2009 Activities

OCTOBER

Philip Pardey presents at The Crawford Fund Annual International Conference. He also briefs The Australian Council of Deans of Agriculture (ACDA) meeting at University House, Australian National University (ANU) on the state of agricultural R&D investments worldwide and reviews methods for evaluating and prioritizing agricultural research. Philip continues discussions with ACIAR , AusAID and CSIRO regarding possible HarvestChoice engagement and discusses Phase II plans with Prabhu Pingali, Deputy Director, Global Development Programs, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Michael Taylor, Chairman, Murray-Darling Basin Authority .

HarvestChoice team meets to discuss server status and GeoNetwork reconfigurations with Jubal Harpster, Spatial Development International , and web site redesign (Drupal 6, web support, solr and biblio features) with Drew Gorton, Gorton Studios at the Department of Applied Economics , University of Minnesota.

Participants: Jason Beddow, Laura Bipes, Chad Fennell, Drew Gorton, Michelle Hallaway, Jubal Harpster, Louise Letnes, Philip Pardey, Kate Sebastian and Stanley Wood.

Philip Pardey and Stanley Wood travel to Monsanto headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri to explore prospective Monsanto engagement with Phase II of the HarvestChoice Initiative. They meet with Michael Doane, Kevin Eblen, Eric Sachs, Elizabeth Vancil, Blaen Abraham and Jerry Steiner.

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SEPTEMBER

Philip Pardey presents an overview of the HarvestChoice project at the Agricultural Economics Reference Organization (AERO) Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Philip Pardey participates in a Farm Foundation and Global Harvest Initiative Productivity Measurement Workshop at the offices of Fleishman Hillard, Washington, DC. The Global Harvest Initiative is a consortium founded by agribusiness interests Archer Daniels Midland Company, DuPont, John Deere and Monsanto Company.

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AUGUST

Philip Pardey discusses potential HarvestChoice Phase II collaboration with Peter Baxter, acting Director-General of AusAID , Nick Austin, Chief Executive Officer of ACIAR , and ACIAR personnel Simon Hearn, John Dixon and Debbie Templeton. He also meets Darren Kriticos, CSIRO-Canberra , and joins a video conference with Brian Keating and Gary Fitt, CSIRO-Brisbane.

Philip Pardey attends the International Association of Agricultural Economists Conference in Beijing. Philip participates in a joint CCAP -CIFAP -IFPRI meeting in Beijing to identify research collaboration prospects regarding projects, funding and resources.

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JULY

Jason Beddow and Stanley Wood participate in the 2009 annual meeting of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association in Milwaukee, WI. Jason and Stanley serve as panel members and present in the AAEA organized symposium New Data Sources for Research on Agricultural Development. Jason also serves as a panel member and presents in the joint AAEA-AARES organized symposium Shifting Patterns of Agricultural Production.

Michelle Hallaway meets in Washington, DC, with Stanley Wood, Jawoo Koo, Liang You, Kate Sebastian, Zhe Guo, Ma. Theresa Tenorio and Williams Ojo to review new update tools and procedures for HarvestChoice website. The team teleconferences with Chad Fennell on the first day.

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JUNE

The HarvestChoice team (Stanley Wood, Jawoo Koo, Liang You, Kate Sebastian, Nanga Kaye, Zhe Guo, Maction Komwa, Ma. Theresa Tenorio,  Williams Ojo) and Mark Rosegrant (division director) meet with Chris Gingerich (Senior Program Officer, Gates Foundation ) at IFPRI to review progress and developments in HarvestChoice, and to plan for the next phase of the project. Prabhu Pingali (Deputy Director, Gates Foundation) joins the group for lunch in IFPRI.

Philip Pardey travels to Johannesburg to collaborate with University of Pretoria and ARC personnel on HarvestChoice Phase I. At ARC, he meets with Aartjan Verschoor and presents “Agricultural Research, Productivity, and Food Commodity Prices.” Frikkie Liebenberg and Christiaan (Ruan) Stander meet with him to review progress on Ruan’s MSc thesis "The Economics of Cultivar Improvement Research in The South African Wheat Industry." Philip meets with Johann Britt, Syngenta-SA , to initiate corn pest survey work in South Africa.

Ken Gorton, GIS server manager, ESRI , works with Zhe Guo on ArcGIS server development. They set up an ArcGIS server installation on the HarvestChoice website, and implement the HarvestChoice AgMarketFinder tool on the server.

Chad Fennell flips the switch allowing HarvestChoice.org to run off the open source content management platform, Drupal .

Ma. Theresa Tenorio attends the CGIAR Poverty Workshop in Washington, DC.

Philip Pardey travels to Basel, Switzerland to discuss possible Syngenta engagement with HarvestChoice Phase II with senior Syngenta personnel, including Marco Ferroni, Executive Director, Syngenta Foundation, Sarah Hull, Head of Public and Government Affairs, and Juan Gonzalez-Valero, Head of Corporate Responsibility. Philip also meets with Stephen Skillman regarding HarvestChoice Phase I pest mapping and related technology evaluation assessments.

Stanley Wood presents at the CGIAR Science Forum 2009 in Wageningen, The Netherlands.

Jonathan Hickman, postdoctoral fellow, Earth Institute , Columbia University, visits IFPRI to work with Jawoo Koo on crop modeling calibration and validation using plot data from the Millenium Village Project .

