Dear colleagues, dear friends, good afternoon, Dobri Vecher, distinguished speaker, panelists, participants. It's really an honor and a pleasure to welcome you to this regional webinar on the COVID-19 response and digitalization in Europe and Central Asia. I'm just coming, in fact, also from the EU FAO Strategic Dialogue. Actually, this is still running and where digitalization, of course, is also a key issue of the discussion. So the webinar today is really very timely because technology and innovation are of paramount importance in FAO's work and it's increasingly going to be really important. It's a key element of the strategic framework of the new strategic framework 2022 to 2031. So really for the next 10 years, it's widely recognized that digitalization can and is a key accelerator supporting the transformation of the food systems and the food systems itself is a key accelerator in order to achieve also the SDGs. Digitalization supports achieving economic, environmental, and social sustainability in the agrofood system and, therefore, it's really a key element also supporting our aspirations, leaving no one behind. So technology, innovation, and digitalization are embedded in the regional work program with our focus on small orders and youth food systems transformation and sustainable natural resource management. Emerging technologies are already changing the food and agriculture sector, yet most of the governments or the agrofood systems actors have yet really to harness their powerful potential. So helping farmers take full advantage of new approaches such as digital agriculture, precision agriculture, biotechnologies, and innovation in agroecology to increase food production whilst respecting the environment will need to be emphasis in national policies. To give an example, agrofood sector can harness digital tools ranging from e-commerce, mobile technologies for increasing access to markets to the use of also artificial intelligence for improved pest controls and crop genetics, as well as tools allowing an optimized management of natural resources and early warning of food security threats. FAO has launched several global and regional initiatives supporting the digital rule transformation such as the geospatial platform and the digital village initiative. The digital village initiative will be definitely a key issue in order to also further transfer knowledge and science in this context between the countries and from countries where already some of this technology is already available. However, we are not alone in this process. The digitalization activities are driven by a variety of stakeholders using diverse technologies and we are glad to see the representatives of various of these sectors and organizations amongst the speakers and panelists also today. This excellent composition of these speakers and let me thank already all the speakers and panelists for your readiness and availability to this important discussion. And agrofood sector in their respective fields during the challenging pandemic period. So many digital initiatives were completed already in our region, many were initiated and we are expecting more to be triggered. So dear participants, the objective of the webinar today is really to present a number of technologies out of the wide digital agricultural range such as each rate mechanisms, internet connectivity in remote areas, precision farming systems, crop predictions and weather monitoring. The presentations of our speakers will really focus on the interconnectivity and the potential benefits of these technologies as well as challenges to practical implementation during the pandemic. I really hope and I'm convinced that the discussions will be a contribution to identifying the regional digital trends in agriculture during the pandemic, sharing the experience of various stakeholders, building resilience when faced with a crisis and shaping digital strategies in agriculture in post pandemic. I also invite you to use the webinar really as a basis for further exchange and collaboration in this important area of digital agriculture and I would very much welcome further collaboration in this area. In concluding a quick remark about the series of these webinars, with this session we are closing the series of 12 webinars that we have started just a year ago with the aim of facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogues on the impacts of COVID on the food systems. I think the series provided really an excellent opportunity to exchange experience amongst others on extension services, smallholders, research and innovation and migration as well as many others. You can have the recording available on the website of the regional office but they have been also all been made available on YouTube. So with this I'm really looking forward to the discussion today and a fruitful exchange and of course this as a starting point for a continued dialogue. Unfortunately I cannot stay with you for the whole session so I wish you really good luck and an interesting deliberation. Thank you. Back to you Victor. Thank you Rehmont. An excellent overview of our meeting today and what was done and will be done by FAO in the region. Of course digitalization is the key and of course FAO our office is doing a lot on this in the region but indeed it's we're not alone and other units and other stakeholders are quite important and it's well represented and we are looking forward indeed to what will be said but to start it to start the discussion I think it would be quite great and quite important to see what was done by FAO in the region and for that I am giving the floor to Sophie Train and regional digital agriculture team leader Sophie for yours. Thank you very much Victor for passing the floor and for setting the stage. So we have been working on digital agriculture of course way before COVID and let's go immediately into the next slide to really show that information and communication technologies, digital technologies are nowadays everywhere whether it's on our phone, computer, whether we are using broadcasting, web platform, clouds, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, sensors, digital communication, robotics, software solution, internet of things, blockchain so you see a great diversity now of technologies and in the next slide you will see that in agriculture there are a lot of opportunities offered by these digital technologies we are using them in agriculture extension and advisory services they are helping us for a more sustainable farming but they are also very important for disaster risk management and early warning system with market being disrupted during COVID time digitalization was really something important and it can really enhance market access and we want to have to be sure that our food is safe so the traceability is also a sector where we can work with digitalization but not only that also financial services and insurance and to be a we are using also digitalization for capacity development and to empower people, communities, women, youth and also elders so we also have the digital skills to improve the usability of digital technologies but this cannot happen if you don't have a regulatory framework and this is why we are also working on strategies and making sure that this is embedded into national programs agenda and that everybody is involved so let's move now to how is the digital divide it is unfortunately still a reality it is a reality and it is more so even in rural areas during the COVID time there was an increased demand of connectivity for e-commerce, e-health, teleworking but in rural areas and some of us connected today are really facing this the connection isn't stable irregular of poor quality and we pay the same price as in the cities so they are still room for improvement and we realize that there is a lower use of digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas and this is specifically true for small older farmers and this may be due to poor services and lack of investments from farmer's side but also investments from public sector sites so let's see how is our region and these challenges so the human challenges in our region are can be embedded in these different factors the young generation is living rural areas and we need to attract and keep the rural areas and agriculture as attractive for the young generation because our farming population is really aging the average age of a farmer is above 50 years old and the majority of farmers are small older with the COVID we have seen that due to the seasonal migration there was shortage of farm labor so this is something that was already an issue but that has been exacerbated during the COVID pandemic we also face another problem is the negative connotation of the word cooperative so we need to really enhance collaboration cooperation among the small older farmers and some farmers not the young one but the older generation has a conservative attitude towards technology and women and elders and poor people have access and control over technologies and because a lot of issues are related to the digital skills so let's move now to what are the challenges in the next slide of a small older farmers so in the region the the farm size varied a lot because we have very small farms too extremely big and still they are called small older farmers so it's really depending from one country to another in the region and what are the issues is that the technologies are sometimes available but not always adequate for small farmers reality because you need to have a larger farm to be able to do that so some what we have to make sure is that small orders are not excluded from policy in incentive and rural services and we also have to face another challenge is the capacity to generate use and manage data and information at all levels whether it's farmers service producers or regulators and so access to and control of data in the agri-food sector is also still something that we need to work on due to the limited integration in market change the limited decision making powers and unclear unclear on farm data ownership whether it's the farmer or is it the private sector or the government so we need to also regulate this and have clarity let's move to the next slide please so all these issues and challenges can be summarized with keywords and we are using some of these so be sure that technologies are accessible affordable appropriate adaptable and actionable and this is related to replying to the barriers I've mentioned to you about the connectivity the cost the content to have good content localized context which is really replying to the request and the needs of the people or in local and rural areas the capacity at different levels whether it's institutional or whether it's an individual and we need to also have trust in what is being done and confidence in using these technologies and this is why we should reply with a people-centered approach using participation and partnership from the different sectors participation from the different actors in the society and the partnership between public private civil society academia so this is a long process and it should be based on learning lessons from the practices whether there are failures or successes so hopefully we should keep this digital transformation so simple sustainable and as an approach a system approach and the publication there it's really to show you that all these aspects have been covered in the publication on gender and niceties so how is FAU responding to this so we have helped having guidelines to actually develop a national frameworks we are looking at the gender issues and taking really the people-centered approach on the regular base we are doing a regional assessment we're also doing national assessment and the latest publication with ITU is on the status of digital agriculture in 18 countries of Europe and Central Asia and the Russian version of this publication will be able available this year but all the work that we are doing as mentioned by Raymond Yelle is embedded in the work and the program of work of in the region and with the member states and so we are also sharing you these documents and then of course things are moving and I have also added from France to space from space to farm sorry and we will be able to talk about this in the panel discussion so in a conclusion in the next slide you will see that a conducive environment for digital agriculture requires this inclusive approach that I mentioned people