Excellencies, distinguished delegates, participants, and dear colleagues, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on your time zones. And welcome to FAO in Geneva, Agriculture Trade Talks session today, the first series of this year. My name is Pinar Karakaya. I am working as an economist at FAO Liaison Office in Geneva, and today I will be moderating the session. At the outset, I would like to thank you all for taking the time to attend our webinar today, given your busy schedules. We appreciate your support and interest in FAO's work. Before starting our event, let me share some details regarding the logistics and housekeeping issues for this virtual session. This webinar will be in English only with no interpretation. It will be recorded and will later be available on our website, along with various related resources relevant to the session. It is scheduled to last about one hour and 15 minutes. We have reserved some time towards the end of the webinar for question and answer session. Please submit your questions in the Q&A module, not in the regular chat box. While posting your questions, please kindly state your name and organization or institution. We will try to accommodate as many requests as possible, either in writing or oral during the webinar. If you have any problems or technical issues, please send the message in the chat box to us for support. That's all for housekeeping issues. Now I would like to take a moment to give a brief information on FAO in Geneva Agriculture Trade Talks. As you will already know, FAO supports its members' efforts to formulate trade policies that are conducive to improved food security by strengthening evidence and analysis, providing capacity development, and facilitating a neutral dialogue away from the negotiating table. In this separate, we have been organizing FAO in Geneva Agricultural Trade Talks with a view to share information on relevant and timely topics at the intersection of trade and agriculture. These trade talks are based on an approach we call three eyes, informal, interactive, and inspirational. Excellencies, dear participants and dear colleagues, today we will focus on digitalization and agriculture. This session will enable diverse group of panelists, including the digital agriculture specialists and technology innovators to discuss the role of digitalization in contributing more economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable agriculture. It will examine some of the opportunities as well as the associated challenges. We will also listen to experts' views with a focus on African region, on the youth and technology, and on the role of the youth in the sustainable agriculture agenda. Today's session will also provide an opportunity for the winners of the FAO, Geneva Trade Platform Hecaton, imagining apps for sustainable agriculture held on the 17th of November 2022 to present the application they designed. This Hecaton showcased how youth can contribute to transforming agriculture to become more sustainable and resilient through digital transformation. Further information on this event can be accessed through our website. Before proceeding with the session, I would also like to introduce today's topic. Throughout the ages, technological change in agri-food systems and elsewhere has brought gains in productivity, incomes, and human well-being. Today, technological solutions are indispensable to contribute to feed a continuously growing population in the face of limited agricultural land, unsustainable natural resource use, and increasing shocks and stresses including climate change. These solutions are needed to support the transformation of agri-food systems to make them more resilient, inclusive, sustainable, and efficient, leaving no one behind. Digitalization in agriculture presents many opportunities. It can raise productivity, it can provide better working conditions and improve incomes and reduce the workload of farming, and it can generate new rural entrepreneurial opportunities. On the other hand, it can also pose various challenges. With this background, I would like to introduce our speakers. Mr. Tambani Malapela, Knowledge and Information Management Officer from the Office of Innovation at FAO. Mr. Ken Lohento, Digital Agriculture and Strategic Focal Point from FAO Regional Office for Africa. Mr. Cesar Wuli, Youth Employment Specialist from FAO Regional Office for Africa. Mr. Mo Sapa, Heads of Sales and Data Success at Eqqlo in Geneva, and the winning team of the FAO Geneva Trade Platform, Hekaton Composito Maximilian Bibelsmann, who is a student of the International Affairs Program at the University of Sengalian in Switzerland, and Varun Bagat, who is a final year master's student at the Geneva Graduate Institute specializing in Sustainable Trade. We will now hear from Mr. Tambani Malapela. He will set the global scene in relation to the digitalization and agriculture sector. As indicated earlier, please post any questions in the Q&A module. Your questions will be answered by the speakers during the session or at the end of our meeting, time permitting. Please, Mr. Malapela, the floor is yours. Thank you very much for welcoming me here. I'm going to offer some remarks here. I'm honored really to be invited to this edition of FAO in Geneva Agricultural Trade Talks and specifically to offer some remarks on the global scene in relation to digitalization and agriculture. For me, this meeting comes very close to the FAO Geneva Trade Platform Hekaton Imagining Apps for Sustainable Agriculture, which was held on the 17th of November 2022, and which I was honored to be a jury to see some of the solutions that were presented at that meetings. What really touched me there was how the youth can contribute to transforming agriculture to become more sustainable and resilient through digital transformation to present their applications that were designed to support sustainable use of resources such as fertilizer and other inputs by the So we are meeting here and we are gaining on this progress in this trade talks and it allows us to deliberate on how digital technologies are indispensable to feed a continuously growing population and also sustainable use of resources, including the challenges that we have. I'm particularly pleased that the focus is really still on the youth and on innovative solutions as a central part of the agricultural transformation and productivity and digitalization in agriculture. Just laying back on the much more broader objectives, such issues are very, very important for FAO digitalization, innovation, digital agriculture, science, technology and innovation focusing on youth and women are very important to us. You might also have had that FAO just recently had a science and innovation strategy, which aims to strengthen the farce work on science, technology and innovation and to accelerate the transformation of agri-food systems so that they become more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems for a better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, leaving no one behind. So ladies and gentlemen, we are having this when we do have global challenges and opportunities of transforming agri-food systems for such issues. We're just about to come out of the COVID-19 situation. We're having geopolitical instability and conflict. We have climate-induced crises. We have biodiversity law, the rising cost of food, the weakening and increasing hunger and increasing inequalities. The effects really do not look good. For example, between 702 and 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021. We're still looking to see what 2022 would look like. The number has grown about 150 million since the outbreak of COVID-19, 103 million people between 2019 and 2020, which was an additional 46 million more in 2021. Recently, in a couple of days we heard of the earthquake in countries, we are having serious challenges in a global level. Furthermore, food systems are really also facing great from climate change and as we have noted, other sustainable use of inputs. So in order to overcome these challenges, FAO believes that science, technology and innovation should be placed at the center of agri-food system transformation and most importantly digitalization if implemented sustainable is a key driver in the transformation of agri-food systems. Ladies and gentlemen, when you look at making the transformation of agri-food systems a reality and achieve the sustainable development of goals, we need to invest in digital technologies and also digitalization as a way to accelerate some of these gains that we have and also to overcome the challenges that I mentioned above. If implemented properly, digitalization has the potential to increase agricultural productivity and food security while enhancing the sustainability and inclusiveness of the global agri-food sector, triggering new partnership and opportunities for emerging actors. By empowering small holder farmers with innovative technologies that enhance food sustainability and building resilience, we should be able to fight against food losses. So really digital technologies can apply and play a key role in improving security. Precision agriculture, for example, the use of sensor networks and data analytics to help farmers optimize crop yields and improve water and fertilizer management and other inputs management can lead to a more efficient use of resources and greater crop yields which can help to ensure that more people have access to nutritious food. But for these technologies, we need to be inclusive to ensure that when we apply digitalization, we are not leaving anyone behind. Another example is using big data and artificial intelligence technologies to inform decision making on processes on food supply chain from farm to table is another important aspect of digital transformation in food security. This can help identify potential bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the systems, allowing for more effective food distributions. So the rise of emerging technologies such as meat service, artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics also offer more opportunities in agriculture. And I hope some of my colleagues here, as we are going to venture into the debate, they might explore much detail in some of these areas. I would like to take this moment to share a few examples of what FAO has been doing in the area of digitalization. FAO considers digitalization as a key approach to work. For example, digital agriculture is part of the 20 program priority areas of the FAO's work. And also FAO really moves on to the digital for impact as a means of delivery. We have, for example, the FAO's hand in hand initiative which uses your special biophysical and social economic data as well as advanced analytics to identify territories where agriculture transformation and sustainable management of forestry and fisheries have the greatest potential for alleviating poverty and data. So the hand in hand, the hand in hand geospatial platform is a crucial tool for all efforts to build better and create more resilient food systems post COVID. And increasing of number of countries that are participating in this platform shows a successful use and application of data and geospatial technologies in tackling the challenges that we face. Associated FAO's open access use special platform which is a digital public good provides advanced information, federating food security indicators and agricultural statistics, combining geographic information and statistical data on more than 10 domains including food security, farms, soil, water, climate, fisheries, livestock and forestry. So this platform unlocks millions of data layers from different domains and sources to serve as a key enabling tool for digital agriculture experts, economists, government agencies, and other stakeholders working in the food and agricultural sector. Related to this is the digital villages initiatives which aims to convert digital villages across the world into digital hubs to support the acceleration of rural transformation and reduce the digital gap, including the gender and rural divide. So this initiative is being rolled out globally in close partnership with FAO regional offices and our members across the globe. As you can see from my small enumeration of these initiatives, you can see that FAO is trying to embed digitalization into its work by ensuring that we are not leaving everyone behind. The theme of our discussion today talks about the opportunities and challenges. The digitalization is coming when already the societies have challenges that are existing. If not implemented with conscious care, digitalization can exacerbate the already existing divides or inequalities such as gender divide, rural divide, rich and poor divide. We should ensure that when we implement digital technologies, we should be cognizant of the challenges and the gaps that exist. These are just a few examples of digital agriculture and innovation interventions focusing on FAO's or FAO's digital for impact portfolio. So