South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Awan Achiek
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Tuesday launched an online agricultural digital platform to improve the provision of extension services and boost production and farmers’ income.
The online platform will facilitate the registration of farmers, establish a database, and enhance the identification of electronic voucher subsidy beneficiaries.
Its package is composed of e-registry, voucher management system, e-extension, weather advisory mobile platform, and seed management system.
Meshack Malo, the FAO South Sudan country representative said the platform seeks to build a digital community of farmers that would enable the sharing of information for the growth of the sector.
“This is going to be a very important database in increasing our efficiency and working with farmers. The next fight is an information fight and our farmers like in Aweil need to go through the mobile phone and be able to upload a photo of a particular pest,” Malo said during the launching ceremony in Juba.
He added that the digital platform will also provide early information to farmers on planting various seed varieties.
“We believe that the seed sector is an important sector. So many farmers are also wasting a lot of time ploughing which is very hectic but at the end of the day putting the wrong seed on the ground,” he said.
For her part, Josephine Lagu, the minister of agriculture and food security said the online agriculture digital platform will help to improve food security in the country.
“I feel humbled to speak to you today about this important milestone, a clear game changer in our quest to make agriculture more efficient in our efforts to achieve food and nutrition security in our country,” Lagu said.
She said the digital platform will ensure the country is not left behind on the e-agriculture revolution.
“Indeed, my country should be part of the global efforts to transform the agri-food systems to make them more inclusive, more resilient, and more sustainable. Digitalization and innovation are therefore key accelerators to this transformation,” Lagu added.
The digitial platform also captures information such as beneficiary bio-data, demographic data, fingerprint, images, size of the field, livestock, agro- dealers’ data, and any other information envisaged important. The latest Integrated Food Classification Report (IPC) shows that 5.83 million people, 46 percent of the population in South Sudan are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity in 2023.