approach not leaving any one behind that we have to improve the infrastructure both for ICTs and also in the agriculture sector we still have to increase awareness on what are the benefits the challenges that have to be overcome and it's important that we continue sharing knowledge sharing good practices and we will not bridge the rural digital divide if we are not improving digital skills so this is something that we are also working on and this should be embedded in a regulatory framework conducive to innovation and that takes into account the specific cities and the risk that digitalization entails so okay great great thank you so much again it's a very good overview of what was already done and what is to be done and how digital agriculture depends on many sectors and many prerequisites I would say and it's great that you outlined all those elements out of all those variety of prerequisites maybe connectivity to rural areas will be one of the main ones and one of the major obstacles and on that note I'd like to give the floor to Jaroslav Ponder who is coming from international telecommunication unit Jaroslav is head of European office of the union and who's better than him can represent the digitalization and connectivity trends in the region thank you very much please Jaroslav the floor is yours yes thank you very much Victor and thank you very much Sophie for inviting ITU to this very important dialogue on the digitalization of the agriculture which is very close to our heart we as the ITU being the UN specialized agency in charge of the ICTs we are paying very much attention and to the connectivity but also to the meaningful connectivity it's not only about providing the cable and to the home and to the unit but also to build upon this what creates real value proposition and I think that this value proposition in case of the agriculture can be really much more strengthened but certain parameters have to be also addressed and many of those already selfie has addressed so recently in the preparations towards the world telecommunication development conference which is our milestone conference discussing all digital transformation undertakings by the government and taking a look how to accelerate the transformation transformative power of the ICTs for the SDGs we have prepared and took a look at where we stand with the connectivity and today I have the pleasure and not speaking only on behalf of the European region but also our colleagues from the CIS region and to the office which is placed in Moscow so we encourage you to download those two publications as they're going a little bit in depth and giving good understanding the challenge of the connectivity in the context of the digital transformation next slide so of course all of us we have the feeling that the world is becoming mobile and this is true and it's true for all Europe and Central Asia as we see on those graphs the equally European and Central Asia countries are well connected in terms of the providing the access to the and to the ICTs through the mobile connectivity and usually going up to the 4G but now you are entering in the new phase of implementation of the 5G and many countries are just working on this important journey which requires additional investment but the technology which will offer us not only to make the real gigabit society a reality but more importantly providing also the proper foundation for digitalization of the sector and providing the sector the possibility that internet of things smart agriculture and smart production becomes reality that artificial intelligence about which we are reading so much in the context of the of the agriculture sector can really debug and to grow in terms of the applications of different services so next slide so this is the reason why we are also taking a look at the use of the mobile telecommunication in terms of the mobile broadband and we see that when we are diving in those numbers already and the use and the number of the subscribers is very different and diverse and very different from this what we've seen from this just simple subscription to the mobile technology so let's keep in mind the connectivity is good but the quality of the connectivity and the access to the broadband through the mobile technology has an important meaning and when we many of you going through the countryside very often experience the lack of the connection lack of the connection and the service basic service voice service so in order to change this we need to also make the systemic change which we will be talking about just in second next slide so also let's take a look at the at the broadband fix broadband connectivity which is taking off but not that as fast as possible it could be and requires much more attention the urban versus rural connectivity still becomes a significant challenge once the urban accelerations are very well connected in the rural areas we still do not have the proper rollout of the broadband and in different countries it rolls with different dynamics and it's it's not only the advocacy and the challenge of the ministers of ICTs and the regulators but also of the of the ministers of agriculture and those who are creating the significant demands because without this infrastructure we cannot progress with the next layer value at its proposed by the services next slide also when we are taking a look at the pricing we see and that in terms of the pricing even though most of the countries in Europe and Central Asia are below the target of the UN broadband commission set by the United Nations broadband commission commissioners to be below two percent of the GNI but still we have some countries where this connectivity is a challenge it's a challenge for the end users who should benefit from the daily connectivity but also for those who are using this in more entrepreneurial meaning next slide also when we are taking a look at the issue of the digital skills what Sophie already mentioned we see that the dynamics in Europe and Central Asia is very different and very significant efforts needs to be dedicated because we can face the situation that even though we'll create a lot of services and value proposition coming from the ICT industry unfortunately the end user will not be able to use it properly and this is the challenge which we need to address from the more systemic point of view to make sure and that all this innovation is embedded and adopted from the inception point of view and not just later on and just to become the following next slide of course we have the challenge of the gender once we are these are the data for the global reach and global average we will see that we have around five percent to seven percent depending on the country of the difference once we are taking a look at the desegregated data at the rural areas these data are looking even worse and this makes us really worried and this is some space where we really hope to advance in the near future much stronger next slide please so what has to happen also to make this change in order to unlock investment in the non-profitable areas and to bridge the digital rural divide and we need to make sure that enabling environment provides the conditions for the investment and that's why we're monitoring the enabling environment in all countries and as you see the dynamics looks very different and because of the some assumptions of the strategies of the countries but also because of the speed of adoption of certain good practices from the different coming from the different countries so there is still the work to be done in order to reach this golden reference point the generation fifth of the regulation and by all countries what is happening already progressively but very slow so next slide and when we so there are several items to be addressed in order to to make the progress and but once we are coming to the diversity of the items and the moves to be done in order to accelerate digital agriculture expansion we need also to take a look at the cross-sectoral collaboration and this is something what is very close to our and our heart and this is something what has been advocated next slide when we are talking to the membership when we are designing the regional initiatives for Europe and thank you very much FAU and also other UN agencies and the community of FAU for advocating this when we are discussing about this with the ICP ministries so just to close I encourage you to take a look at the different regional initiatives and the synergies between these what we are doing as the ICT community and this what we are creating together with FAU bringing into the discussion these two communities so just to close there are several goods the liberables of the joint work with FAU and we are very proud of this collaboration and we just draw attention to the recent developments on focusing on the activation of the ICT-centric ecosystem targeting specifically agriculture and we hope that you will be able to see very soon the excellent compendium of the over almost 200 digital solutions which are making change in the way how the digital agriculture functions providing the solutions to those who are in the business and looking how to increase the efficiency and through the digital so we look forward to the great collaboration and also to the great discussions during this this session and thank you very much for for your attention thank you great great thank you so much Roslav excellent overview of what was happening and we're always happy to collaborate and open for that of course digital agriculture is a huge area and there is a lot of different technologies sometimes you can do things without connectivity but it's very relevant and very important specifically for small holders in remote areas in challenging locations as I would call it so on this note I'd like to give a floor to Hank Tran who is working on on this topic trying to bring connectivity and internet to the areas without it coming from company CIS uh Hank floor is yours please okay okay Victor thank you so much it's an honor and privilege to be here with you all today that was really great presentation from Sophie and J. Osloff I've learned a lot already you know from looking some of the items that you guys are working on that's that's amazing so as Victor mentioned I'm from the private industry I work for SES and I'll go through some of the things that we do next slide please as we all know prior to the epidemic a paradigm shift toward digitalization technology was well underway just that COVID-19 have really really speeded up the adoption of technologies I think I've seen it somewhere in statistic that within instead of doing this over five years with COVID-19 it really pushed it up in a few months as you can imagine last year when COVID happened all of a sudden you know we were asked to do the remote work the kids were asked to stay home to go listen learning as Sophie mentioned earlier it's it's fine for the first world countries however in a lot of the rural places such as in Africa or even here in the US in in the rural area it was not that easy for some of those people to do these basic things that we take for granted such as connectivity right so everything have changed for all of us such as telemedicine just being able to do the basics things and we couldn't do it so for example I do support a lot of the UN UN agencies and definitely in Central African Republic in Bangdee when it first happened the UN staff was not able to do a lot of these things because the infrastructure was not available so as I mentioned earlier we take some of these things for granted such as digitalization sure it sounds great but some of these rural areas it's not that easy to do these things so in this digital area high speed connectivity and reliable network access is the most important to empower business and communities especially remote area as Sophie mentioned earlier next slide please so this map here I just want to show you just to see that the connectivity that we have today right this is this shows all the suffering cables and if you look at it along the major cities they are well connected but if you go in the middle of the continents the landlocked countries the suffering cable the connectivity doesn't quite reach some of these locations and as you can see with the lack of connectivity the rural area really suffer you know for example we were working on a project with the UNIDO for the smart villages just the basic things of being able to access the information