FAO remains committed, ladies and gentlemen, to strengthen global collaboration on the future of food and farming and enhancing digital transformations in the food agriculture sector with all the parties. We are really excited to be part of this discussion in FAO Geneva to bring all stakeholders into this discussion. FAO notices and understands that working in this area, we need to work with like-minded organizations and partners in addressing the needs of our members. I will share with you an interesting picture that really I liked very much. It offers a bit of an, I don't know whether you can see the picture. So when you see this cartoon picture, it shows the future of agriculture is changing. From this picture you see where we come from and where we're going. This is just an example of one area which is mechanization. We see at the end of the picture that the future of agriculture is likely to be very digital, very mechanized. So FAO has a vital role to play the digital ecosystem for sustainable agri-food system. So the notion of sustainability needs to be translated in digital terms and we are all just at the beginning of this journey. We need to ensure that when we get to this area, we are not leaving anyone behind. Let me see if I can share this picture. So the constructive dialogues like these, joint actions like these, hackathons bringing youth together, exchanges of best practices in the use of digital technologies, must be key components of shaping the most targeted policies for the future of our agri-food system where we're all likely to have a role to play. As you have seen in the my cartoon that I just showed, humans certainly have disappeared. We do not want to have a situation like that. So we are also participating as FAO with the global initiatives within the UN system on ensuring how we keep young people, how we keep youth and humans as part of the agri-food systems. So the future of the technology and field systems lies in the next technologies, lies also in the next generation. The awareness and acknowledgement of the problem has increased the chances of making a change for a better and better future and likelihood of an effort that can be made to reverse the harmful consequences of technologies that might have to family farmers and small holders is put in place today. So I hope that our discussions today addresses the investments bought from opportunistic perspective and from a challenges perspective. I especially look forward for exchanges today and what comes next. Thank you. We would like to thank you very much Mr. Malapela for this comprehensive overview of the topic, your pertinent points concerning digitalization and agriculture, including what FAO is doing in this area, including FAO's major initiatives relevant and associated with digital life. Now we will hear from the winners. Varun and Maximilian will present the application they designed and named the Green Crop App, which aims to support fertilizer used by farmers and to support domestic fruits making. Please Varun and Maximilian, the floor is yours. Hi, is the slide visible? Yes, we can see it, perfect. So greetings to everyone. I was joining from Geneva and around the world. As highlighted, Maximilian and I will be presenting the app ideation that made us win the FAO GDP student hackathon held in November last year, and we named it Green Crop, primarily because it dealt with the sustainability challenges associated with fertilizers. This is what we aim to cover in a very brief presentation today, beginning with the very rational of why we thought of developing an app in this field, moving forward to the key phases of the application, how it functions, the input requirement in terms of data, etc. The potential scaling up of the app and the foreseen limitations will be covered in the Bay Head section. So, coming to why the app is needed and why we thought it was necessary to sort of pitch an idea of having an app in this domain. As we all know, there has been a shortage of fertilizers in the global market since about an year now, and both FAO and WTO have estimated that this fertilizer shortage will persist into 2023. And such a condition makes it very tough for regions like Africa to secure the requisite fertilizer supply, and then maintain the food production. This global shortage of fertilizers comes at a time when there has been an increasing dependence on fertilizers by farmers for growing their crops. And as we all know, this over usage and over dependence on fertilizers has and can further lead to reduced production per unit of fertilizer. This means that more and more fertilizers would be required to ensure this to match and ensure the same yield as before. This would result in increased costs for farmers and lower profits. In terms of environmental degradation, it's a well known fact that fertilizers can and have a detrimental impact on environment. All those factors and conditions in mind we knew that we had to develop an app which could in some way target these issue and provide a much more sustainable take on the issue of fertilizers and the concerning areas. So the key points of the app include our target users are the critical stakeholders of the agriculture sector, both farmers and policymakers are objective as I just mentioned is to address the critical issues and promote sustainable practices. And we will present it in subsequent slides that these sustainable practices are not just for fertilizers per se, but for the larger agriculture sectors and we'll just show how and we aim to achieve this by including a scientific measure for providing us an optimal fertilizer usage for farmers and then a dialogue platform for knowledge sharing and best practices among the policymakers. We identified Brazil as a pilot project country, because we noticed that it has an high import dependence on fertilizers, and then given the sort of contemporary scenario for the geo for the global market of fertilizers the kind of the government had last implemented a national fertilizer plan to sort of reduce its dependence on import, as well as usage of the fertilizers domestically. So such conditions made Brazil as a perfect place in our opinion to roll out our app. So we identified into Brazil forward while designing the app. So once this application has been downloaded, this is the first base that any user or person will see there will be two language options English and Portuguese this has been kept in mind with Brazil as a pilot project country. The user can select their profile either as a farmer, or a policy maker and then they region from a drop down list, and then some of their data. In case a user has selected a policy maker profile in the registration page, this is the home page they will be directed to the end of the first option of database policy framework, they will have access to all the relevant frameworks that have been enacted. And both the national as well as international framework. So just to highlight this would include all the policy frameworks such as the framework which FAO enacted in 2019 with multilateral support for the usage of fertilizers so all the policy frameworks that have been enacted relating to fertilizers will be there so having they have an easy access to the data and they do not need to look anywhere else. And finally, they will also be a dialogue platform for the policy for the policy makers to interact and engage with their colleagues at the regional at the national, as well as the international counterparts and the representatives from FAO on the matters of fertilizers and agriculture at large. Lastly, the policy makers will also benefit from a series of informative videos on refining this skill sets. There will be more on the videos on this slide. So under the informative videos they will have a multiple of options as you can see on this slide under the recent facts and finance. The policy makers will be able to sort of be up to date with the latest developments in this particular field of fertilizers and the largest sustainable agriculture. The idea of success stories of policy makers idea was that with the short clips of policy makers that were successful in implementing sustainable practices pertaining to both fertilizing larger agriculture domain. Other policy makers would be encouraged and motivated to do the same in their region. Lastly, under the strategic communication option. The policy makers will see videos as to how they can improve their interpersonal skills. And also they will be given certain strategies as to how they could interact with the farmers at the local level. So as to motivate them and encourage and ensure rather a wider adoption of sustainable practices. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you. So now we would see the interface of the farmers. Starting with their homepage where you can see the key sub product of them, which is the fertilizer calculator, which would indicate the optimal quantity of fertilizers to be used while growing the crop. The calculator would derive this value after taking into account various parameters that we will talk after this slide. Furthermore, farmers will benefit from the convenient access to the small videos of easy to adopt sustainable practices. Additionally, having testimonials of farmers that have adopted such similar sustainable matters, I thought based on the videos or through their own innovative spirit will be presented and celebrated as success stories. If there are any questions asked an expert option provided in the app to the farmers will give them the option to reach their local offices or the regional offices. In case of a question or problem. And the next slide please. The fertilizer calculator is now looked into more detail. First of all, before putting in the relevant nutrition values of the soil in the case that they are known, the type of crop, the growing season, the area of the field and which fertilizers preferred to be used are asked for to create an accurate amount for fertilizer usage. So when you fill that out, you will come to the next slide, which is the soil report. So in the case that the farmers have the relevant data available. They will have to put in the pH value nitrogen value phosphorus potassium so for as well as sync values, which are just an example of which can be relevant, but it is depending on the type of crop and other factors also. But it is not necessarily the perfect fertilizer calculator for every crop. And then once they fill that out, they get the report available. They can either download or just view. And also additionally, they have the chance to get more information on sustainable farming, which will bring them to the video section. Talk about afterwards. So the video section is where the farmers get the chance to watch the easy to adopt sustainable practices, as well as the best practice example videos. And even today the FAO already published videos around that topic on their official YouTube channel, which are the ones that are being used as examples on this slide. So now we will talk about the input requirements that will be necessary for that. The first input requirement is for for farmers to refine the existing fertilizer calculation mechanism, because as we said it depends on which crop is being used and there would have to be an expert looking into the detailed calculator. We just gave an example of how one could look based on the available information on the internet, but just to make it more accurate. And also the second option is the requirement of soil reported for accurate results, which means that not every farmer has those soil reports available and they make the result a lot more accurate, which is why they are very important for the app. And also there's the need to create the videos on the one and the ones for the policymakers as well as for the farmers. And that is also a task that has to be done before the app can be used. And we also think that in general the success of the app will be dependent greatly on the active participation of local and national policymakers to support the promotion of sustainable practices within the farmer community, which is the overall goal of the app. And then the next slide please. Yeah, so the way ahead is on one hand the future prospects. And where we see the app in later stages could have a messaging feature for the policymakers to interact on a one to one basis both nationally and internationally. Furthermore, the subsequent versions of the app are envisioned to seek feedback from the farmers at the end of the year, indicating the usage of the fertilizers and the overall output so that you can compare how much fertilizers they used in which year and what the results were based on that. This can be later than used also to show other farmers how effective this can be. Then coming to the limitations of the app. The one problem could be that there are a lot of variables that cannot be estimated. For example, a vast exchange of weather, or also past attacks. So, this can also affect the yield. And additionally, the tailoring of the sustainable