
E-mail: panos.panagos(a)jrc.ec.europa.eu


G8 Science Ministers endorse the need to increase access to publicly-funded research
See: http://aims.fao.org//aims.fao.org/community/open-access/blogs/g8-science-ministers-endorse-need-increase-access-publicly-funded-resear


The golf ball and the sand wedge

A woman takes a lover home during the day while her husband is at work.

Her 9-year old son comes home unexpectedly, sees them, and hides in the bedroom closet. Then the woman's husband also comes home. She puts her lover in the closet, not realizing that the little boy is in there already.

The little boy says, 'Dark in here.'
The man says, 'Yes, it is.'
Boy - 'I have a golf ball.'
Man - 'That's nice.'
Boy - 'Want to buy it?'
Man - 'No, thanks.'
Boy - 'My dad's outside.'
Man - 'OK, how much?'
Boy - '$250'

A few weeks later, it happens again that the boy and the lover are in the closet together.
Boy - 'Dark in here.'
Man - 'Yes, it is.'
Boy - 'I have sand wedge.'
The lover, remembering the last time, asks the boy, 'How much?'
Boy - '$750'
Man - 'Sold..'

A few days later, the boys' father says to the boy, 'Grab your sand wedge and golf ball, let's go outside and have some short game practice. The boy says, 'I can't, I sold my ball and sand wedge dad.'

The father says, 'What?! How much did you sell them for?'
Boy - '$1,000.'

The father says, 'That's terrible to overcharge your friends like that. That is far more than those two things cost. I'm going to take you to church and make you confess.'

They go to the church and the father makes the little boy sit in the confession booth and he closes the door.

The boy says, 'Dark in here.'

The priest says, 'Don't start that shit with me again. You're in my closet now.'


About the EFITA mailing list
You can use the efita moderated list (> 3800 subscribers) to announce any event / product / web site / joke (!) related to IT in agriculture, environment, food industry and rural areas.
If you want to subscribe a friend, please fill in his form.
If you do not wish to receive our messages, please fill in the following form...