in some of these villages in Niger was really difficult you know people had to travel to places or download the information on a thumb drive and access it so it's not really real-time information you know just to show the the challenges in some of these locations that they have to endure and that's why we as SES trying to work with some of these governments UN agencies to help to mitigate some of these problems next slide please so I would be amiss if I didn't take a few minutes to talk about who we are and what we do SES is the largest satellite operator in the world today the headquarters is based in Luxembourg we as I mentioned we do a lot of work supporting governments the UN UN agencies so for example if if you want if you want to boat or plane I need to be connected a lot about service come from SES as I mentioned we we do support and work with the emergency telecom clusters supporting disasters so if there's a hurricane or flood that takes place we work quite well with the ETTC which is really typically sponsored by the war food program to to go through and support a lot of these disaster responses next slide please as I mentioned SES is the largest satellite operator today in a lot of these locations whether it's on the fringes of the Central Asia or in the landlocked country you know jungle DRC the best things to to reach some of these locations is through satellite because the the fiber it's either difficult or it's really cost prohibitive for a lot of these telco companies to be able to extend the range out to some of the locations this slide just to show you the innovation that we are working on we've been using this technology to support a lot of the markets in Central Asia Africa and it really helps a lot of the market that we hear so for example simple things as someone being able to pick up a phone and ask for the weather or the price of a certain crop that really gives them real-time information that they didn't have before right at the end of the day we want to provide the real-time information to the villagers so that they can you know make a smart decision based on this information that as I mentioned earlier we take it for granted on a lot of places with with this satellite it's really flexible it provides a lot of great services to to a lot of these you know villages a lot of time most people think of satellite as slow and unreliable services however you know as you mentioned earlier with the changing in technology the advancement in the satellite technology have led to an improved user experience you know gone are the days of endless buffering due to the high latency and low speed internet right we approve for the past few years that passengers on cruise ships or on on the planes are able to to serve the information just as today now so the next time you know you want to take a nap on a plane and you must check the service you can thank us for that on this one I just want to show that we when we come in and do a project with a lot of these locations we want to work with local telco partners why is that from our experience working with the governments and the un agencies it's good that we the local companies they they know and understand the local the regulations and at the end of the day it's good for the economy that we work with a lot of these telco companies if I may interrupt you have one minute left okay next slide please I just on this one just want to show the couple of the projects that we work with other agencies so for example this past April we signed an MOU with the Kazakhstan government supporting their digitalization process if you can move on to the next one just to show that you know there's a map where a lot of the small villages that is difficult for them to access the information that we mentioned before right the ability to access the information the payment system so with this connectivity it really brings the people and the villages together and really at the end of the day right it's access for everyone blast but not least go back to the first slide right so even once the COVID is finished go ahead the next one please yeah even when when post COVID there will be no return to normal I mean the remote work arrangement the hybrid distance learning telemedicine I think it will be here and connectivity is part of the infrastructure so with that Victor again thank you so much for having me and I'll turn it over to you thank you Hank and apologies for interrupting and just making your smooth talk a bit interrupted yet and apologies in advance for all other speakers so we'll have to interrupt if you're going above it but it says way great I have my noble duty in front of all the attendees that we will try to stick to to ours as we schedule so uh one that note I mean it's great a great indeed what you were referring and mentioning and of course a partnership and collaboration is a key between public and private stakeholders in bringing connectivity to to all those challenging areas in challenging times as you said it's very COVID indeed is a very challenging time for everyone but and as Jaroslav mentioned it's it's very important to meet this connectivity meaningful and that's our next session will be devoted on that and before going there I can see some questions in our Q&A session in Q&A functionality and I'm inviting again anyone to publish your questions there were relevant to that meaningful and collectivity and all the aspects of different applications let's say let me pick one here that was about about any subsidies for small holders if it's possible to get subsidies for small holders to invest in technological infrastructure if you can briefly somehow reference to it because we do know connectivity costs a lot and it's a lot of a lot of a lot of funds required for this you Hank said it's not expensive but if you can reflect a little bit more on this and Jaroslav within short answer that would be great again I will repeat the question is there is any international subsidies uh is there any internationals the question jumped is there any international subsidies program for small holders farmers to invest in technological infrastructure thanks so so thank you for that Victor we do a lot of the projects whether with you know countries in Africa or Central Asia and if necessary SES we do make donations to some of these projects when it's necessary right and then we do a lot of these stuff for for example last year when COVID-19 hit we already support the UN agencies and we made a lot of donations to some of these agencies during this difficult time so so yes you know as part of the corporate social responsibility when we work on some of these projects we do make donations toward it and I you know we can certainly take it offline you know on a specific project as well great great to know and it's anyone who was attending can see all their credentials and if there's any discussion or interest from participants they can reach you out indeed thank you so much Hank for that I'm turning to Jaroslav do you have anything to add on that specific question indeed another question was coming is there is any is there is any opportunities for service providers to collaborate and engage in the programs in the UN FAO may I direct this question to maybe Sophie who probably would be representing UN FAO on that quickly if you can mention something I think that this is the right moment to make the transition with the next speaker who is exactly going to answer this question so rather than replying myself I would prefer to have George Bears explaining what is being done absolutely it's a brilliant idea let's do that George's floor is coming to you and as we know we're starting with a little bit video coming from you and then for your thanks the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities in the European agri-food industry it has disrupted our food supply chain and affected the lives of people working in the sector guaranteed access to fresh food is more important than ever it is not only hotels bars and restaurants that are struggling travel restrictions are also causing severe labour shortages in the agri-food sector the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing climate emergency require a more sustainable agri-food system the twin challenge of resilience and sustainability in agriculture can be achieved through digital innovation this is how the smart agri-hubs community responded the creation of online marketplaces allows the most vulnerable members of society to satisfy their basic needs in an efficient way as our digital innovation hub pay de la loire has shown the use of robotics precision agriculture and online matchmaking services can address critical labour shortages our flagship innovation experiment autonomous greenhouses tackles this most of the solutions will encompass a digital application whether it is through data-driven platforms AI based tools or matchmaking algorithms the potential is enormous smart agri-hubs digital innovation hubs across europe assist in the development of these solutions and foresee what is needed to bring these promising ideas to the market thousands of organizations and individuals have joined up within the scope of this project the innovation portal helps to deliver a digitalized european agri-food sector that remains efficient yet is still resilient and sustainable the community is expanding enormously join us and be part of this sustainable wave okay i'll share my screen just george will i confirm we can sell us in here go ahead okay well thanks victor for giving giving me the opportunity to to present how the smart agri-hubs community a pan-european network dedicated to digital transformation in in agriculture how we responded to the covid-19 crisis maybe first some words on the on the project i think it's good to be aware that the digital transformation takes place at local level in the fields close to farmers and farmers are ground bound so they are they cannot move their location they are so the digitization has to take place at the local level but on the other hand we see a lot of examples in in european projects national projects where digitization is is taking place and the project is about how to connect the dots how to make the state of the art as it is present in all over europe how to make it available for farmers in the region that want to digitize this is not only for farmers to to digitize it's also for not doing the same everywhere but building upon each other's experiences and and and results instead of doing the same all over all over again the the concept we are using for that is digital innovation hub and digital innovation hub is a local center center of expertise you can say it's close to farmers so it's in a region where farmers farming is an important activity and it's the digital innovation hub is supporting farmers and is promoting digital tools digital solutions to their own farmers to the farmers community at local level they do it by providing services not only on technology but also in business and on on on ecosystem so brokerage events and so on and for the business part it's also important that digital innovation hubs have a service for looking for funding looking for the funding opportunities we have about we are targeting on 400 of this digital innovation hubs and how to connect the dots and it's already illustrated in the in the animation that we have an innovation portal for that in the innovation portal we are collecting good practices on digitization so interesting projects that can be interesting for for other people we are making a register of competence centers so this is not a register yellow pages or something like that it's it's a register where we have companies that can provide innovation services and we have a collection of digital innovation hubs so digital innovation hub can contact each other and interact with each other and a lot of tools and guidelines webinars for developing the services of the digital innovation hubs so all in all this is a lot of knowledge that we collect in the innovation portal and make it available for digital innovation hubs at a local level to provide service to their community so that's about the like I said we are targeting on 400 digital innovation hubs at the moment as we speak we are halfway the project it's a four-year project we already have 250 digital innovation hub connected to our network how did we respond to to to covid because we are in age 2020 projects and we've got a request from the european commission