From Insights to Action: Amplifying Positive Deviance within Somali Rangelands

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Basma Albanna, Andreas Pawelke and Hodan Abdullahi: “In every community, some individuals or groups achieve significantly better outcomes than their peers, despite having similar challenges and resources. Finding these so-called positive deviants and working with them to diffuse their practices is referred to as the Positive Deviance approach. The Data-Powered Positive Deviance (DPPD) method follows the same logic as the Positive Deviance approach but leverages existing, non-traditional data sources, in conjunction with traditional data sources to identify and scale the solutions of positive deviants. The UNDP Somalia Accelerator Lab was part of the first cohort of teams that piloted the application of DPPD trying to tackle the rangeland health problem in the West Golis region. In this blog post we’re reflecting on the process we designed and tested to go from the identification and validation of successful practices to helping other communities adopt them.

Uncovering Rangeland Success

Three years ago we embarked on a journey to identify pastoral communities in Somaliland that demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity. Using a mix of traditional and non-traditional data sources, we wanted to explore and learn from communities that managed to have healthy rangelands despite the severe droughts of 2016 and 2017.

We engaged with government officials from various ministries, experts from the University of Hargeisa, international organizations like the FAO and members of agro-pastoral communities to learn more about rangeland health. We then selected the West Golis as our region of interest with a majority pastoral community and relative ease of access. Employing the Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) and using geospatial and earth observation data allowed us to identify an initial group of potential positive deviants illustrated as green circles in Figure 1 below.

From Insights to Action: Amplifying Positive Deviance within Somali Rangelands
Figure 1: Measuring the vegetation health within 5 km community buffer zones based on SAVI.

Following the identification of potential positive deviants, we engaged with 18 pastoral communities from the Togdheer, Awdal, and Maroodijeex regions to validate whether the positive deviants we found using earth observation data were indeed doing better than the other communities.

The primary objective of the fieldwork was to uncover the existing practices and strategies that could explain the outperformance of positively-deviant communities compared to other communities. The research team identified a range of strategies, including soil and water conservation techniques, locally-produced pesticides, and reseeding practices as summarized in Figure 2.

From Insights to Action
Figure 2: Strategies and practices that emerged from the fieldwork

Data-Powered Positive Deviance is not just about identifying outperformers and their successful practices. The real value lies in the diffusion, adoption and adaptation of these practices by individuals, groups or communities facing similar challenges. For this to succeed, both the positive deviants and those learning about their practices must take ownership and drive the process. Merely presenting the uncommon but successful practices of positive deviants to others will not work. The secret to success is in empowering the community to take charge, overcome challenges, and leverage their own resources and capabilities to effect change…(More)”.

Bridging Digital Divides: How PescaData is Connecting Small-Scale Fishing Cooperatives to the Blue Economy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stuart Fulton: “In this research project, we examine how digital platforms – specifically PescaData – can be leveraged to connect small-scale fishing cooperatives with impact investors and donors, creating new pathways for sustainable blue economy financing, while simultaneously ensuring fair data practices that respect data sovereignty and traditional ecological knowledge.

PescaData emerged as a pioneering digital platform that enables fishing communities to collect more accurate data to ensure sustainable fisheries. Since then, PescaData has evolved to provide software as a service to fishing cooperatives and to allow fishers to document their solutions to environmental and economic challenges. Since 2022, small-scale fishers have used it to document nearly 300 initiatives that contribute to multiple Sustainable Development Goals. 

Respecting Data Sovereignty in the Digital Age

One critical aspect of our research acknowledges the unique challenges of implementing digital tools in traditional cooperative settings. Unlike conventional tech implementations that often extract value from communities, PescaData´s approach centers on data sovereignty – the principle that fishing communities should maintain ownership and control over their data. As the PescaData case study demonstrates, a humanity-centric rather than merely user-centric approach is essential. This means designing with compassion and establishing clear governance around data from the very beginning. The data generated by fishing cooperatives represents not just information, but traditional knowledge accumulated over generations of resource management.

The fishers themselves have articulated clear principles for data governance in a cooperative model:

  • Ownership: Fishers, as data producers, decide who has access and under what conditions.
  • Transparency: Clear agreements on data use.
  • Knowledge assessment: Highlighting fishers’ contributions and placing them in decision-making positions.
  • Co-design: Ensuring the platform meets their specific needs.
  • Security: Protecting collected data…(More)”.

Farmers Sue Over Deletion of Climate Data From Government Websites

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Karen Zraick: “Organic farmers and environmental groups sued the Agriculture Department on Monday over its scrubbing of references to climate change from its website.

The department had ordered staff to take down pages focused on climate change on Jan. 30, according to the suit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Within hours, it said, information started disappearing.

That included websites containing data sets, interactive tools and funding information that farmers and researchers relied on for planning and adaptation projects, according to the lawsuit.

