 Hello everybody and welcome to RAIL's second Agri-Tech Talk, an initiative of the regional office for Europe and Central Asia, whereby each month we invite a different guest to talk with us and to get us inspired and get us to think tech when designing and implementing our projects and programs in less than 20 minutes. My name is Daniela Vigian-Antonio and I am the team leader for a digital agriculture and today's host. Today we really have a special guest. He is Dejan Jakunjelec, Pao's CIO and director of the Informatics Division. Dejan, welcome. Thank you very much and happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Hello to you and to all the colleagues who are on the call. Thanks to you Dejan, but actually this session is special, not because we have the honor to have you here, but because we're not simply going to ask you some questions. We are going to ask you some tough questions or rather thought-provoking ones. Still very important questions on our role and the value that we, that Fao, can bring to truly make a positive impact through digitalization. So I have four questions ready for you. Actually all these questions are questions or statements that at some point I've got post myself. So now you'll help me answer them in front of many participants joining us today. So we'll start with these questions. We'll launch a timer to help us stay within time, but in the last minutes we will take a few questions from our audience. So let me encourage everyone to use the chat function and start typing the questions that you always wanted to ask, but never dared. So timer will start running now. Dejan, are you ready? Ready. Great. So first question and again something I actually often hear is that digital solutions simply do not work for smallholder farmers, that the reality of rural people in our region is different from what is written in reports. So Dejan, how would you reply to this? Can digitalization really work for smallholder farmers? Wow, that's a really excellent question. I would say yes and no, more yes, but I would say that the solution is not to basically throw money and technology into the field, let's say. That doesn't work. I think it's very important to first understand that the needs of the farmers and smallholder farmers in particular is very different everywhere. So you can have even within the same country farmer on the let's say north needing a help with the farming, but then the south it could be more around the fisheries. So it's a very different context. So I don't think it's good to actually invest without adopting the solutions to the actual needs of the farmers. So circumstances are definitely different. Success factor here would be to adapt to the needs. So really to target the digital efforts. And I think we have some good examples of this in FAO, if maybe not in your region that I can quote now, but I remember now Senegal, Rwanda, Jordan, Tanzania. We had a very, let's say intimate engagement with the local communities and the farmers, and that brought us success. So does it work? Yes. Does it work by default? No. It needs to be adapted. So the solutions digital needs to be adapted to the local needs and work to the farmers. We shouldn't forget that also digitalization works for smallholder farmers also on the stakeholder level. So if we enable the ministries. So we need to also add the aspect of having a good intervention and help to the ministry so they can also therefore make help to the smallholder farmers. I see time is running out. I'm looking forward to the next question as well. Thanks a lot, Dejan. So indeed, it can work, but we need to adapt the solution to the needs. And what I would add here perhaps is that it's about also the level of technology. And we do not necessarily have to think of very high tech solutions. And we can see clearly cases in our region as well where digitalization is already working for farmers. They are meeting online in Facebook groups via telegram apps and using digitalization simple tools to network, share knowledge and advice. But let's go to next question. So next question is about is really a provoking statement on our role and impact. Digital agriculture did not uphold its premises. It's just a password, a trend, and development organizations have dedicated an impressive amount of energy and resources to this with very little impact in developing countries. Dejan, what do you think? Is that true? Have we really dedicated too much energy and resources without demonstrated impact? Is this really just a temporary trend? Yeah, I would not think that. Well, I don't know how much resources globally was dedicated also outside of our, but I would not say it's a temporary trend. I think what we are seeing now in the last few years, I think it's hard to say that the digital transformation is actually transforming itself. And I think we are more definitely more on target on the digital for impact. And at least in FAO, we very much focus on digital for impact with the keyword impact. And I think the COVID was a good catalyst, but we have other crises now coming where we can see the value of digital and actually how we cannot move or accelerate transformation without digital. So I think we moved from purely digitalizing, piloting with certain level of