what can you do to to help us out in this this this covid crisis for that we established a task force on covid 19 and the task force developed a vision on what agricultural or digital agriculture can do to to to reduce the negative impacts of the covid crisis i think it's the the special edition that we made on this newsletter i can recommend everybody to take a look at that and to see what we what our vision is and how we are communicating it to the to the to the farming community and to the smart agria community and i think the the animation is one of the let's say results of that um i i don't have the time to go into all details but i want to focus on the open calls that we also launched dedicated to uh to the covid crisis um the call was focusing on on the challenges of the broken supply chains due to the covid and on the issue of low labor shortage in this in the agricultural sector as a result we got eight as a means solutions that we granted that we funded and to give you an idea on this as a means solution so it's as a me companies that are providing solutions an interesting one was to reduce the visits of veterinarians to the dairy farms so a tool to to to support online the farmers online on the the health care of their cows we have an interesting example of a let's say in the labor reduction a an application to to to to manage the flocks in in the poultry we have a um an an an example of robots in the packing packing of fruits so also to to reduce the labor an platform or maybe you can say a marketplace for seasonal workforces that's also one of the solutions that as an as a means working on and of course we have a couple of market places for local produce to to shorten the supply chain they have we have business to business platforms but also business to consume consumer platforms so these are a few examples in the as a means solutions on the other hand we also have 13 hackathons and to explain for those who are not familiar with hackathons hackathon is a competition you bring together a lot of expertise of people interested in in the challenges you bring them together make them forming teams and think about bright ideas to to to deal with the these challenges and the the function of these hackathons is to to mobilize people to bring people together from difference from it from agri and maybe some other knowledge domains you bring them and you challenge them to to bring out the best ideas so it's a really competition and there are prices for the best ideas the 13 hackathons are presented in a nice overview in this in this link so you please take a look at that to have more then you can see what's what's what's what's the ideas are so in summary i think the smart agri hubs community responded quite efficient and effective to this this covid crisis and i think it's for the audience today it is important that we are in an open innovation so everybody is welcome to join us if you are want to establish a digital innovation hub please register yourself on our web portal it's not we are an EU project but we are open to other areas in the world and please connect us make use of all the knowledge that we have in our innovation portal and please also provide us your knowledge in the innovation portal okay thank you very much thank you thank you thank you george that was george beers coordinator of smart agri hubs european union project with the good examples how to make the connectivity meaningful and variety of them great george uh good over you but now let's move to some specific examples and on that note i'd like to introduce marcus pickard economic affairs officer at united nations economic commission for europe who will be talking more about each rate and potential solutions there please marcus lord yours yes so thank you for inviting you and ece to this very important meeting and also very timely meeting given the situation that the global pandemic has created if you could please put my presentation on screen so as we have very little time thank you it's a good slide so next slide please a un ece is in the un system the focal point the global focal point to develop standards best practice and recommendations for international trade we do this in a specific unit the un center for trade facilitation and electronic business un cfac this is about 1000 participants working as volunteers in the center we develop global standards in particular on the standard side standards for electronic business and the standard support the complete supply chain so that is from production distribution regulatory control down to finance and insurance now trade is something that is intrinsically linked to everything else that affects humans and so if you develop standards for international trades and you have to work with all other players so i made a list here some of the standards and players that that we're working this particular FAO, IEC, IPPC and so on and so forth now what we do is we develop standards for electronic information exchange so for example sanitary phytosanitary certificates electronic anxiety certificates quality certificates just to to mention this and and that's what we're doing it's but the the standard itself is at is and Mr. Gil in the openings that e-business technologies are are accelerators for change and so if you have a standard this is the basis in the precondition for a lot of other things that you want to introduce in an agriculture supply chain that is improvement of the logistics and and trade supply chain improvement of trade procedures traceability transparency using of modern ways to control supply chains like electronic risk management and and all this leads at the end to resilience in times of crisis and pandemic I give you two examples so you get it's not too abstract e-business can be or is often very abstract I give you two examples and I looked for examples that are relevant for transition economies and developing countries also because Sophie mentioned an important aspect of e-business is to to to bridge the the digital divide so one standard we have is is called e-cert it's a standard for electronic licenses permits and certificates in agriculture trade it's recommended into alia by the IPPC as the global standard for electronic phytosatificates but many countries also use it for SPS certificates for mesh for meat fishery products dairy products and so on electronic SPS are exchanged between the the big players already since quite a while and they have greatly helped to to reduce transaction costs make trade better and to increase the to lead to better regulatory control however the use of these electronic certificates was a bit prohibitive for smaller countries and therefore the IPPC together with the World Trade Organization in Geneva they developed next slide please they developed and what is called the e-phytohub so the phytohub is consists of two components one component is a is a generic system for national competent authority to fill in an electronic phytosatificate and the second component is an exchange hub so once the authority has generated such a certificate it can be electronically exchanged to other competent authorities and there's also a bridge between this e-phytohub and the traces and t-hub of the european union so a country connected to the e-phytohub will also be able to exchange electronic certificates with the european union just to give you an example the speakistan recently adopted this hub they took it took some only three months in order to get everything running and today they're already exchanging 4 000 certificates with countries like korea germany is the us russia and so on next slide please the next short example i want to show you is is electronic certificates for trade in international species of wild flora and fauna site is convention next slide please so site ease has a if you could move to the next slide please site ease trade is uh site ease has a problem that uh illegal trade in international wildlife is the first biggest international crime and so a lot of site ease permits and certificates are tempered with are forged so site ease set up vision a concept for an end-to-end control of trade and endangered species using internet technology if you could please uh move on uh yes thank you and so one of the components of this strategic vision is uh is a cooperation with the unctad asicuda project to develop an a cloud-based uh a tool for issuing and controlling of electronic site ease permits that can be used by management authorities this is the unctad asicuda base solution this system as i said is is cloud-based traders can actually request uh permits using mobile phones or any other uh uh stationary computer equipment and even the government agencies can control uh in a personal-ass manner the complete workflow and the approval of this permit the system the first country where it was implemented was Sri Lanka in February of 2020 very shortly after the inauguration of the system Sri Lanka had to go into a hard lockdown all government agencies were closed i talked uh uh in spring of last year i talked to a trader and the trader told me before it was taking months and longer to get uh such a certificate and i would have to go several times to the management authority uh with this new system we had uh uh and a zero disruption of of our export procedures and he said without that system uh they were exporting nefantis so that is uh ornamental flowers he said i would have lost my complete uh uh production so yes thank you uh so next slide uh and this is basically what i just said if you can go to the final slide so what i i wanted to to show here is is the two main pillars for electronic business so it allows efficient controls and and and supply chain operations which is faster movement less based of produce and paperless uh contactless clearance of goods and the other i think very important aspect is and that was said in the presentation of george before we've seen in the covid pandemic a disruption in the supply chain we have seen major shifts both on the production and on the consumption side and that that required a lot of changes in order to deal with this uh with this disruptions and uh electronic information and the possibility to use electronic systems that are acting on this electronic information uh was uh one of the pillars that kept international agriculture trade alive and still keeps it alive in the current pandemic um thank you thank you so much uh marcos that was also a good overview of various applications uh uh and and ways of using of making connectivity meaningful thank you so much uh now uh let's move to a little bit different area uh to earth observations and to using all other type chunk of technologies like satellites uh for precision agriculture etc uh to prescribe a senior scientific advisor from uh journal intergovernmental group on earth observations with his presentation on gail glenn okay thank you victor can you hear me okay perfect lovely great thanks so much for inviting me to participate in this webinar on behalf of the group on earth observations i just want to talk a little bit about uh in a first instance the global earth observation uh agricultural monitoring initiative actually it's a flagship of the geo uh which uh as you may know geo the group on earth observations is an intergovernmental partnership of of over 100 countries and participating organizations and geo glam is working to fight food insecurity markets through the use of earth observations as as you just mentioned the group on earth observations global agricultural monitoring uh flagship was initially launched by the group of uh 20 agricultural ministers in paris in june 2011 as part of the minister's g20 action plan on food price volatility and since 2011 uh geo glam has expanded its focus to include a broader uh uh emphasis on global food security geo glam delivers on its mission by producing and openly disseminating consensus based relevant and timely and actionable information on agricultural conditions and outlooks of production at national regional and global scales and here you can see the final declaration from that uh meeting in paris in 2011 from the g20 agricultural ministers geo glam uh participants include representatives from most g20 nations as well as many other countries and several international organizations and NGOs participation is from more than 120 institutions and over 50 nations with beneficiaries from at least from least developed nations further expanding the reach of geo glam the main product that