At the same time, the department also froze funding that had been promised to businesses and nonprofits through conservation and climate programs. The purge then “removed critical information about these programs from the public record, denying farmers access to resources they need to advocate for funds they are owed,” it said.

The Agriculture Department referred questions about the lawsuit to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit was filed by lawyers from Earthjustice, based in San Francisco, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, based in Binghamton; the Natural Resources Defense Council, based in New York; and the Environmental Working Group, based in Washington. The latter two groups relied on the department website for their research and advocacy, the lawsuit said.

Peter Lehner, a lawyer for Earthjustice, said the pages being purged were crucial for farmers facing risks linked to climate change, including heat waves, droughts, floods, extreme weather and wildfires. The websites had contained information about how to mitigate dangers and adopt new agricultural techniques and strategies. Long-term weather data and trends are valuable in the agriculture industry for planning, research and business strategy.

“You can purge a website of the words climate change, but that doesn’t mean climate change goes away,” Mr. Lehner said…(More)”.

Rethinking the Measurement of Resilience for
Food and Nutrition Security

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by John M. Ulimwengu: “This paper presents a novel framework for assessing resilience in food systems, focusing on three dynamic metrics: return time, magnitude of deviation, and recovery rate. Traditional resilience measures have often relied on static and composite indicators, creating gaps in understanding the complex responses of food systems to shocks. This framework addresses these gaps, providing a more nuanced assessment of resilience in agrifood sectors. It highlights how integrating dynamic metrics enables policymakers to design tailored, sector-specific interventions that enhance resilience. Recognizing the data intensity required for these metrics, the paper indicates how emerging satellite imagery and advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) can make data collection both high-frequency and location-specific, at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. These technologies facilitate a scalable approach to resilience measurement, enhancing the accuracy, timeliness, and accessibility of resilience data. The paper concludes with recommendations for refining resilience tools and adapting policy frameworks to better respond to the increasing challenges faced by food systems across the world…(More)”.

Inside the New Nonprofit AI Initiatives Seeking to Aid Teachers and Farmers in Rural Africa

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Andrew R. Chow: “Over the past year, rural farmers in Malawi have been seeking advice about their crops and animals from a generative AI chatbot. These farmers ask questions in Chichewa, their native tongue, and the app, Ulangizi, responds in kind, using conversational language based on information taken from the government’s agricultural manual. “In the past we could wait for days for agriculture extension workers to come and address whatever problems we had on our farms,” Maron Galeta, a Malawian farmer, told Bloomberg. “Just a touch of a button we have all the information we need.”

The nonprofit behind the app, Opportunity International, hopes to bring similar AI-based solutions to other impoverished communities. In February, Opportunity ran an acceleration incubator for humanitarian workers across the world to pitch AI-based ideas and then develop them alongside mentors from institutions like Microsoft and Amazon. On October 30, Opportunity announced the three winners of this program: free-to-use apps that aim to help African farmers with crop and climate strategy, teachers with lesson planning, and school leaders with administration management. The winners will each receive about $150,000 in funding to pilot the apps in their communities, with the goal of reaching millions of people within two years. 

Greg Nelson, the CTO of Opportunity, hopes that the program will show the power of AI to level playing fields for those who previously faced barriers to accessing knowledge and expertise. “Since the mobile phone, this is the biggest democratizing change that we have seen in our lifetime,” he says…(More)”.

The paradox of climate data in West Africa: growing urgency coupled with diminishing accessibility

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cirad: “In 2022, a prolonged drought devastated maize crops in northern Burkina Faso, leaving two million people without sufficient food resources. This dramatic situation could have been better anticipated and its impacts could have been mitigated with the collection and equitable sharing of specific data: that of agrometeorology, the science that studies the effects of meteorological, climatological and hydrological factors on crops.

Although it is too late to prevent the 2022 drought, protecting people from future droughts remains an urgent priority, especially in Africa, a continent where climate change poses a serious threat to rainfed agriculture, its main agricultural and economic activity.

To anticipate these climate risks, it is essential to have access to reliable meteorological data, which is crucial for ensuring sustainable and resilient agricultural practices. Yet in West Africa, the accessibility and reliability of this data are increasingly threatened and face unprecedented diplomatic, economic and security challenges…(More)”.