experimentation. So of course, with experimentation, certain level of experiments will fail as well. But we now see that the new tools actually do make impact. And we have, I think in FAO, we have fantastic examples. If you look at even on our COVID-19 response page, a lot of digital tools to help stakeholders. And behind the scenes, if we take, for example, the DSPs and the hand-in-hand platform, geospatial platforms, they're actually used to help with tools for farmers in hand. So there is a direct correlation now and we can see the impact. So I would say that it's not the buzzword. I think it's this, the transformation is here to stay. And I think we need to simply target it better. I think maybe related to question number one as well, that we ensure that the impact happens as well. Thanks a lot, Dejan. So digital transformation is transforming itself. It has to be channeled to make impact very interesting. So let me now pose you next question that is on the possible side effects then that digitalization can bring. And it is based on the assumption that by over relying on digital technologies, farmers could risk losing expertise and skills, and even the touching from nature, from the environment. So what do you think? Can technology really pose the risks of farmers over relying on them, so to lose expertise and skills? That's a very interesting aspect. I have to say maybe, maybe some farmers, but perhaps not. The way I see is technology. I think technology gives a bit, is actually the other way around in my mind, because you may have farmers who have a lot of knowledge, but that's all they have it isolated with them in a way, right? So they need to transmit this knowledge. How do we transmit this knowledge to other farmers? So I think that we are in this way enabling, I think in technology enables us to actually share the knowledge and make it available in the fingertips, let's say, and also build upon on it. I think different aspect maybe we can bring into this discussion is what would be the farmers of the future and how will the farmers of the future have the knowledge to get into farming, to get them interested, to say, well, you can do it and to give them the advisory. In my mind, if we were to compare the future farmers and the current farmers, I think the difference would be the farmer who is using digital also to gather knowledge and to operate the farm small or big versus farmer who doesn't. I think the farmer who does will have definitely an advantage. So I don't think the farmer will go away and be fully automatized, but the difference, the key difference would be with or without using the technology. We've seen in fact, we have many examples where we enabled farmer to farmer communication sharing knowledge. So maybe that would be that would be an interesting example how in fact, we enable knowledge to be shared. And then maybe another benefit I can see is that we can bring into the mix more scientific and new elements to farming. So maybe something was done for 100 years the same way, but maybe today we found out something else how we can improve. So I don't think we should discount that opportunity as well. So I see a strong role. So I see here, the digital farmer that uses technology to help him actually access more knowledge, not to reduce the experience and the skills, but also very important to transmit the knowledge that he acquires to other farmers, the farmer to farmer digital communication as an advantage as a level that can be further explored. Thanks a lot Dejan. So I have the last question. And this is again, something on FAO's role and something I heard myself, but I must be honest, something I'm hearing less and less often. So the statement goes this way. Fall is a slow and bureaucratic organization. We should not focus on digital because it's just not our strength. So Dejan, what do you think? Should we just stop focusing on digital because we are slow and bureaucratic? And should we just keep doing only what we are used to do? Yeah, I think definitely time changed. And if you look in the last, what, three years maybe, three and a half, four years, I think time changed dramatically in terms of FAO. I think I see FAO now as a very dynamic in terms of digital. To give one example, the hand in hand initiative, one of the flag initiatives is basically underpinned by a geospatial platform. Maybe colleagues don't know, we rolled it out in two months. I don't know any other organization who can roll out such platform in two months. We have now more than 30 countries on the platform. And just recently during the Science and Innovation Week, we also had a, in a way, matchmaking exercise using the platform to target interventions and attract funding. So we see results, we see how fast we can move. Also, if you look at, for example, in a matter of day or so, we produced a tool to track, for example, fertilizers, a major tool now given the situation. So I think in terms of digital, I see us, we feel the strong sense of urgency and motivation to do more, not less, but more. And I see a fantastic role for FAO moving forward. I think the future of FAO will be the digital FAO. And I see us going strongly and in fact, if I think about your team and what you're doing with your team, that's it, you