Information and Communication Technologies

The smallholder resource poor farmers are facing many challenges from climate change in the form of increased frequency of natural disasters, loss of biodiversity, increasing petroleum prices, increasing food prices, inefficient supply chains and others. Farmers require the information for making more decisions on the selection of crop/variety, time of sowing, irrigation, pesticide spray, harvest, choice of markets to sell their products and other decisions that influence the livelihoods of the farm families and society.
Certainly, ICT applications make agriculture knowledge-intensive in true sense. Emerging ICTs have provided new opportunities to address the challenges faced by agriculture. Mobile phones for disease surveillance and pest tracking, varietal information, nutrient management are now common practice.
ICT tools help to improve access to information and enrich knowledge on production technologies.
ICTs facilitate discussion between stakeholders and across levels, and build knowledge networks. ICT enables its users in providing extension and training, and disseminate technology suitable for climate change adaptation.