policy frameworks could be another limitation because that's also dependent on local governments and is how to calculate before on how effective this will be done. And yes, thank you for your time. And if you have any questions, you can fill them out and we will talk about it later. Thank you very much Varun and Maximilian for this very excellent presentation. Following your presentation now, Mr. Mosavov will present a real life example of the process on how their company brings and brought an application into life. During my introductory remarks, Mr. Safav is the head of sales and data success at Ekplov. Ekplov is a market data and intelligence startup company based in Geneva, Switzerland with the mission of digitalizing agricultural markets. Please, Mr. Safav, the floor is yours. Thank you very much for having me. I want to echo some of the sentiments of the other speakers and being honored to have been invited to speak here and to give you a perspective, a different perspective I guess from the private sector. I'm just going to share my screen. So, yes, as Pinar mentioned, so outflow, our core mission I suppose is incredibly relevant to the basis of this webinar. It is to digitalize agricultural markets. My role within that so we have been in business since 2013. And from 2019, there was a new management wave, a restructuring of the company, a renewed vigor and a renewed vision. And I was part of that movement. So I have been working really as head of sales and data success, which means I direct the commercial strategies that are relevant to new client acquisition. The relationship management of both clients and data partners. So I've been really seeing the evolution over the past three years in terms of our product development, which is very much reliant on the data partner network that we have. Because essentially what we do is collect market data from proprietary network of 140 to 150 companies across the full value chain of the agricultural industry. So, to give you an idea, so why are we here. So we have two key challenges that we see that I think are very unique to the agricultural industry actually. These are an asymmetric value distribution and unprecedented market volatility. So agricultural practice is quite old school. A lot of knowledge and information sharing can be informal, quite casual, really dependent on who you know. And so if you're trying to create an informed decision, the lower you are in the value chain or the less people you know, the more challenging that becomes. So for a local farmer or a smaller producer or an exporter, they may not have the access that some of the larger companies do. And that makes it quite, quite challenging. And so in this sense we see an asymmetric distribution, as I say, and the fundamental breakage in the data sharing and data democratization in the industry. When you answer that, the fact that markets are incredibly volatile. You know, a lot and the FAO will obviously know much more than me but there are a lot of geopolitical challenges that that really are directly impacting food supply and food security. And a very tangible example is that is obviously the events of last year and still unfolding in Russia and Ukraine. And so the need to have reliable data in order to mitigate the food supply risks has never been more important. So just to give you a bit of a graphic and a visual to try and describe that a bit more holistically. So we're really trying to streamline the collection, the cleaning and the presentation of data in order for different players across the market chain to make informed decisions. And most importantly, to do that digitally, of course, and to keep the supply chain resilient. So, again, coming back to the idea of some of the smaller players, you know, they really, they really can be in a position where they are becoming price takers, not actually creating or generating their own business due to the issue with distribution. And that makes the whole process of the supply chain quite unresilient. And so, giving them a fair and democratic right to a wide range of data sets is really at the heart of our long term vision. So on this slide, you can kind of see the wide range of data sets that we cover. For your interest, the darker squares are the proprietary privileged information that we collect from this network. The core business has always been focused on a number of data sets, which are the physical cash price of goods, mainly grains, oil seeds, veg oils, some pulses and thoughts. The cost to ship those goods, which we acquire from shipping companies and freight forwarders, and the S&D lineup information, so which vessels are carrying which agricultural goods in and out of ports around the world. And from that strong foundation and from the strategic relationships and partnerships we have created, we are then able to direct our commercial strategy and our product development based on the market trends. So, where we've started to build additional use cases for people like risk managers, we are able to direct efforts into things like algorithmic forward curves. So using a bank of factual data, we are then able to speak to our clients, analyze a total addressable market, really get feedback and involvement with these clients or users to see if the market requires potential data sets or tools to support them. And another good example of that is a CFR matrix CFR calculator that we created with one of our strategic partners. Really, we highlighted that as a pain point for something that they were doing, you know, on a day to day basis. So, utilizing and crossing our cash price data set with our freight, we were able to generate a tool for them, which then became commercially viable to other use cases across the industry and supply chain. And so one of the big pieces of advice I'd give in terms of commercialization is the importance of developing a use case and also really getting market feedback as to the real need to that. So, so when I say the use case, I'm talking about, you know, how can you make their life easier on a day to day basis, right? And those are the kind of tools that we've been able to create with the strong data bank that we have. We also have a number of other data sets that are a lot more relevant when it comes to things like supply and demand food supply and that kind of thing. And just for your interest, the long term goal for us really is to cross these data sets. So have an idea as to, you know, why the cash price is where it is dependent on the movement of goods, depending on the weather and depending on national stocks. So, so really, that's what we're trying to get to because the market has informed us that that's what they would want to see. So, just to give you a very tangible use case of an ongoing project at the moment, we were very honored to successfully win a grant with Inno Swiss in the past 18 months. And the idea is to develop in unison with HES and University of Luzon an app for farmers. And the idea again is coming back to the challenge that we've seen with data not being readily available to people at a more local level is again, as you can see, we've highlighted with them a big challenge for them to get access to reliable information. The goal of the tool is to use natural language processing to scrape open sources and privilege sources and develop the tool that is customized to an individual at a farmer local level. So, for instance, if you're working in West Africa, you're unaware of what's going on in the market, we can scrape a lot of local information and then actionably demonstrate that on an app that would be readily available so you can make an informed decision. So that that in a nutshell is the kind of goal so using that kind of machine learning artificial intelligence is a much smoother and automated process. So we're currently developing that and like I say the result will be to have this user friendly mobile application from vetted sources that are customized to the individual user. So I just wanted to give a bit of a shout out to the team and also a bit of encouragement to those that are obviously working in commercializing tech within ag because we're a very small team. We're very dynamic where we're diverse and global. And I think just in the lens of commercialization, you know, with the right expertise and the right communication and the right passion. There isn't really a limit to what can be achieved. So, yeah, just wanted to give you the idea that even within those three or four years we've been able to scale up and grow, not just our own internal team but our data partners and obviously the projects that we work on. And finally, just to give you kind of an idea and in a nutshell, some of the companies that we work with and that really validate the work that we're doing. And obviously a bit more context as to why we do what we do and what our goal is in the long term. So thank you for listening and happy to take any questions. Thank you very much Mr. Safa for your points from a private sector perspective. It's really interesting to hear what is doing in the area of digitalization, including the recent project you have been working on. And today we also have a digital agriculture and strategy expert from a few regional office for Africa, Mr. Ken Lohento and Mr. Lohento will provide the regional perspective from Africa. On how digital technology can play an important role in the region in terms of sustainable agriculture agenda. Please, Mr. Lohento, the floor is yours. Okay, thank you very much. Once again, let me share my screen. I think it is this one. Yes, thanks very much for the opportunity indeed. And greetings to everyone. So I work for the regional office for Africa. So headquartered in Ghana. So I would like to share with you some insights on how the digital agriculture landscape is involved in Africa, particularly relating to sustainable agriculture. So I'll be more focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, that is the focus of the regional office for Africa, because we have another office that covers North Africa. So most of the example that I will be giving will be relating to that specific geography. So first, as you may see on the screen, we have about 400 active applications, platforms, and on digital agriculture according to various estimates. And these applications are actually coming across all the different use cases of digital agriculture. So we have most of the services or platforms that are serving advisory services. Market linkages is the second use case where we have more usage of digital agriculture. We also have a variety of platforms that are addressing access to finance. Supply chain management is another area where we are having more and more applications. Again, we also have one specific use case that we call macro agro-intelligence, basically meaning the use of a variety of data platforms, for example, by government, but sometimes also by private sector, so that they can really draw intelligence from the data that have been shared. So I think the colleague that just presented highlighted some of the use cases, particularly some that may be related to macro agro-intelligence. So in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly the region where we have most usage of digitalization in agriculture is obviously, as you may suspect, is Africa. And a region where we have the least is Central Africa where we have just about 6% of the active digital agriculture platform. So if we want to improve things in that area, these are some of the area where that we need to be active. Some of the data that I have been sharing are more or less data of 2020, so maybe currently we have more advances, but basically the picture is that one. Now, I want to let's say zero in bits or be more specific when we talk about sustainable agriculture. We have seen different use cases in the previous slide. And when we really want to more talk about sustainable agriculture, if we follow the model, the framework of FAO, which has identified five key principles of sustainable agriculture. We can classify existing platform in those five categories. So we have platform, we do have platform that are supporting the improvement of the use of natural resources for more efficiency, which is one of one of the key area of sustainable agriculture. And I have put there some example, for example, in Tunisia, we have the RoboCare, which is a platform that is supporting pest management using also artificial intelligence and others. We have also at another layer, for example, considering the need to protect and enhance natural resources, we have a number of platform that exists. Even at FAO, we have, for example, what we call the E-locust platform that support addressing and eradicating diesel locusts in the crop production. So this is something that we have been using in different geographies, particularly in East Africa. We also have an organization called IGAD, which has a number of systems supporting climate change. Let's say addressing climate change issues. So these are some of the platform we have