The future of agricultural data-sharing policy in Europe: stakeholder insights on the EU Code of Conduct

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Mark Ryan, Can Atik, Kelly Rijswijk, Marc-Jeroen Bogaardt, Eva Maes & Ella Deroo: “n 2018, the EU Code of Conduct of Agricultural Data Sharing by Contractual Agreement (EUCC) was published. This voluntary initiative is considered a basis for rights and responsibilities for data sharing in the agri-food sector, with a specific farmer orientation. While the involved industry associations agreed on its content, there are limited insights into how and to what extent the EUCC has been received and implemented within the sector. In 2024, the Data Act was introduced, a horizontal legal framework that aims to enforce specific legal requirements for data sharing across sectors. Yet, it remains to be seen if it will be the ultimate solution for the agricultural sector, as some significant agricultural data access issues remain. It is thus essential to determine if the EUCC may still play a significant role to address sector-specific issues in line with the horizontal rules of the Data Act. During six workshops across Europe with 89 stakeholders, we identified how the EUCC has been (1) received by stakeholders, (2) implemented, and (3) its future use (particularly in response to the Data Act). Based on the workshop results and continued engagements with researchers and stakeholders, we conclude that the EUCC is still an important document for the agricultural sector but should be updated in response to the content of the Data Act. Hence we propose the following improvements to the EUCC: 1. Provide clear, practical examples for applying the EUCC combined with the Data Act; 2. Generate model contractual terms based on the EUCC provisions; 3. Clarify GDPR-centric concepts like anonymisation and pseudonymisation in the agricultural data-sharing setting; 4. Develop a functional enforcement and implementation framework; and 5. Play a role in increasing interoperability and trust among stakeholders…(More)”

How Open-Source Software Empowers Nonprofits And The Global Communities They Serve

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Steve Francis: “One particular area where this challenge is evident is climate. Thousands of nonprofits strive to address the effects of a changing climate and its impact on communities worldwide. Headlines often go to big organizations doing high-profile work (planting trees, for instance) in well-known places. Money goes to large-scale commercial agriculture or new technologies — because that’s where profits are most easily made. But thousands of other communities of small farmers that aren’t as visible or profitable need help too. These communities come together to tackle a number of interrelated problems: climate, soil health and productivity, biodiversity and human health and welfare. They envision a more sustainable future.

The reality is that software is crafted to meet market needs, but these communities don’t represent a profitable market. Every major industry has its own software applications and a network of consultants to tune that software for optimal performance. A farm cooperative in less developed parts of the world seeking to maximize value for sustainably harvested produce faces very different challenges than do any of these business users. Often they need to collect and manipulate data in the field, on whatever mobile device they have, with little or no connectivity. Modern software systems are rarely designed to operate in such an environment; they assume the latest devices and continuous connectivity…(More)”.

This Chatbot Democratizes Data to Empower India’s Farmers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Abha Malpani Naismith: “…The lack of access to market price information and reliance on intermediaries to sell on their behalf leaves farmers vulnerable to price exploitation and uncertain returns on their investments.

To solve this, Gramhal is building a data cooperative in India where farmers contribute their information to a data ecosystem, which all farmers can leverage for better informed decision-making…

The social enterprise started the project to democratize data first by using the Indian government’s collected data sets from markets and crops across the country. It then built a chatbot (called Bolbhav) and plugged in that data. Soon about 300,000 farmers were accessing this data set via the chatbot on their mobile phones. 

“We spent no money on marketing — this was all just from word of mouth!” Kaleem said. 

gramhal chatbot provides market data for small farmers in India
Gramhal’s Bolbhav chatbot provides farmers with market data so they know how to fairly price their crops. 

However, Gramhal started getting feedback from farmers that the chatbot was giving them prices three days old and what they wanted was real-time, reliable data. “That is when we realized that we need to work with the power of community and think about a societal network framework where every farmer who is selling can contribute to the data and have access to it,” Kaleem explained. “We needed to find a way where the farmer can send price information about what they are selling by uploading their receipts, and we can aggregate that data across markets and share it with them.”

The solution was an upgraded version of the chatbot called Bolbhav Plus, which Gramhal launched in April 2023…(More)”

When Farmland Becomes the Front Line, Satellite Data and Analysis Can Fight Hunger

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Inbal Becker-Reshef and Mary Mitkish: “When a shock to the global food system occurs—such as during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022—collecting the usual ground-based data is all but impossible. The Russia–Ukraine war has turned farmland into the front lines of a war zone. In this situation, it is unreasonable to expect civilians to walk onto fields riddled with land mines and damaged by craters to collect information on what has been planted, where it was planted, and if it could be harvested. The inherent danger of ground-based data collection, especially in occupied territories of the conflict, has demanded a different way to assess planted and harvested areas and forecast crop production.

Satellite-based information can provide this evidence quickly and reliably. At NASA Harvest, NASA’s Global Food Security and Agriculture Consortium, one of our main aims is to use satellite-based information to fill gaps in the agriculture information ecosystem. Since the start of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, we have been using satellite imagery to estimate the impact of the war on Ukraine’s agricultural lands at the request of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine. Our work demonstrates how effective this approach can be for delivering critical and timely insights for decisionmakers.

Prior to the war, Ukraine accounted for over 10% of the world’s wheat, corn, and barley trade and was the number one sunflower oil exporter, accounting for close to 50% of the global market. In other words, food produced in Ukraine is critical for its national economy, for global trade, and for feeding millions across the globe…(More)”.