Global and cross-sector collaboration on open data for agriculture and nutrition

Making open data work for agriculture and nutrition requires a shared agenda to increase the supply, quality, and interoperability of data, alongside action to build capacity for the use of data.

The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative includes partners from across the globe, States, Private Companies, Civil Society, united by the common belief that sharing agriculture and nutrition data makes us stronger, more innovative and as a result, in a better position to address the emerging food security challenge while developing wealth through the stimulation of global ag markets. The key pillars of the organisation are private and public world leaders, clear supporters of knowledge and innovation.

The GODAN network can act as a convener, bringing to Governments solutions, ideas, expertise around the world from other governments on how to solve common problems through the use of open data. For example: ensure public access to weather data, trade data, geographic data, soil and water data, registries of agricultural inputs - to use open data to monitor and enhance the implementation of key food security, agriculture and nutrition plans, and the full achievement of the SDGs.

GODAN can introduce relevant Government officials to success stories, lessons learned, interoperability, through access, dissemination, licensing - with a special focus on increasing agricultural and nutrition productivity. Currently there are 5,135 agriculture datasets and 20 nutrition datasets available on Canada’s Open Data Portal [1] [2]. We would like to help advocate for and facilitate the release of many more datasets of general public interest in these areas.

GODAN is in a unique position, acting as the connection between the ultimate data users - the population - those who make it possible developing applications that make use of it to answer needs from the public - the private sector - and Governments, source of the data and in turn, of additional satisfaction from the populations.

In other words, through open data, GODAN helps Governments and civil society build up a true partnership for development.

For more information, please contact us at enquiries@godan.info

Sources:
[1] http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset?q=agriculture
[2] http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset?q=nutrition&sort=metadata_modified