that are supporting sustainable agriculture. So by and large, as you can see on the screen, in every area or in all the key area that are related to sustainable agriculture, we do have platform currently in Africa that we are using. Some of them are not from Africa per se, but they are operational in Africa. But we have some challenges, particularly when we talk about using digital tools for, let's say, improving sustainable agriculture or for achieving sustainable agriculture. And I would like particularly to take the example of technologies that are supporting climate smart agriculture. So what we call digital climate smart agriculture services and highlight some of the key challenges that we have in that area in Africa, particularly, but I think it is more than in Africa. We also have some of those challenges elsewhere. One of the key challenges that we have is that because many of the platform that are supporting climate smart agriculture are quite new, actually. So we don't have enough knowledge on and best practices, as well as lessons learned in that area. So how do we use digitalization to address climate smart agriculture. We don't have enough lessons learned in that area. So this is something that we may want to work on. We have a lot of pilots here and there, but we don't have large scale implementation because of a variety of reasons that may include access to finance challenges for government, for example. We have some projects that are not going to scale, sometimes even us. I mean, donors, we funds project just for two years, one year, and then it does not always favor implementing at large scale. We have also issues relating to R&D and technical capacity, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa in poorer countries to develop digital climate smart agriculture solutions. For example, when we are talking about satellite services, geospatial services, many developers or many stakeholders in Africa that don't have enough scale really to develop effective services. Sometimes when you do hackathons in Africa, they may provide prototypes, but these prototypes, if they really want to go to scale, they face challenges because they have limited capacity. So at the level of universities, for example, there are a lot of support that we can bring so that at the university level, at the incubators level, we have the capacity really to better develop those kind of services. And we have also an issue relating to the sustainability of business models, particularly when we are talking about startups. This is a critical issue that is, let's say, impacting the effectiveness of the solutions that we are developing during hackathons or the solutions that our young entrepreneurs are putting on the market. And of course, we have a lack of funding for all that is needed to climate smart agriculture. I think we have all heard reports, particularly from the IPCC or the GCA, the global, I forgot the full definition, and they have highlighted that currently we have a lack of 7 billion USD that are needed really to bring additional 300 million smaller farmers globally by 2030 into, I would say, the effectiveness of the usage of climate smart agriculture. So we have a lot of funding needs and this is why, for example, at the last COP, I think that was organized, there have been a lot of calls for more funding for climate smart agriculture in general. So these are some of the challenges that we are facing and FAO has been also very working with a variety of companies. For example, we have a program at the regional, regional office for Africa that we call Digital Village Initiative. And in that framework in Senegal, for example, we are working with a company called Tool B when we're doing the pilot, and they have provided some climate smart agriculture services. We also, okay, maybe I will now just give other quick, I would say, recommendation to close. By and large, there are some, I would say, five key areas where we need to bring more support if we want to support digitalization for climate smart agriculture and digitalization for agriculture as a whole. I think we need to work around innovation to support better innovation, particularly for young entrepreneurs so that we can strengthen their offering and strengthen the opportunity that they may have. Supporting data-driven digital climate smart agriculture and R&D, working more to promote partnership, multi-stakeholder partnership, even at, let's say, African level between the government, the startups, the research entities, the farmer organization or the organization supporting agriculture system, include more women. And this is the key issue, particularly when it comes to digital agriculture entrepreneurship. We don't have enough women that are at the head of those companies. So this is something that is an issue. Even at the level of rural areas, we don't have enough capacity to leverage utilization for the small businesses. This is the area that we need to address. And of course, working on capacity-building, promoting enabling environment for digital agriculture, et cetera. So I would like to stop by saying that we have a lot of opportunities to really impact small-coder farmers' agriculture and growth in Africa through digitalization. Currently, it has been estimated that we only have a 6% of the market of digital agriculture that has been captured for now. So we see that then we have a large cap, particularly for businesses, there is a huge opportunity. So for now, about only 20% of small-coder farmers are reached by digital services. It does not mean that they are really impacted, but at least they are reached because when you want to talk about impact, it is another business. You need to really have more specific data. And we really need to improve the business models. For example, better promote bundling of services. I think that entrepreneurs are better understanding that in Africa now, particularly young entrepreneurs, but we need to continue leveraging those, I would say, successful business models. And lastly, we really need to support entrepreneurs, especially the young entrepreneurs, so that we strengthen the local ecosystem, so that we strengthen the local offering as well, so that they can be more competitive and offer services that can also be globally effective. Thank you. I'll stop here for now. And if we have questions, I can respond to them. Thank you very much. We would like to thank you very much, Mr. Lohento, for those pertinent points in relation to the digitalization and agriculture with a focus on the sub-Saharan Africa and how effective supporting in the region. Now our last speaker is Mr. Cesar Wuli. His remarks will focus on the youth and technology and their role in the sustainable agriculture agenda. Please, Mr. Wuli, the floor is yours. Yeah, thank you very much, Pinar, and to all the speakers that have come before me for all those insightful points. As rightly said, so I work with the FAO's regional office for Africa also based in Ghana and function as a regional youth employment specialist within our decent employment in agri-food systems team. And this afternoon I'm happy to contribute around the subject of youth and technology and their role in the sustainable agriculture agenda. This has been touched on a little bit by some of the speakers before me, but I wanted to just take a step back and really also talk about some of the key drivers of the sustainable agriculture agenda, which Mr. Lohento sort of defined, you know, in his remarks just before me. So a few things. One, we know that globally, you know, there's a growing population that expected to reach nearly 10 billion by the middle of the century. Along with this growing population will be rising food consumption needs, which we must find ways to sort of address in order to safeguard the health and the productivity of the growing population. These first two points sort of relate to sort of the future, but if you even take the presence and the immediate past, like Mr. Malapela mentioned, you know, we have a situation of worsening global hunger. And over the last two years, you know, about 46 million people, additional people have been affected by hunger and bringing the total number around the world to over 800 million. We also have a situation where, you know, we're experiencing an age and farming population around the world, but even specifically in sub Saharan Africa, where the global, where the average age of a farmer is somewhere between 50 and 60 years old, which tells you that there's a need to sort of replenish the labor force within the sector. And so when you take all these factors and combine them, they collectively point to the growing need for sustainable agri food systems. And what that really means what I want to focus on is the need to address the hunger and nutrition challenges of today, without negatively impacting our ability to solve those same problems tomorrow, as far as the environment and food security are concerned. So, I'm supposed to change yet. So, focusing on youth, you know, why are you well positioned to contribute to this agenda around sustainable agriculture a few facts. One is that youth account for nearly 20% of the global population. And when you focus on sub Saharan Africa you see that youth actually constitutes over 60% of the population. And what this represents is the strong labor force potential, what we call a demographic dividend that can be leveraged to address the agri food systems challenges, both of today, while also building resilient food systems for tomorrow. The other reason youth are important is because they are already well positioned to drive the transition to more sustainable practices in agriculture, because food systems are the largest employer for young people as we speak today, and specifically in Africa. But the issue with that is, you know, most of those jobs that youth have in agri food systems are not yet green or not green enough, and informal probably don't pay a living wage and so I'm not decent when we say jobs are decent we're talking about the extent to which they are safe and able to pay living wages. So there's a need to create more green and decent jobs within agri food systems and youth are well positioned to take these jobs. And then finally, but not the least, it's obvious that youth have longer work in the lives ahead of them than older adults and so any investment that is targeting the future of food systems would smartly be placed if it is made in youth. So those are some reasons why youth are well positioned to contribute to the sustainable agriculture agenda. Now the question is, you know, we're talking about youth and technology so how can you, how can technology essentially boost youth contribution to the sustainable agriculture agenda. I want to talk about a few opportunities that, you know, yeah, that are relevant here. And I think of this in terms of the three days, right, so technology is able to de risk, digitalize and diversify youth participation in agriculture. When we talk about the risk and we know that youth, young women and men have had, you know, maybe the smallest opportunity to live and work in a crude capital to invest in agriculture. And so the little money funds that young people are able to invest in agriculture and agri business need to be protected the risks around agriculture need to be minimized in order to save God those investments and guarantee a return. And so what digital technologies are able to do is essentially reduce those risks so you have things like the provision of weather information you have the extension services, you have remote sensing and monitoring technologies. All of these sort of allow youth to access data and information to make better decisions on the farm, and ultimately reduce crop failure if you're talking about production I'm sure we can have this conversation and you know around different nodes of value chains, but for the purposes of illustration I focus on production here. Right and so these technologies this information again reduce the risk of crop failure because youth will then have information and data for decision making around when to prepare how to prepare the land when to plant, when to water how to apply inputs we talked about precision agriculture especially on when to harvest and things like that. The other risk that is reduced by technology at those environmental risks, especially when you focus on precision agriculture. You know when you look at farm farmland analysis it's easy to apply fertilizer you know our hackathon winners are focused on fertilizer. Traditional practices just to apply fertilizer across the entire farmland at specific periods of time, but there might be specific sort of points or areas on the farm that need more or less fertilizer than others. And so having information and data through the remote sensing and monitoring technologies allows for these very precise application of inputs, which then ultimately reduces agriculture's impact on the environment. The second D here has to do with the digitalization of farm business