geo glam initially um uh put forth was something called the crop monitor for the agricultural um monitoring information system and uh this produces monthly crop uh condition assessments for wheat maize soybean and rice um the uh since 2012 geo glam information has covered uh amos major importing and exporting countries and the crop monitor encompasses over 80 percent of global production consumption and trade volumes of amos targeted crops over 40 nations and institutions contribute to the crop monitor and then since uh 2016 the crop monitor for early warning has monitored crops that are important for food security by region generally encompassing countries and regions that are susceptible to food insecurity and participants include the major food security organizations such as the world food program FAO us aid fuse net uh the joint research center of um the european commission asa rice and others combined the geo glam crop monitors covers most of the world and here is an example of uh that comes from the latest um uh crop monitor early warning for may which shows conditions uh across central and south asia and in particular we can see that um conditions in kazakhstan for example are favorable for for the crops that are looking at uh and uh the uh planting of spring wheat has continued across kazakhstan afghanistan kyrgyzstan and then uh the outlook calls for below normal precipitation and above normal temperatures during may and june in parts of central asia and we can see again that this is the case in regions such as as kazakhstan now what has been the impact of co vid on geo glam operations well according to the geo glam report that is going to the g20 meeting to be held later this summer uh the world is currently facing one of the greatest food emergencies in more than a generation geo glam is monitoring uh that global food insecurity and it is shown that it has risen due to the challenges associated with increasing conflict and the world's changing weather and climate conditions impacts from other events include floods winds and droughts uh and in across africa one of the worst waves of locus uh in many many years what is different in 2020 is that co vid 19 has amplified the risks already facing the world 690 million hungry people potentially doubling the population facing acute word uh food shortages that's from the world food um wfp the joint research center in kenya indicated that 76 percent of the small holder farmers were impacted by pandemic measures affecting the availability of inputs labor transport and cross border trade and compounded by the crop loss and 16 percent of farms due to the locus invasions but in response to the evolving crude food crisis the provision of objective and transparent near real-time information on global agriculture was critical and geo glam rose to the challenge in 2020 and continues to do so in 2021 by by providing state of the science information products to the amos g20 community in a year when much of the world was in some form of lockdown the pandemic has demonstrated the importance of space-based observations to compensate for the reduction in near uh in ground information to provide insights on the state and challenges of producing crops in near real time and importantly technology in geoglams response has been um responsible for managing the human dimension because geoglam has established resilience and commute committed expert networks it has been able to rally the community to continue to deliver vetted consensus information to support food commodity markets without missing a step so to conclude here geoglam participates in providing a price prediction mechanism which reduces market volatility by the use or the production of its crop monitors as you can see here on the left that in combination with products provided by amos such as the supply and demand and commodity price index provides market stability through authoritative provision of authoritative information based on independent collaboration and real near time assessment so with those comments i conclude my presentation back to you victor thank you great uh douglas specifically you made it even shorter than your assigned time slot was thank you so much and of course all those mechanisms what you described a crop monitoring and price prediction are so important specifically in those challenging times we're at now on that note let me give the floor for our next speaker dominic berot head of first system monitoring division at the world meteorological organization thank you very much victor and thank you for having me here uh to give you another view on dobio murals activity in hydrological monitoring specifically during that cave situation so dobio murals that's the world meteorological organization dealing with the un agency for climate weather on the water almost specifically uh hydrological um monitoring on the operational hydrology that's quite important so i do not have to convince you how important water is not only for agriculture but as well for hydro power for navigation for ecosystems so we have to act and sdg number six on water is absolutely clear on this but it's so difficult to act to take the right decision in terms of operation irrigation schemes in terms of infrastructure because the system is still very much unknown so the the whole hydrological cycle as we'll see at the bottom of this picture is still unknown so we we just cannot probably understand the system and we cannot model the system probably and we need more monitoring and that's the key having observations of the system can allow to to build that value chain and to take the right decision and we know for a long time that we need to to increase the monitoring system of water all around the world i'm talking about surface water rivers groundwater and without forgetting the ocean by the way and you see from that picture there is only a few countries that have a proper water observing system and that are not sharing that system to all the stakeholders and that was an issue even before the covid situation and it was clear to us that we have to improve that situation and the covid situation for more than a year now has pretty much shown that there are strong limitations on that we have to improve the situation and you see this result from a survey that in many cases hydro meteorological services dealing with climate weather on the water are facing huge challenges due to covid 19 and have severe restriction of all the services they provide to population due to covid and you see all colors but gray are where you have issues for for mailed moderate and too strong issues and especially numerical predictions that allow for weather predictions are very much restricted due to covid so it was clear we have to act and to accelerate all we are doing in terms of digitalization due to to ensure that we are stronger on on more robust in for for the next pandemic or whatever natural hazard that can happen and that's even more true for specifically hydrology and specifically true for for the region we are here so Central Asia and Eastern Europe on that short survey from last year showed that most of the countries are facing difficulty in delivering hydrological services and data data products forecast rolling systems on one of the reasons being that the fieldwork is not possible and fieldwork is important for getting to the stations measuring stations because still many stations are not automatized it's on paper on you need observers to go on the site to take the measure on that's not only expensive and consuming but in in in case of a crisis and including a pandemic you just cannot go in the field on that's an issue we have to solve on the other issue being that for most of the countries there is huge uncertainties in terms of budgeting for operation and maintenance of the network so it's a clear sign we have to be more efficient and to provide more support in terms of um digitized solutions on thematic solutions on that's actually what the WM world is trying to do for years now especially building a new generation of water monitoring and we started that long before the the covid but the covid was a clear sign we have to accelerate that so you saw some presentation dealing with hubs so we also have a hub on it's called hydro hub building the new generation of water monitoring and with an innovation hub aiming at finding an additional solution to the say standard measurements thanks to a new technology, low-cost technology, citizen observations, satellite information that are shown by the just before me and we have to to make sure that we can improve the all information flux on the water thanks to that new generation of of devices and monitoring approaches and we're working much more currently in different african regions but very much open to to to discuss as well with partner for core asia on the eastern europe you will see some examples in a few minutes and a concrete example is when we're talking about data sharing we are building what we call the who's the WMO hydrological observing system which is an automatization of data transmission so as soon as you have the data that are collected on on the database you can be sure that you can transmit all the data to any kind of users stakeholders who are in your in your region in your country all around the world thanks to that who's system without any burden on question on data formatting on any kind of data quality whatever we can deal with this and making sure we have that value chain from the data to the applications including from private sector or universities or other national agencies agriculture and natural hazard and so on and so forth and on that's what i call a success of digitalizations not having any burden anymore of getting to the in the field for for getting paper or whatever solutions to have all the solutions here in one hand on that provided by the WMO and more than that we are developing based on those data that are collected what we call the hydrological status and outlook system hydro SOS which is producing information for the current situation of all the world and as well for a kind of outlook or what's what could be coming in the next days or weeks or even months on the are they drop expected somewhere in the world are they flood situation expected on that the hydro SOS provide that it's by the national hydromete services on for the national hydromete services with all possible stakeholders around the world so on that thanks to digitalizations you can reach that kind of services it's not only useful for the users but it's useful as well to gain visibility to ministries and so on to show that that what we can do for hydrology in terms of services for any kind of stakeholders and a few examples on what we are doing with partners all around the region starting with them starting years ago a multi hazard early warning system in Southeast Europe with at least 10 countries on the hopefully some of the countries that are here now at that webinar and we started together with the USID a modernization of the Afghan hydromete service including forecast system on digitalization of all the the measurement networks and a Swiss consortium called IMO developed a new type of water level monitoring system for Kyrgyzstan that was conceived on build in Kyrgyzstan and especially for measuring irrigation channels water level velocity and then conveying that kind of information into a database then for decision makers and it's a good news for me having an institute in Kyrgyzstan able to to build that kind of devices and we are right now working with Caritas a Swiss NGO to build local climate services for farmers in Tajikistan so it just has been funded by the the Swiss government and that will help local farmers to to take the better decisions thanks to whether water on climate services at the local scales are linked to what the the national authorities are doing and so my final slide just to tell that we need to build that value chain and digitalizations from the data collections to the decisions and to the the final users being populations being farmers being decision makers can help this and WMO working with many different farmers is happy to to support all these efforts and I think that's my last slide thank you very much thank you so much Dominique that's great to know I mean no need to to persuade us that water is so important for agriculture and it's great to have you on board in this area in this sector and delivering all those great services to different probabilistic