know, supporting actually the digital, right, the digital agriculture and our digital for impact efforts. So my answer would be times are different, times are different. I think the normative may still kind of follow the same, you know, negotiations. But for us, in terms of digital, we move, we move fast. Thanks a lot, Bijan. And indeed, you know, even just, you know, the fact that this team is here is a signal that things are changing and are changing very quickly. All right, so if I have to think of the FAO I joined in 2018 and how much we have accomplished really, and as you said, impact that can be demonstrated. So time is up now, which means that it's time for questions. So let me ask my colleagues, Agustina, that has been monitoring the chat throughout this time, which interesting questions our colleagues have for Dejan. Yeah, super. Thank you so much, Daniela. Thank you, Dejan, for this very interesting session. So first question, because I think that in the chat, it has triggered some interest. Engaging in digitalization of the agricultural sector is something that entails engaging with data. We know that we include the farthest data. And the question is, is someone ready to handle appropriately the farmer's data and personal data? Yeah, that's an excellent question. And I think for, for many years to come, I think the use of data, data privacy, artificial intelligence, ethical use of artificial intelligence will be one of the dominant topics around digital agriculture. When it comes to FAO in particular, I'm not sure if colleagues are aware, we now have a data privacy policy adopted. There is also, we are currently establishing a data protection unit. So enormous focus on data, data privacy, and making sure that everything is done correctly. We also signed the agreement to actually around ethical use of AI within the organization, but also us influencing others how they use the data. And so, and we have a data governance group also. So all the elements on handling these kind of questions within FAO are there. In practical terms, I want to say that we actually tried not to handle farmer's data. There is no maybe need for FAO to have a particular data about the farmer. We operate on anonymized data. So far, if you see systems like geospatial system, can you insist they handle only public data? So we combine a lot of public data to have the insights. And that works well. I think our role is to advise governments. So we have a lot of projects when we advise governments on how to implement a solution for the farmers. So you can imagine it as a citizen services that have data for the farmers. And this is a complex area because I can give you one, just to give you an idea, we have about 100 and more than 150 different GDPRs globally. So each country has their own set of rules on what to do with private data. So of course, what is the role of FAO? The FAO will maybe provide a journey on how to get to a digital agriculture, but basically the government will decide on the privacy levels of the data. So this is a big topic. I think I can exhaust time just speaking about this, but maybe I stop here and if there is anything we can follow up later. Let's see if there are other questions. If not, I can come back to this as well. There are all the questions because you're bringing very interesting elements here. So the next question will be, are there ways that you see for FAO to be working with all the donors on the digitalization agenda to better coordinate the efforts that we're doing for a better impact? Yeah. So for us, one of the challenging things is to engage with the private sector, because we need to be neutral. So what we are doing is specifically for digital aspects. We recently also joined the Digital Public Goods Alliance. So we believe very strongly that the solutions we provide should be a digital public good. So all the tools I spoke about, they're actually free and they're provided, let's say by FAO and they follow the digital public goods principles. When it comes to enabling, I think FAO can have a strong role to enable maybe to pave the way for other entities to in the country to actually act and enhance impact. We work very closely with different partners. So we have, for example, Gates Foundation, we have others who we work with on different elements of digital agriculture. So maybe that's the way to engage. Another one was just recently done with enabling, for example, countries to attract funding for interventions by exposing where these interventions could be. So this is what happened during the Science and Innovation Forum where we exposed possible interventions in 23 countries and we attract different partners. It could be governments but also private sector. So that was a really good successful way to, or FAO, to enable advancement without actually pushing for a particular private sector company. Dejan, thank you so much. Data, partners, solutions impact. It is so exciting to hear of all these efforts going on. It was a pleasure to have you here today and go through these intriguing yet important topics together. And I see the conversations sparked really a lot of the interest from our colleagues. I can see there are still questions that haven't been answered, but perhaps we can do this at a later stage.