operations, while also increasing access to market and profitability for young agripreneurs. And the point here really is, is, is how the incorporation of digital technologies can essentially reduce labor physical labor requirements on farms and free up time through this optimization process for youth to invest in scaling up their ideas or invest in other aspects of value chains. So we have a lot of mobile and web based services like Mr. Lohento started to, to share that improve access to finance they improve access to markets. They improve access to digital technologies. And these, these digital technologies or these solutions by further digitalizing, you know, agricultural production and management practices contribute to the overall sustainability of the agricultural sector. The other sort of thing I want to talk about around digitalization is that access to market. So, you know, one of the things that young people in agriculture struggle with right is price transparency is transparency around what are the best markets for the sale of the produce. You have the African continent of free trade agreement that is now enforced. How do you understand or come to understand which markets in Africa are best positioned to absorb their products and their services. It's through digital technologies and digital tools, right. So digitalization really does create huge opportunities in terms of access to markets and profitability for youth. And then finally, technology enables the diversification of youth participation and agricultural value chains. One of the challenge we one of the challenges we tend to see is that there's a heavy concentration of young people at the production end so the upstream end of agricultural value chains. I think everybody on this on this call understands that value chains are very diverse and opportunities exist. Many opportunities exists all along the value chain whether you're talking about crop or animal value chains. And so, digital technologies sort of allow young people to be able to identify or plug into those different aspects. So, again, you can sort of tap into mechanization you can tap into aggregation. You can tap into the provision of financial services, you can tap into the provision of weather related information, you can tap into transportation and logistics management. You know, these are all things that are data driven and technology driven. And so they, you know, again, they provide new opportunities for youth to plug into the more downstream aspects of agricultural value chains. And ultimately, a more diversified value chain is a stronger value chain, right because it's more complete and it's more competitive. So taking together technology has a strong potential to make agriculture more attractive to and profitable for young people. It has a strong potential to ensure sustainable management of land, water and natural resources, and then boost youth involvement in agribusiness and the sustainable agriculture agenda. To conclude, just want to talk about how some of the best practices for fostering youth, increased youth participation in the sustainable agriculture space. What we do, you know, I am the regional coordinator for what we call the opportunities for youth in Africa program. And we take an integrated approach, right, to fostering youth participation in agriculture and agribusiness, and that integrated approach comprises capacity building on one level, access to land markets and services. And this includes financial and technology services, and then also creates an enabling environment by working with policy makers and governments to essentially invest in making things more conducive for youth to participate in agriculture. So at the capacity building level, we have, you know, investments in training for existing and aspiring youth agripreneurs, but also incubation and acceleration programs for youth-led agribusinesses. So essentially converting ideas into reality, and then converting pilots into full-scale projects. In terms of access to land and markets, we also do a lot of work around business to building business to business linkages that enhance youth access to finance markets, innovation and so on. We also build in youth to youth linkages by creating those mentoring opportunities for youth that have achieved some success, you know, in agriculture and agribusiness to pass on that knowledge to other young people and reduce the risk of failure, like I talked about earlier.  In many parts of rural Africa, we still don't have stable electricity, and you can't have any realistic conversation about digitalization and digital agriculture without basic things like electricity. So there is sort of a push for the provision of these kinds of amenities for research and development, which Mr. Alejandro talked about, and infrastructure, including roads. When you talk about access to markets, you know, most of the rural agricultural practitioners need a better way to access mainstream markets, whether it's an urban center or peri-urban centers. And so we continue to sort of take this integrated approach because doing one thing and leaving the other sort of tends to limit the extent to which you can achieve impact. And so this is just supposed to be sort of an example of a model that perhaps other stakeholders on the call could embrace in the efforts to foster increased youth participation in the sustainable agriculture agenda. And so I'll leave it here for now and also sort of happy to continue the conversation through the Q&A. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Wuli, for those interesting points. They were really insightful. We will now move on to the questions and answers section. Since we started a little bit late, we will extend the session a little bit more with additional 10 to 15 minutes. I see that there are already questions in the Q&A module and some of them have been already answered. And we have two more questions. The first question is addressed to Mr. Ken Lohento from Thomas Watai. The question is as follows, are there any cases enough, are there cases in Africa when telecommunication firms support the provision of digital climate smart agriculture services? If yes, could you provide some examples? Yeah, thank you very much, Pina. So we have many telecom operators that are providing those kind of services. And actually, if you consider numbers, the most farmers are rather reached by telecom operator services. And in many cases, the telecom operators, they work with the government, even though they can also work with private sector. Now, to give some example, in Mali and Niger, also Bukina Faso, I think the three countries were involved at some point in time. There has been a program called Garbal, which is a satellite-based information for pastoralists. And Orange, which is originally the French telecom operator that is also operating in Africa, they have worked with the organization, the Dutch organization SMV, to provide that service. So a consortium has been put in place so that the three different institutions can collaborate and deliver services to pastoralists. We also have the case of ATO telecom. So the telecom operator of Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, they have a platform that they called, I think it is Helpdesk 8028, which is an advisory service platform, but it's also it can be considered as a service that support climate smart agriculture. The service is offered with the support of the ATO telecom, which is the telecom operator and agricultural transformation agency of Ethiopia. Basically, the government is collaborating with them to deliver that service. And because telecom operators, generally they have millions of users in the databases, those who are the clients receiving SMS services and the like, they can easily reach out and reach stakeholders, many stakeholders, many stakeholders. So yes, in Africa, we have many platforms that are supported by telecom operators, and generally they collaborate with government or private sector for the delivery of those services. Over. Thank you so much, Mr. Lohento. And I will pass to the last question today because we are almost out of our time. And the second question is from Nick Stone. It is as follows. How do we ensure that we can create dignified jobs for youth using digital? Can you give examples? Maybe Mr. Wuli, would you like to, would you like to refer to that question? Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Nick, for the question. I will use our program as a case in point. I think the starting point for creating dignified jobs for youth is to involve, is to sort of take a context specific approach when designing solutions. Right, so ensuring that you're listening to youth voices or we are listening to youth voices when we design programs or interventions that are meant to create opportunities as far as employment and entrepreneurship go for young people. So in terms of creating these things, these opportunities using digital, within the OYA program, we, we, or we've done and that has worked very well, especially in the COVID period, is to organize virtual incubation programs, actually hybrid incubation programs. That sort of, first of all, you know, allow us to be able to reach young people who are not in city centers, right? So when you have these kinds of programs, young people in a city like Nairobi, you know, can obviously join physically, but in other counties like CIA might not be able to join physically. So taking this hybrid approach allows us to be able to rope in a larger number of young people and sort of bridge the digital divide. That's a perfect solution because there are young people in parts of various countries that don't have access to stable internet, right? And for those situations, we do have on the ground delivery of technical assistance of trainings and capacity building programs that ensure that these solutions reach young people. And what are the solutions, right? So there are training programs and incubation programs that enable youth to understand business development, investment readiness, financial literacy, value addition. Basically the essential elements to building a sustainable business and building a sustainable business means you're also building a dignified business or getting a dignified job. And so this is probably one of just one example of how we sort of leverage digital to create dignified jobs for young people in agriculture and agribusiness. I hope that answers the question. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Wuli. We would like to thank you to all participants for their questions and comments. And now I would like to wrap up the session. Excellencies, distinguished delegates and participants and their colleagues. Today we have heard about the importance of technological change and digitalization for the sustainable agriculture agenda, particularly the solutions it can offer in the face of the contemporary challenges of our times. We have also heard the challenges associated with this transformation and how to address those challenges. I would like to express my gratitude to all the speakers who dedicated their valuable time to be with us today. Before concluding, in addition to what we heard from our FAO colleagues on FAO's work in the area of digitalization, I would like to refer to one of the flagship reports produced each year by FAO, the SOFA, the state of food and agriculture. The 2022 edition, which is of relevance to today's topic and might be of relevance for future work in this area, looks at how automation, including the most recent digital technologies in our agri-food systems can contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals and offers recommendations to policymakers on how to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks. With case studies from all over the world, representing technologies at different stages of readiness and appropriate to agricultural producers of different scales and levels of income, the report investigates the drivers of these technologies and identifies several barriers preventing its adoption, particularly by small-scale producers. As highlighted in the foreword of the report by the FAO Director General, without technological progress and increased productivity, there is no possibility of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. And it must be ensured that the process takes place in a way that is inclusive and promotes sustainability. While concluding, I would like to express our gratitude to your participants for taking your time and joining the session of the FAO in Geneva Agriculture Trade Talks. I thank you all for your attendance. FAO in Geneva will continue to organize dialogues on the topics of agriculture and fisheries in collaboration with the markets and trade division and the fisheries and aquaculture division this year. We will be announcing the teams and days for the upcoming series in the course. I wish you all a very good day. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Bye-bye. Thanks Pina, thanks everyone. Cheers, bye-bye.