holders including farmers and making it available to them I can see that all those questions variety and the multiple questions we have in coming from audience are well answered and well handled by by speakers and by our team members and I invite all the questions to still come in and we will try to answer them and I invite speakers also just to try to contribute to that actively and like to give the floor to Sophie train and who will be leading leading the discussion panel with other representatives coming from this very important and very relevant and very timely sector such as digitalization of agriculture in the region thank you very much victor so we will have now a panel discussion and we have invited some colleagues from F.A.O. we have Navana Nevena Alexandreva Stefanovna who will with a agriculture extension officer in age quarter and she knows very well the region because she worked in Europe and Central Asia for many years we also will have with us Marc Ovarie who is an animal health preparedness expert and he will tell us more about capacity development and what was needed to be done during this covered time then we have people representing the private the public sector and this will be the case of Leila Agazada and she is working in Azerbaijan and she will present us the platform that is being developed and has been accelerated during the covered time then we have another representative from a country Vito Guajica who is representing the academia sector as he is a professor at the University of East Sarajevo and then we have a representative from the private sector from Russia this is Ilya Skabara who is the vice president of cognitive technologies so we will discover how artificial intelligence is being applied to agriculture so without any further due I will invite Nevena to join us and I would be pleased to actually discover a little bit more what has been done during this pandemic because the extension unit of FAO has run a series of webinars and I know that digitalization was one aspect of it so what are the lessons learned Nevena? Thank you thank you very much Sophie for inviting me to share some experiences from research and extension unit of the office of innovation and headquarters in Rome so since the beginning of the pandemic extension and advisory services have been a major contributor to the COVID-19 response bridging much needed information from and to the field and yet extension and advisory services around the world are very seriously challenged to transform themselves and adapt to remote and digital delivery so in the period May-June 2020 our unit produced some policy briefs related to extension and also research and innovation systems that I will share in a moment and also have conducted series of regional webinars in Asia, European Central Asia and Africa and with the aim to understand how different extension and advisory services providers and the pluralistic systems at national level are coping with the new normal and how they are innovating under different circumstances lockdowns or recovery scenarios and in a very uneven and also specific regional context the webinars aimed at identifying and advocating for such innovations in extension within the regions and also to act as a platform for rapid knowledge and exchange between those regions so as you said we have analyzed several aspects coming out of this knowledge brought by the webinars and additional research in particular in the case of the remote and digital delivery of advisory services so most of the countries including in this region reported an increased application of digital tools in extension however those tools were not precision agriculture so those were primarily used as an alternative to face-to-face communication to maintain the contact with the clients and provide services and learning through mobile phone chats and video exchange applications through SMS or interactive voice recording and social media online platforms but also traditional ICTs like radio and TV channels and although the remote delivery was not the unique mode of service provision and advisors also went to the field but it is surprising that the communication flow between the farmers and advisors that was mainly again a remote increased up to 50 percent so a large part of this increase was due to the use of digital tools on the ICTs and to cope with the challenge of closing the farmer markets there were many emerging trends like digital tools like developing of commercial online platforms in many countries including in the region for instance North Macedonia, Hungary, Greece that were not only linked to selling of the agriculture produce but also helping employment information also it was noted that advisory services had a great contribution to these online platforms to help farmers provide data on the platforms but also to engage them to collaborate and form clusters in the recovery period what has been noticed is an increased demand for social financial instruments and also more knowledge through online platforms but so we have analyzed the the champions examples we also noted that in a great number of cases the advisory services just stopped working in the the lockdown period especially in the first three to four months in some countries so a great number of farmers did not have an access to services in this period and this is due to infrastructure and also policy issues so our key message would be that policies relate and investments related to extension and advisory services digitalization and maybe framed in the policy overall policy of agriculture innovation are pertinent to continue to capitalize on digitalization and cope with pandemic thank you and Nevena I know that during the pandemic there was also this publication so very shortly because we are running out of time could you explain what is this publication from space to farm and how the small orders can really benefit from that even in the COVID time thank you Sophie so we know that COVID-19 brought an uncertainty in the food supply chains but we also know from experience especially in this part of the world during the economic transition to market economies that small farmers and family farms who are very instrumental pertinent to cope with the economic crisis so there is a potential here a new to unutilized potential for small holders to contribute to the response and decrease the uncertainty of for the supply chains but there is a problem in many countries small farms often out of the rather of the official records and statistics so this potential could not be evaluated and capitalized therefore on so the project salsa it's a horizon 2020 project to which FA contributed and I had the pleasure to lead this effort from FAO site had developed an innovative methodology to identify and characterize small farms using open source free of charge satellite data from the Copernicus program and satellite sentinel one and two missions data have been used to assess the crop types and link them to the distribution and acreage of the farms and of course different spectrum one were analyzed machine learning was used and also farmer survey and official statistics to verify the data and this is how this methodology was then used for policy purposes policy recommendations in several European regions and also two African regions were produced that's indeed very interesting how this what we can learn from this how to apply this methodology and indeed what we can have is to have more data and understanding on agricultural landscape on the crop distribution on the yield expectations on how to do better decision making on the field how extension services could be more efficient in their advisors also for policy making to empower for their small holders and this data again that is very it's cost efficient to use because we have the methodology and it's free of charge data saves a lot of time of normally data collection that would be done through surveys etc and this is why we believe it's very instrumental in the covet 19 recovery thank you thank you very much nevena this is really useful because this is really showing also the diversity of approaches from simple use of social media sms to something which is more sophisticated like a satellite information and data so now i would like to show another aspect and this aspect is related to capacity development in fau we are doing a lot of training workshop capacity development is a very important aspect of our work and most of the time we are doing this face to face however during the pandemic our team each rate team the animal health team they face the same issue we had to find another solution so i'm inviting mark ovary who is from our animal health unit to explain how they responded to the pandemic in changing their strategy mark the floor is yours thank you so if we thank you for your invitation to be on this panel and the opportunity to share our experience on this four week long all night training on africans fine fever um so to summarize probably um what is the main difference in term of preparation um compared to a face-to-face training in an online training um so interestingly many aspects are quite similar um there are some key differences that i would like to highlight so just as it face-to-face um trainings we define an aim and the learning objectives which guide us throughout the course now when it comes to the creation of the content the time spent on the training material is much longer um and compared to face-to-face events um it is on one hand to ensure uh to have optimal standardization of the material and as we're talking about interactive modules where people click on the various slides uh the sequencing of self-test questions and proper writing style because in case of online learning we use four sentences rather than bullet points because we don't have an audio component when we interact with the participants um and of course once all the technical aspects have been set then it takes time for an instructional designer to create the modules and we still sort out the last clutches buttons working and and and these sorts um and of course we set everything in a training environment which means that participants enter the web page where they find the training modules but it is more than that uh we provide um and have created webinars at the beginning of the course and at the end of the course we have created short video material on subjects where they wanted to have a better understanding and also we maintain a discussion forum which is our main platform to interact with the participants they can ask questions on the subject matter which in our case was African swine fever and we also engage them with various smaller exercises to um ensure them um to learn the material in a in a more deeper way um then if we think about what are the benefits of digitalization of uh for course as mentioned the standardization that's a very important aspect um but also it's the sheer scale while in case of face-to-face training we would be able to train 20 to 30 participants um in case of these tutored online trainings um we can um train between 350 and 400 participants um and also because our course was tutored we still have maintained connection with them as mentioned through the discussion forum um apart from the numbers uh the other benefits include um adaptation to various languages adaptations to local needs so the course that we have developed um for African swine fever for Europe has been adapted in other regions um in Asia Pacific, Latin American, Caribbean and also one will be coming up for South Africa so we're rather proud about the this achievement. So this is also very nice because when it's well done then it can be replicated more easily and scaled up in in other regions uh so this is a very good uh lessons learned and also what you said about uh being digital takes more time more preparation uh yes but uh in the long run uh it pays off because uh more can take advantage of it so I know that uh in some cases these uh tutored training they can also be converted uh into MOOCs this is uh what we will be doing with our course on experience capitalization and of course we should never underestimate um this did you face any issues of connectivity with your participants Mark or was this okay? Yeah thank you for for your question so based on our experience in Europe so we have run one course for Europe um the entire Europe there wasn't any issues and also we had a local adaptation for the Balkan region um connection we