Enormous building full of marble and light and mogano in a still more enourmous town in the centre of the Pearl River Delta, sense of oversizing.
Meting with Vice Dean, Mr Li, Buro of Agriculture DongGuan City.
Information centre and Food safety chain.
Information about FAO/GAAS relationships. All young guys in the responsible positions.
Information Technology and Agriculture weak relation. Many raw products of agriculture have been moved out. In the city very little agricultural production left. Information Service for farmers not so important. Percentage of Agriculture lower than 5%.
(Chinese Development Portal for Agriculture, much more than accessing open Archives, also technology and services to offer, looking for industry partners right friom the beginning for ads)
Consumption and logistics important. Information Services changed into that direction. BOA helps to establish good information for products consumption. Website Agriculture gives product price information. 800 updates per day and updates come from the different partners, wholesale markets, which have specific staff to collect this information.
Also information about policy statements and promotions,management standards, for science and technology they focus on local species like bananas and lichees. Also expert database and a QandA services. Question to the system, if they can answer, they do, otherwise it goes to an expert and the answer is published at the website. Professionals in the local institutes of agricultural systems and other centres with a network of experts, local professionals, universities not involved. 20-30 experts for Dongguan city. A good structure for the website. 32 2 towns in DongGuan city.
The information providers of each sector are not only staff, but many providers. In a village where Agriculture is important the BOA will give subsidies for information provision.
Extension Services:
2 Demonstration sites in two villages last year with computers and touch screens, with updates automatically. 15-20 villages are in a single town.. (like telecentres) total information extension directly to the consumers. Another problem how many farmers need such information services. Even in some villages with still some agriculture production they hire people from other provinces to do the agriculture. 100.000 acres Lychee, 100000 acres. bananas and 300000 acres of vegetables. Also for famers agricultural production is not a major income source.
Systems, Structures, and Information Providers, MoA has released a certificate to certain qualified persons (150 information collectors) and they hold training twice a year for this information collection people. People who can use computers, digital cameras and other techniques. They enter information locally and send it by emails to BoA.