Search for a home on any device, any time, anywhere. Private Property, a home for everyone. Welcome back to the trendy Winner Home on Afternoon Express, only on SABC3. Now Private Property has teamed up with Afternoon Express to provide you with advice on the different aspects of property and estates. Now if you are a landlord perhaps or an investor who wants to invest in property and particularly to rent out that property, today's segment will be of great interest to you. We have Michelle Dickens, Managing Director of TPN Credit Bureau in studio, to give us the lowdown on letting property in and estates. Welcome to our loft. Good afternoon, Dan. So Michelle, let's talk about what your company does, because numbers seem to be the most important thing when it comes to looking at buying. So what TPN does is we are a credit bureau and we collect rental data on tenants around South Africa. And the idea is to understand where people rent, how much they rent for and most importantly how they're paying their rents on a monthly basis. Coupled with that rental data, we overlay the deeds data. So we've got a market value for the property, we've got a rental value for the property and we can then determine the gross yield on a per property basis. So if I rub the genie's lamp, I can get all this information out, which will help me make a wise decision when it comes to buying to let. So what is your data showing? Where are people buying? Where are people renting? Where should we buy and where should we rent? So there's different things that a landlord or an investor is going to look for. He's either going to look for capital appreciation or he's going to look for yield appreciation. And the yield appreciation takes into account data such as or factors such as my delinquency ratios, my vacancy ratios and how much rent I'm actually able to achieve. We look at that and we say, well, what are the different areas performing? I can totally down in the Western Cape. It's one of our best performing areas in terms of rent collection. So our tenants pay incredibly well down in the Western Cape. As we know, property is at a premium. And so our yields are not nearly as high in the Western Cape as they are in, say, Johannesburg. Johannesburg and Tuane and Ecoleni, I get my best gross yields. But unfortunately, my tenants are a little bit more challenging to collect rent from. And so I might have a little bit more of a delinquency rate. You mentioned delinquency. Sorry to interrupt you there. But a delinquency itself, is that basically a tenant who doesn't pay on time or doesn't pay at all? Correct. We look at the data as a good standing tenant. As a tenant who's paid on time, paid late, either in the grace or later in the month. But by the end of the month, he's paid up. Our delinquency is they're not tenants who either partially paid or not paid. We don't want those. No, we don't. And nationally, we have about 6% of tenants who are on the delinquency not payment. Just quite a lot. Or you could go to below 3,000 man rentals and there your tenants are 13% in the did not pay category. Pay or rent people, pay it. Obviously the landlords, the guys who are making these investments, don't get to make their money back.  But what about estates? I mean where are estates on your map at the moment? Are estates a good place to invest? So estates are a fantastic place to rent in terms of location, location, location. Typically what you're buying into there is a premium. You're buying into a lifestyle estate. And a buyer to rent, even a buyer to invest, is not a short term decision. It's a long term decision. And so over a 10 or 15 or 20 year period, one expects there to be a change in the cycle and for capital appreciation to start delivering in our estate market. Okay, so estates are a good place to start looking into. But in terms of the rules and responsibilities, you're kind of liable as the owner of the property if your tenant starts to behave terribly on the estates also play loud music. You're quite responsible as the owner. So first of all, how do we go about choosing the right tenants to put into an estate house that we're renting out? So tenant selection is one of your key critical areas in terms of replacements. What you want to look at there is their previous rental experience, how they've paid their rent, their previous credit behaviour. Can we ask for that information? Absolutely. We need the consent of the tenant. So effectively what the investor or the agent on their behalf does ask for consent and then perform the relevant credit checks to ensure that the tenant that replacing has the right history and therefore is going to be a good tenant going forward. Okay. So one of the key elements of your lease is signing a lease agreement at the beginning of the lease and making the rules of the lease, the homeowner's rules, materially part of that lease agreement. So an action to get to the actual lease agreement. Okay. That's important because if your tenant is non-compliant in terms of those rules, the investor can then pass a fine on to the tenant in terms of any fines that he might have received. If the tenant is breaching the rules in such a way that it's a material breach of the lease agreement, the landlord can then start the process of evicting the tenant. And it's the same process in terms of whether the material breach is non-compliance of rules versus non-payments. The challenge with the lease agreement is it can be either verbal or written. So simply because you've got a rental agreement or lease agreement, you're not going to attach rules to a verbal lease agreement. But the Mental Housing Act has got some amendments play. Potentially that means that the lease will have to be in writing. And it's a good idea then to annex those body corporate rules or homeowner's rules as part of that lease agreement. Stunning. So there you guys have it. Renting out a property on an estate can be a very good investment, but with most rental investments conducting research beforehand and screening your tenant thoroughly is absolutely needed. So don't forget to enter the Winner Home Grand Prize Competition on private property and stand a chance to win a multi-million-round home on the Eye of Africa estate. All you have to do is log on to privateproperty.co.za and answer that very simple question and then vote for your favorite design duo. After the break on the show today, I check in to see how the master bedrooms are progressing at the halfway mark.


Welcome everyone to the 19th meeting in 2019 of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. We got apologies from Mary Phee today. The first item of business is to propose that the committee takes items 4, 5 and 6 on consideration of the delegated power provisions in three bills. Census amendment, human tissue authorisation and fuel poverty bills in private. Does the committee agree with that? we agreed. Okay. Under item 2, we're considering instruments subject to negative procedure. No points have been raised on SSIs 2019, 174, 175 and 177, but despite that, if I could just explain what 177 is for anyone who's watching or reading afterwards, 177 relates to personal licences that were up to 15,000 personal licences, which were due for renewal, and what this actually does is gives licensing boards longer to consider those licence renewals. They all had to be in by the end of May. Licences, they would have had to have been considered by September. What this does is gives licensing boards until the end of February to deal with what could be quite a lot of these renewals, so that's what this does, so I just thought it was worth explaining that. But no points have been raised on any of those, so is the committee content with these instruments? Gender item 3, we're considering an instrument not subject to any parliamentary procedure, and no points have been raised on SSIs 2019, 181. Is the committee content with this? I'll move the meeting into private.