didn't experience major connection issues uh but to circumvent any issues all of our training modules so the learning content was also available in a handout downloadable format so for those who had maybe had a problem of running the interactive courses they could just download it in a PDF and study the material. Ah yes that's very good advice that's these are good tips to have uh the course available in different formats interactive lessons downloadable PDF and things like that um and um I was wondering did you need to have um because you need a certain level of digital skills so um was this an issue or most of your learners where had the appropriate digital skills or you were having a support special support service? Right so so thank you that this is a very important question um so from from our side so from the platform side we collaborated with other partners uh to have our course uh courses developed so I think that there are two ways to approach it either you build your infrastructure yourself you take small steps and after investing maybe a couple years you would have to put infrastructure the capacity to run a course the other solution is to partner up with somebody who has already a built out infrastructure has to know how and how to create these materials how to moderate um an online course this is what we did so we partnered up with others uh we learned a lot through this experience and actually we want to engage more on our regional level to to have more of this infrastructure and know how built in in our environment so we are more you know independent. Okay thank you very much Mark I think that um this topic about capacity development and also how we should move from face to face to online but in a more interactive way uh is something that will be uh the focus over a next webinar specifically devoted to that thank you so much um so now let's move into the public sector and we have invited Leila Agaza from Azerbaijan. Leila is working as a project manager on a very interesting initiative from the government so Leila could you please tell us a few words on this initiative. First of all hello thank you for the speech great speech in our public sector government sector we are doing the electronic version of the agricultural system which was already started to improving from 2019 and now we are also improving this system with turning the physical processes to the electronic one and yes and so because of the pandemic what you had started doing was accelerated and now you are analyzing what was done physically so that you can convert them electronically and what are the challenges that you have been facing during the pandemic to do this. Yeah uh as I mentioned before uh we had this system before the pandemic like this is the electronic agricultural information system which is IAGROS was one of the goals that already existed before the pandemic and was to be improved in other words even before the pandemic farmers could easily apply for the subsidies and we could carry out the processes through the system without physical uh contact however the pandemic has had a major impact on this digitalization process this process consists of the farmer entering the zone area into the system reporting the planting uh and also inspecting the air this area with satellite monitoring with a crop map by the operator after the farmers apply for the subsidy like the field inspection process is carried out in the in this case if there is any problem and if the subsidies is approved then the farmer cards are ordered through the system again and each of these processes is carried out entirely through the IAGROS system without physical intervention. In addition during the pandemic work permits were also issued through the system like about 400 000 farmers through the system get their work permits during the strict quarantine periods like in addition to this also a number of other improvements has been made to the system in order to increase the user friendliness in general like such as such changes also have been made not only for farmers but also for panels for operators, veterinarians, artificial insemination specialists like these chains have helped accelerating the process of digitalization in Azerbaijan during the COVID-19 pandemic times like during the pandemic also we faced some difficulties but the fact that the IAGROS system already exists before the pandemic is in working order has made most of the things easier for us like these problems only arose during the physical processes such as sales deliveries also field inspection processes like I would like to also briefly inform you that access to the IAGROS system is carried out with ASAN login in which case the user must have registered in the ASAN login system before entering the IAGROS system during the pandemic farmers who were not registered in the ASAN login system had some problems connecting to the IAGROS this process also was organized by mobile buses of ASAN service another problem was like the delivery of farmer cards to the farmers with as little contact as possible like which was achieved by mobile buses delivering the cards even to their homes without contacting this also helped farmers to get their farmer cards without having to go to the banks to the city or district centers yeah this was all problems also in order to reduce the contact during the pandemic mobile sales and deliveries of fertilizers and similar sales also were performed were organized by the by these buses and we decreased the reduce the contact during the pandemic with these processes so this is very interesting because you have found very innovative approaches to reply to all these challenges and for people who had then difficulties in logging in you also have a call center where people can get advice on how to proceed on the platform is that correct yes we have contact call centers and support centers established within the minister of agriculture of Republic of Azerbaijan they try to help solve problems and answer questions that user face both before pandemic but during the pandemic okay so thank you very much for this example from Azerbaijan and from Caucasus region now let's move to the western Balkan and we are now welcoming Vito Grudjika who is a professor at the University of Sarajevo Vito is also working with FAO on the preparation of the digital agriculture strategy for the country and Vito is really traveling everywhere in Bosnia, Izegovina and he is really the specialist on digitalization in agriculture so Vito with all this experience and with your view as a professor how your country has replied to the pandemic with digitalization thank you so greetings greetings from Bosnia thank you for the invitation to be on every story this webinar the Bosnia is as you mentioned the Bosnia is one of the country where the FAO launched the activities focused on the agriculture development if we are looking for any positive impact of Covid-19 pandemic in Bosnia and Herzegovina in agriculture and of course rural areas we can find it in two sectors one of them is agritourism and digitalization from one side during the pandemic people were looking for destination in nature we had a fully locked down in april and may of may last year we had summer temperature in that time the borders were closed rural destination were the only solution for the people this was not the case before the pandemic today we have a lot of different initiatives projects focused on the rural tourism linking agriculture with tourism sector it is it is direction where the small borders small agricultural farmers in rural area can find they their their business strategies in addition on the others on the other hand the pandemic pandemic has accelerated digitalization this is the case this is the case within the almost all sectors both public and private like education like communication trade and healthcare the first work from home was introduced in in Bosnia and Herzegovina just last year please go ahead do ahead with so yes okay thank you the this this phase knows both younger and older older people when we are talking for the digitalization in the agriculture sector I would like to highlight the e-commerce before the pandemic there are there are just a few I can say general e-commerce platforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina but more new solutions were launched last year during the pandemic period for instance a new a few bigger bigger retail chains introduced launched online platforms for ordering and also delivering um new uh there was there are a few new specialized uh online platforms for the agricultural products and also food food stuffs the small agriculture producers are using social networks like facebook or or Viber for instance there is a livestock market of Bosnia and Herzegovina growth on facebook with more than at the moment more than 13 000 members it was launched in December last year from the other side the covid 19 pandemic has shown the key limitation of limitations in the rural area in terms of digitalization uh on the first phase I'd like to mention ICP infrastructure we heard today on the beginning of the beginning of even the term digital uh villages but I think the ICP infrastructure in rural areas is one of the key condition or precondition for digital digital transformation in rural areas we have in Bosnia now we have some villages without without gsm network the second one is the population young people moving to the cities we know for both for diversification in rural area including other tourists and for digital transformation the key key people is young people but we we we have uh less and less young people in rural areas I think that is the the key key limitations the constraints for additional digital transformation and it is few reasons uh why we started with a national agriculture strategy yes and maybe you can just uh to finalize uh when is this strategy going to be live or and how is it embedded in the other strategies of the Bosnia and Herzegovina uh at the moment you know uh you know so at the moment we are on the we are finalizing our national strategy and in the future period from 2021 uh to 26 or 37 seven at the moment they are uh the the government sector are creating the general agricultural strategy what can be the best solution the best solution I think will be if the the government sector will include the priorities the findings the recommendations from e-national agriculture strategy to uh embedded embedded to to uh agricultural strategies of course and rural I fully agree with you uh things should be embedded and not only in one sector but in different sectors the strategy of the ministry of agriculture of the telecoms rural development uh so it's a a system approach as we like to say so and I have to tell you also good luck because uh nine out for June there will be a validation workshop or with all the stakeholders so it's also a long process but that will produce good results thank you very much Vito uh from uh showing this perspective and also the reconnection to nature and rural areas not only um agriculture now my last speaker is uh from the private sector and um I'm very pleased uh to have Ilya with us because uh this is something different it is uh artificial intelligence and it's so to see um what does artificial intelligence do for us in the agriculture sector and uh how this the private sector and artificial intelligence uh was a reply to COVID-19 pandemic Ilya the floor is yours okay thank you Sophie uh I'm happy to represent here uh a company which started uh 25 years ago research and development and computer vision and cognitive technologies our company two years ago launched agro pilot it was a new field for us before we work with uh Hyundai Mobility and we take part as a as a builder for automotive autopilot and we produce co-pilots for railroads companies and uh and based on which and we based on these solutions we built uh inexpensive and user user friendly device for agriculture uh today we have 1000 agro pilot in use in Russia in European Union in North and South America as a transfer technology to agro tech uh it was a very interesting situation uh when what we have seen during the pandemic the first one is a critical situation with seasonal workers and as a result huge demand on automatization in agriculture the second one is a big problem with components even our company feels that but fortunately we found uh partners in Germany in Eastern Europe and now we can produce our agro agro pilot as a international