OECS countries work to establish information observatory for agriculture
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Contact: Adhara King
Thursday, May 29, 2008 – The abundance of information collected within the agricultural sector will be made more accessible to OECS countries with the establishment of a proposed Information Observatory for Agriculture and Rural Territories.
St. Lucia's Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) is hosting a workshop aimed at launching a consortium for the development of an information observatory for agriculture within the OECS.
IICA representative to the Eastern Caribbean States, Una May Gordon, says the cooperation of all stakeholders within the OECS is necessary to effectively execute the project.
“We have all the partners, all the stakeholders in agriculture, the private sector, the ministry of agriculture, and the OECS Secretariat. So we have participants from right across the OECS countries sitting down to look at what we can do with information, and how we can use information to further the decision making process in agriculture,” said the IICA representative.
The concept of the observatory was first introduced in November 2006, when stakeholders in agriculture identified the need to create a “credible information system” to ensure the wealth of data collected would be accessible in maintaining sustainable development for OECS territories.
“One thing that came out quite forcefully is that information is not lacking in agriculture. What came out was that we were not using the information for good decision making, and also that the information was scattered everywhere. There is enough information but there is a lack of access, and there is a lack of the use of the information. One of the reasons for that is that the information was not in any one place, or was not accessible. This led to the development of the concept and how we could get better use and better access of the information,” said Gordon.
Gordon emphasisesthe imperative of understanding the difference between a regular database and an observatory. According to her, the observatory is meant to function as an active tool in decision making processes in agriculture and rural development. |
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