Andre, would you agree with the backyard being number one? I know basements, bathrooms, kitchens, but I have to say it's the backyard is number one trend right now. I would agree. I would agree now because summer is now. When winter comes, things will change. We'll go back indoors. That's right. Well, I know personally I spent a lot of time, a lot of money on my own backyard.  We want different zones. My dad says, if you're spending a lot of time at home, you want different experiences. You don't want to become bored of being at home. The importance of having an at-home office or two at-home offices, an area where your kids can play that you can still monitor them, and then an area where, you know, whether you have kids or not, where you can go and have that romantic time, that special time with your partner.


Hello, my name is Mary Coughlin and I'm Chair of the American Institute for Conservation's Collection Care Network, abbreviated CCN. CCN was created in recognition of the critical importance of preventive conservation as the most effective means of promoting the long-term preservation of cultural property. This means managing risks to prevent damage to collections, keeping temperature, relative humidity and light levels at safe ranges, keeping pests out of collections, putting good policies in place to make sure collections are inventoried, secured and handled properly and much, much more. In this way, museum collections, historic sites and archival holdings can be made accessible not just today but for many years in the future. The following video is one of three interviews that CCN conducted with the 2020 AIC Award recipients whose work specifically focuses on collection care. If you're interested in learning more about CCN, please visit culturalheritage.org and search for Collection Care Network. We strive to support the growing number of conservators and collection care professionals with strong preventive responsibilities and interests, so we always have many projects for you to be involved in. Thanks for watching. Great. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us. My name is Kelly Krish, I'm the editor for the Collection Care Network as part of AIC. And joining me today is Sam Anderson. I appreciate him taking the time today. Sam Anderson is the recipient of this year's Ally Professional Award, which recognizes the work and contributions from professionals in other fields in the advancement of the conservation profession. Sam is the principal of Samuel Anderson Architects and in that role he has overseen the creation, expansion and remodeling of countless conservation laboratories in North America as well as playing a key role in the design of storage spaces, museum expansions, study rooms and other related projects. So thank you Sam. I think we'll go ahead and get started with our first question, which was what should conservators know about working with architects and how can we most effectively communicate? Well those are great questions and I would say there are several ways to answer the question and the first one is that first of all I think the architects who are good to work with and the architects who aren't so good to work with. So part of it is sort of figuring out what sort of firm are you working with and how responsible they be. Then the second key factor is who else in your organization is involved and what's their attitude about it. In other words is there a director or an owner's rep or some of the person who has decision making authority that influences your situation and what you're trying to achieve. And then thirdly that's what can you as a conservator or as a collection specialist know what can you do to be most effective in working with an architect. And I guess I'll start with that. I think the most important thing conservators can do at the beginning is to be clear about what you want. And so architects often talk about a program or a brief and that's basically a document that says this is what we're trying to do and what we need to have happen so that we can do it better. So you sort of outline what's the role of conservation. If you're a private organization and you're a firm and if you're part of a museum or a library or something then how does conservation fit into the overall mission of that institution? So that's like a paragraph. And then after that it's specific things about what you're trying to achieve. Like you need more space, you need more light, you need better lights, you need better environmental controls, you need more equipment. And you sort of explain those things. And then ideally you would include a list so that it's clear to whoever's going to work with you, do you need a scanning electron microscope or not? Do you need a spray room? Do you need all the stuff that you may or may not need depending on what your practice is like? So to be effective in helping the architect give you what you need, the first thing is to be able to be able to find what it is that you need. That's the most important thing in terms of the beginning. Then in terms of say your director or your deputy director, whoever else in your organization is influencing what's going to happen. A lot of that has to do with what kind of relationship have you developed with that person over time. Because I've been engaged in circumstances where the conservators in an institution are respected and appreciated and others where the conservator is seen sort of as a pest or as a complainer. So that's not something you can change overnight. But I would encourage everybody who's thinking of doing something like this to try to make sure that the way that you're articulating things over time is constructive and positive and clear. Not discursive or confusing or not as a problem.  So then finally, the architect. Sadly, some architects are really good at listening and paying attention and caring about how things work. And other architects are more concerned about how it looks or how it comes across in pictures or does it fit into the other work that I've done in my past. So it's a good idea when you're looking for an architect to do some research and make sure you're getting somebody who will pay attention to your functional needs. And then if you're being told this is the architect you're going to work with, because it's part of a bigger project, then do some research and try and figure out where's that architect coming from. And then do whatever you can to build an alliance with that person to make it clear that you want them to succeed. You want them to be proud of what they've done. And part of that is helping them understand what you need and how they can help provide that to you. So along those lines, when people are looking to engage different architectural firms, I know you mentioned doing some research. Are there any particular questions that you should be asking or checking resources, checking recommendations or anything? What are some good things you can do to make sure that you are choosing a firm that will be responsive to your needs? So yeah, I would definitely ask around. Like the one thing I really admire about the conservation community is that you have a really good set of interconnections, you know, and you used to have the distribution list and now you have other forms of basically sharing questions and answers. So I would ask around to get suggestions. And then as you're mirroring in on the architects, you know, ask for examples of works that they've done. If they haven't done a conservation lab, have they done other kinds of lab settings or other kinds of places where good light, good natural light, good control of artificial light, good environmental controls, that they've dealt with those kinds of issues that are key to success in conservation. And then I would also check to make sure who are they picking as a mechanical engineer. Because the success of a conservation center basically is highly dependent on having a mechanical engineer who understands the dynamic nature of the load, so that snorkels turning on and off in funerals and those kinds of things, so that they'll design intelligently to pass. Okay. So if you were picking, so in terms of selecting an architect, if someone doesn't have direct experience of the conservation lab, you should consider other spaces that might have similar needs in terms of function. Okay. I guess one of the other questions when you were mentioning how many people can be involved in these projects, how do you manage multiple stakeholders in such a large project, especially when some people might be involved in different phases? What are some ways to manage that? Yeah, that's a very good question. Because, well, there's sort of two groups of people you have to manage. There's the stakeholders and a lot of the people who are part of the museum or library or whatever, and then there's the design team and the management team. So that's the architect, mechanical engineer, plumbing engineer, maybe lighting consultant, security, there are all these other people that the architect typically brings into the picture. And I find that one of the most important things to accept is that when a group of people in a museum or library are starting to do something like this, oftentimes they may not be that clear about what they want or some people are very clear and other people aren't. So it's important to actually recognize and allow a certain amount of fumbling and uncertainty and discussion and discovery in the process.  I want to know, I want to write it down and get started. That's kind of productive. It's really important to allow a certain amount of exploration and discovery as people are deciding what they want and how they're going to do it. Okay. But then always to let that happen and then build towards decisions. So it's important to have the ability to hear what everybody's saying. They still allow, like, what are the key themes and important issues? And then how do you frame questions so that you can get to decisions that are definitive so you can actually design them? So in terms of them, when an institution should engage in architect, sounds like it's helpful if there's some internal consensus, but you also expect that there might be some modifications as people learn more or hear perspectives and insights from the architect. So at what point is it best to involve an architect in a planning project? Well, before the actual design process happens, there's this thing called programming, which is a word from before there were computers. So for architects and other building planners, programming is when the client sort of defines what they've marked, as I described before. So sometimes that can happen independently. Like sometimes interpreters or an institution will hire somebody just to help them do that. Or you can do it with the architect. I would recommend waiting and doing with the architect because if the architect's good, the architect will welcome that as an opportunity to get to know you and understand who you are and how you work and develop a good relationship as to learning all this specific more technically. So yeah, so I encourage finding an architect towards the very beginning as you're sort of thinking about something. And obviously you've seen a lot of these design and construction projects through. Is there any themes or common issues that have emerged that would help to shape any advice you would give to institutions looking to design storage spaces? Anything they should keep an eye out for or pay special attention to? Sure. And specifically actually a lot of what I've been talking about is for conservation spaces. But in terms of collection storage, there are a couple really important things having to do with basically what sort of parameters do you want to set. And I'm sure everybody watching this is aware of the evolution that's happened in the last, say, 25 years from everything has to be 70 to 50 to you have to pick temperatures and relative humidity based on what's in your collection and what sort of a range you're going to allow. And also to be aware of the way sustainability can influence those kinds of choices too. So it's, I think it's very important to have conversations within the institution to be clear. You know, if we have textiles and objects and paintings and works on paper and metals, like are we going to try and put that all