and as a international uh device what agro pilot can how agro pilot can help with uh situation in a pandemic the first one it's increased daily output and reduced labor cost uh modern combined harvester is bigger than the house where my grandmother was born 100 years ago it's expensive and difficult to manage asset in reality uh our our solution agro pilot can help farmers even that haven't any experience with harvesters to manage it and use it and it's like a transfer technology from other sector like like a automatic automatic speed shift for auto industry yeah it's creating new mobility same agro pilot creating new possibility new opportunity for farmers as Sophie said before a lot of landlords in the european union have a small plot of land and for these farmers uh is doesn't uh economic sense to buy uh expensive big but highly efficient equipment as a result agro pilot give possibility to share this technique between the farmers and we in reality can use sharing model and sharing economy and even for one or two days use farmer can use it with agro pilot the next one is the main difference between our solution and well-known solution from which based on gps agro pilot use computer vision for recognition obstacles people animals and other techniques techniques on the field as a result we increase safety in agro sector we increase productivity and we reduce fuel consumption and reduce a footprint carbon footprint and of course it's a good impact to sustainable development I hope that the fall will be our provider with our solution and of course I call all people who interesting for use that to cooperation to contact I will put a link to our present full presentation to to the chat and thank you very much to invite us to this very interesting meeting just to to see better the pandemic for you then was for your business was just confirmation that you should continue and this has increased demand yeah yeah pandemic showed us that we are on the right way okay because you are replying to specific needs that are there so uh with this presentation we are looking from small to bigger farmers from private sector to public sector to research to actually academia but also the different varieties of how the digital technologies can be applied I will just do my summary of the panel in my closing words so I will give the floor now to Victor maybe to summarize the main points of the webinar and I will compliment you just after that the floor is yours Victor great Sophie what what a great session I must say it's really we when we're planning we're trying to this this event we're trying to cover as many factors as possible and I I I think we have succeeded in a certain way because what we had heard from this was not only versatile and diverse impact of of COVID on on agriculture in different sectors but also by the different types of responses we have heard about connectivity as a very important prerequisite of digitalization and may bring in those digital technologies from public sector and from the private sector and not only connectivity itself but later we have heard many examples of making that connectivity meaningful coming from different regions different parts of power region the real region European Union examples and including other multiple examples from Central Asia from Caucasus from Balkans we have heard diverse points and view points from different stakeholders starting with public international organizations intergovernmental organizations and national institutions governments academia and of course some more field related examples what we what we have collected which we also learned about different technologies how they can be used starting with different certificates with as was outlined by UNSA presentation with different global satellite technologies as it was outlined by WMO and by GeoSecretariat etc etc etc I've been often you've heard all those examples well I don't want to spend time on this now it was really great and what I liked and enjoyed the most indeed was the discussion at the end and your questions reading your questions and reading your answers that was also great and I learned a lot myself being in this field and working the field and being really involved in this I can't stop learning more and more things myself because of beauty of technologies and how it's developing on a daily basis and evolving and it's one of the beauty and I learned myself a lot I hope it was the same with everyone else Sophie for yours thank you very much victor I see that the interest is high because I see all the question and answers I invite the speakers and the panelists who feel comfortable in replying to some of these questions because some of these questions are really addressed to you to do so so that we can really take this into account because I realize that we need to do a kind of little report after this webinar taking into account the questions but also the answers provided digitalization is everywhere some people were asking but what it is it is the use of all these technologies and we have seen that during the pandemic it's not the most sophisticated technology that help people but sometimes it was the most simple uh Nevena Vito others have mentioned just a Viber WhatsApp uh social media this was the fast answer to the need to be connected and also what is important is all the human dimension that we have heard today we even if we have tried to replace the face-to-face interaction with digitalization there are still things that require our physical contacts to really be engaged and be able to talk to each other and demonstrate each other so maybe now after the the pandemic of course digitalization will be embedded more fully in what we are doing teleworking will be part of the the new way of working but we will also really identify that when we have face-to-face we have to take advantage of that that they are important there are things that we don't need to do face-to-face but we can then value and really share this important moment what we realize is that this pandemic has accelerated the digital technologies but also the disparities because even if in places like rural areas where there was already connectivity the increase of the demand didn't provide a good quality service so these are still issues that need to be taken into consideration and infrastructure is key and so this is something that has to be done but then it's also the availability of practical simple tools very important and digital technologies are tools they are not a magic stick and this is why I really appreciated also the participation from Azerbaijan saying that we are looking at our process to see how we can digitalize them so it's not digitalization that is going to solve all the issues the issues have to be solved also in a systematic and a system approach and the digital technologies are tools to resolve that so the system approach in a sustainable way this was also a comment that I have seen we should why the all the the elements that are in these digital technologies they are limited on earth so we have to also make a sustainable use of these technologies and the technologies are not always the solutions to all the problems so it's really to select well which tool whether digital or not to use for a specific problem because we have to look at the all the dimension of sustainability environmental social and financial economic so we had many examples and we mentioned to you that FAU has three regional initiative in the region which is about the small holders and family farming then it's on the the trade and the value chain and then more about the the natural resources environment and climate change and we have tried to look at all these aspects today and we have seen examples for small holders and family farming and Nevena I think will also publish soon a document about really the the learnings and the learnings and digitalization in in extension we have seen the what are the platform that can be done I had question about oh dude you have a regional platform there are plenty of different platforms and you have to find the platforms that your needs depending who you are for farmers platform this is more at the national level they are international platform like the agriculture community of practice I mentioned in some of the comments the answers the sheep platform for small older innovation but you know these platforms they can work only if you do contribute so I don't think that people should say oh I'm going to do that to find a solution you are part of the solution and you have to contribute and that's why it should be participative and so this is also an invitation to really get engaged in in these platforms we have seen that artificial intelligence can be a reply and one of the things I heard also is the importance of sharing machinery it's not only in the individual use it's something it's collective use so I know that in the region the cooperative connotation is not great however people can make good use of these technologies if there is more collaboration if there is a sharing of these technologies and there are plenty of solution this way also a farmer does not need to to know everything the extension agents the advisory services are there so solutions are there and they they can be shared so these are another thing which is important to know we have seen everywhere the growing importance of e-commerce and what was nice it was really to make the connection between producers and consumers and then when you go further when we want to have trade the importance of having standards and all the work that is being done on this is quite useful in FAO iFITO is one of the the standard that we are using for safety so this is something that we will continue working and then there there is all this platform for monitoring weather water so to understand the climate change to increasing resilience to be to react to other crises so you see we have tackled all these things and what I really liked also in what we heard during the pandemic people needed to reconnect to nature and it also showed the digital divide in rural areas so too important to improve it but then realize also and these are other things that we are doing in FAO it's the in heritage in agriculture to make connection between rural development gastronomy and culture in heritage in agriculture this will also support the work that we are doing in having smart villagers but linking smart cities and smart villages and to also promote more what is available so you remember the few words making active accessible connectivity affordable the cost adaptable the content and the context actionable to have the capacity the skills the confidence the trust but this can be done only if it's people centered being done in partnership having specific process and not being afraid of also sharing failures because we are learning from success and failure so I have already invited you to collaborate so do not hesitate to also use our radio digital agriculture email address and I may ask Renault to put it back in the chat and we will continue collaborating today these presentation were more kind of appetizer because we will have other more specific webinars on specific topics so we will meet again we continue the rendezvous and the menu is a lot more than what we have at today so we will have a lot more flavor I would like also to say that with ITU we have done this call on good practices on the digital excellence in agriculture it was done during COVID time we received many many many applications about 200 so we are still screening them because we will have 21 awardees and we can already inform you that on the 23rd of September we will have the award ceremony this means that people who were asking but what are these technologies the use in agriculture these this talk taking exercise that we have been doing will be available in the next months and you will discover even more so I need to thank you all for having participated all the participants that have been with us today but also the speakers the panelists the interpreters the colleagues behind the screens because to do this event it requires many many many people so I would like to extend all my thanks to the colleagues to all the speakers and I'm really glad that we have done this event today so thank you very much to all of you we will try to respond to the the questions that have not immediately been answered and we will do a follow-up with you so thank you very much to all of you and see you soon thank you