in one space or are we going to divide it into five different spaces? And how specifically different do those conditions have to be? Because the more different conditions you have, the more expensive it gets because you have more systems running. So in one sense, it's nice to be able to put stuff together if that's okay. And then only have special spaces for things that really need extreme conditions like, say, metals. And it's another thing that's important to do is to involve your facility staff, your operations people in those conversations too. Because they're the people who are going to have to make sure the system's run. And one thing I've learned is that, you know, it's possible to design a system that will work perfectly and will be phenomenally responsive, but it could be much more complicated and sophisticated than a system that's almost as good would be. And I tend to encourage clients to accept something that might be, you know, 97% good instead of 100% perfect because A, it'll cost a lot less to build, it'll cost less to run. And it'll be much, it'll last much longer if you were ahead of it. So being clear about what is the staff really going to be able to maintain, what systems are they already have, it's important for everybody at the table, not just the engineer and operations people, but the conservators and registrars to be aware of those too. And again, that's the kind of conversation that doesn't happen once. That would be like a series of meetings. You mentioned sustainability too. I was just curious, are there any particular ways that you've found incorporating sustainability to be successful or yeah, or any experiences you'd like to share in that regard? Sure. I would say my two favorite things about sustainability are strategies. One is to put, if you can, if you're designing a building that has many different parts, like it might have offices or conservation labs, as well as storage, one really good strategy is put all the storage in the middle of the building and put all the labs and the offices around the perimeter. Because that way you're getting light into all the spaces that need light and you typically don't need or want light and storage. And that way also you're buffering and insulating the storage spaces so that they're not exposed to extreme outdoor swings and temperature in the middle. So that way you allow the system to run much more efficiently because you're not fighting the cold or fighting the heat. So then the other really good idea for touching storage is when you're designing the mechanical system, basically the mechanical system is a fan and a bunch of heating and cooling coils that takes the air and makes it either warmer or colder and also gets it to the right relative humidity. And you always have to bring in some amount of outside air because otherwise people inside would stick to it. So in the old days they used to design systems so that a fair amount of outside air came in and that the return air coming back from collection would sort of commingle with the outside air and all go back through the system together. And when you design a system like that, if it's a really hot and humid outside, you end up spending a huge amount of energy and carbon to dehumidify all the air including the air that's coming back. So we always recommend actually splitting it up. So you have one air handler that's only dealing with outside air and another air handler that's doing all the work of recirculating. And that way, like at night when there are very few people around, you don't really need much outside air. You bring in very little and that way you're not spending huge amounts of energy when you don't need to. I guess one question I had too since you've been a part of so many projects that have been so successful. Are there any common characteristics that kind of stand out so that when you're starting a project you get the sense of like, this is good. Like we've got really good communication or this team is really involving everyone at the institution. What are some characteristics that tend to make for a more successful project? Yeah, I would say that point you just made is the single most important thing. In that some directors and managers are sort of controlling and they want decisions to happen smoothly and quickly. And if they don't allow the full range of all the stakeholders and all the people who should be involved to be part of the process, that's a bad sign. But if everybody's voice is appreciated and respected and they're allowed to participate, that's a really good sign. And so if I'm getting bad signs, I'll try to have conversations to pry open that thinking so that I can be sure to listen and interact with all the people that should be represented. Well, I think that might be a good place to wrap up. So I want to thank you again, Sam, for joining us today. It's been my pleasure, Kelly. It's been really nice talking to you.


Does your emotion keep changing all the time? One minute you feel so excited and energetic that you find yourself unable to control your urge to talk to someone, buy something new, meet someone or simply indulge in any uncontrollable or risky behavior. In the next minute you may go from feeling so excited to feeling so gloomy. People may have observed that you are often sad one minute and happy the next minute. Your emotions are usually here and there. What do you think is wrong here? As writer, editor and owner of SilverScribe editorial services, Natali Silver wrote, Patterns of this types of mood shift may be symptoms of a more serious health condition. Our moods are our emotions and these emotions affect us daily. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, sometimes we are sad, other times we are happy. We might even be sad and happy in the same day but sometimes people's mood can get stuck on sad or the moods might change a lot or become extreme. When this happens it affects our lives and it might be caused by a group of mental illnesses called mood disorders. These are a few different types of mood disorders, depression, the stomach disorder and bipolar disorder. Mood swings are basically changes we experience in our mood or emotions. It may be minor daily changes or the changes may be significant in the example of mood disorders like major depression or bipolar depression. Melissa Conrad Stubbler, the US board certified anatomic pathologist wrote that mood swings can also occur in women who suffer from premenstrual syndrome or premenstrual dysphoric disorder. The menopausal transition, specifically the time around approaching menopause or perimenopause is associated with mood swings in some women. Mood swings can be seen with other conditions as well including schizophrenia, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, dementia and thyroid conditions.  Mood disorders are one of the most common mental illnesses. In fact, the Canadian Mental Health Association reports that wild mood disorders can affect you at any time in your life. Many people start to experience symptoms in their teens and 20s. The report says that about 3.5% of children and 3-7% of teens are diagnosed with depression. Many people are diagnosed with bipolar disorder between the ages of 15 and 19. Also, having a closer relative who has a mood disorder increases your risk of having one. A report published by VerywellMind says that while shifts in mood can be completely normal, triggered by stress and or part of dealing with a physical health condition, mood swings can also be a symptom of mental illness. When characterizing and diagnosing mental health disorders, particularly bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, the constellation of intense rapid and frequent shifts in mood is sometimes referred to as emotional liability. However, a labial mood is not unique to mental illness. It's also seen in people with traumatic brain injury, stroke and Alzheimer's as well as other medical conditions. What may be responsible for changes in your emotions? For the most part, fluctuating emotions or mood swings may actually be a symptom of a more serious mental health issue. Many mental and physical conditions can cause fluctuations in your emotions. According to a 2011 review, children with severe shifts in mood are often thought to have bipolar disorder but actually have another condition. Mood swings can be caused by a lot of factors but the most contributors are diet, sleep and substance abuse. Diet If your diet is not good enough nutritionally or you're not eating as well as you should, you may experience fluctuations in your emotions due to fluctuating blood sugar levels and malnourishment. As an example, if you feel grouchy after having breakfast and a cup of coffee, it may be due to caffeine withdrawal or low block sugar known as hypoglycemia. According to Nancy Chamele-Fenning, the administrator for the non-profit depression support group, Depression Sanctuary, digestive disorders that affect the body's ability to absorb nutrients such as celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease, IBD, have also been associated with mood swings. These conditions also have been linked to specific mental health conditions such as depression, sleep. Your emotions can and will be greatly affected by the amount and quality of sleep you get. If you're chronically sleep deprived, you will tend to experience intense mood fluctuations, substance abuse, people who abuse substance or who are struggling with substance abuse disorders will experience mood swings or fluctuations in their emotions especially when they're not able to gain access to that substance that will also experience mood swings when they're trying to stay away from substance abuse or when they're experiencing withdrawal. When some medications are not used the way they ought to be used, they can also cause mood changes, hormonal conditions. Hormonal conditions can also be responsible for fluctuating emotions. These hormonal changes will affect the brain. Pregnancy triggers these hormonal changes and so can cause sudden shifts in mood as well as feeling of anxiety. Where a woman's body starts to change, she may also experience fluctuation in her emotions. For pregnant women, this changes in your emotions may be obvious during the first trimester and slow down as soon as the body is used to fluctuating hormone levels. As Natale Silva wrote, teens and women who are pregnant or going through menopause may experience shifts in mood due to hormonal changes associated with this face of their body's development, shifts in mood can also occur due to more than just hormones. Menopause Menopause is also a natural condition that can promote mood changes in women. According to the North American Menopause Society, up to 23% of women experience mood changes during or after menopause. Other symptoms include hot flashes, sleep problems and loss of libido. How are shifts in mood treated? If your emotions are constantly changing and it is becoming severe, experts recommend that because this can cause disruption in typical behavior you should talk to your doctor or a professional. The professional can help you figure out what is responsible for the changes in your emotions and prefer the right treatment for it. Sometimes just making some lifestyle changes can make a lot of difference. You may not require medical attention if your fluctuating emotions isn't negatively impacting other areas of your life. Otherwise, according to Natale Silva, here are some ways you can start to regulate your mood. Keep a schedule. Try to create a routine for yourself especially when it comes to sleeping and eating. Exercise regularly. Exercising regularly has numerous benefits for nearly all aspects of your health including mood.  A good night's sleep is important and sleep deprivation can affect your mood. Eat a healthy diet. A balanced healthy diet can improve your mood and keep you healthy. Here are some tips to sticking to a healthy diet. Practice relaxation. Engage in calming practices like yoga or meditation. Avoid stress. Easier said than done, right? If you can't avoid it, aim to manage and relieve stress as it comes. Express yourself. Find a creative outlet to express yourself. Talk it out. Find someone to talk to such as a friend, family member or professional counselor. If this video inspired you, subscribe to our channel. We love you.