Stanley Wood, Jawoo Koo, Nanga Kaye and Ma. Theresa Tenorio conduct a teleconference with David Neven, senior development specialist, agribusiness, Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) , to review HarvestChoice data applications for USAID’s West Africa Value Chain studies.  Discussions continued on June 12.

Jason Beddow works with CIMMYT plant pathologist Etienne Duveiller to refine HarvestChoice pest and disease maps and information for several wheat pathogens. In addition, Jason gathered new spatial distribution data from key CIMMYT experts.

Jason Beddow and Philip Pardey review and discuss HarvestChoice work with CIMMYT personnel, Petr Kosina, Etienne Duveiller and Hans-Joachim Braun. Philip also meets with Hans-Joachim Braun, Thomas Payne, Petr Kosina and Jonathan Hellin to discuss potential collaboration on a new wheat varietal survey. Philip presents a seminar “A Review and Rethink of the Productivity Potential of Agriculture and the Role of R&D.”

Stanley Wood holds a teleconference with John Dixon and ACIAR -CSIRO staff, based on a HarvestChoice presentation “Integrating Spatial and Economic Survey Data to Identify Agricultural Potential: On-going Development of a Spatially-disaggregated, Crop Production System Evaluation Platform for Key Food Staple Crops.”

Philip Pardey and Jason Beddow meet with CIAT personnel, Stephen Beebe, Daniel Debouck, Ruben Echeverria, Manabu Ishitani, Joe Tohme and Douglas White to share information on the HarvestChoice project and identify possible collaboration opportunities. Glenn Hyman and César Martinez review progress on cassava pest and disease mapping with them. Philip presents a seminar “A Review and Rethink of the Productivity Potential of Agriculture and the Role of R&D.”

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MAY

Stanley Wood meets with Edie Paul in Washington, DC, to discuss HarvestChoice progress and Phase II plans.

Jawoo Koo visits with Jim Jones, professor of agricultural and biological engineering at University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences , to finalize write-up of scientific papers.

Stanley Wood  meets in Washington, DC, with Bekele Shirefaw, principal scientist and program leader for ICRISAT’s research program on markets, institutions and policies in Eastern and Southern Africa, to discuss collaborative activities with HarvestChoice on legume production systems in Africa.

Stanley Wood  meets in Washington, DC, with Judith Hushagen and Robin Postel, Management Network consultancy group (MANNET) , to review IFPRI projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development Program and assess IFPRI’s experiences in working with the foundation.

Stanley Wood  provides introductory remarks to and moderates a side session at the 17th Commission on Sustainable Development Conference (CSD17) held at the United Nations, New York. The session Food Security: Will the Next Revolution be more Sustainable? was convened by UNEP . The outcome of the panel discussion was included in a submission by Achim Steiner, UNEP Director General, to a convening of Agricultural Ministers attending the conference.

Zhe Guo attends the meeting of the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project in Nairobi, Kenya. Zhe Guo is working with the team to validate and improve the HarvestChoice mapping and characterization of maize production systems for Africa. This collaboration may be extended into joint crop modeling work on the implications of drought tolerant maize adoption on productivity and markets in SSA.

Stanley Wood, Jawoo Koo and Zhe Guo meet with Gary Eilerts, USAID Program Officer managing the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS-Net) Project in Washington, DC, to discuss areas of potential collaboration in the characterization of production systems, croplands, livelihood and welfare mapping and market information. Technical follow up meetings are planned.

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APRIL

Philip Pardey works with IFPRI based HarvestChoice collaborators in Washington, DC, on plans for HarvestChoice website development and follow up actions for the second phase of the HarvestChoice project.

Philip Pardey presents at the joint National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education, and Economics Advisory Board (NAREEE) - Farm Foundation conference, Agricultural Research and Productivity for the Future, at the National Press Club, Washington, DC.

Jeanne Downing of USAID and Ruth Campbell and Hannah Schiff of ACDI/VOCA meet with Stanley Wood, Jawoo Koo, Nanga Kaye and Zhe Guo as follow-up to a request for HarvestChoice support to USAID’s Global Food Security Response in West Africa .

Stanley Wood  participates in the USDA Global Food Security Challenges: Monitoring Earth Resources Summit at the Ronald Reagan International Conference Center in Washington, DC. As a panel member, Stanley presents “Keys to Overcoming Global Food Security Challenges”.

Stanley Wood participates in the Interaction /CRS organized meeting in Washington, DC, to explore NGO and Civil Society Organization engagement with the CGIAR. Stanley presents the HarvestChoice as one potential platform for engagement related to intervention targeting and scaling up/out local knowledge.

Stanley Wood  participates in the symposium on Holistic Innovations in Agriculture Programming organized by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC. The meeting rolled out and invited feedback on CSR’s new agricultural strategy.

Liangzhi You and Stanley Wood participate in the African Green Revolution Workshop II at the World Bank in Washington, DC. The workshop (organized by Donald Larson and Kei Otsuka) is part of an initiative to study the obstacles to and potential for productivity growth in African Agriculture. Stanley and Liangzhi present HarvestChoice’s efforts in integrating household survey and geospatial data to develop evidence-based typologies of smallholder production systems and to improve the targeting of technology and policy intervention interventions.

Philip Pardey participates in a press conference in Berlin, Germany, releasing the Berlin Declaration , an affirmation of the February 2009 Humboldt Forum for Food, Agriculture and Nutrition .

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MARCH

CGIAR CSI meeting at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) , Nairobi, Kenya, sponsored by HarvestChoice, AGCommons , CH2M Hill , ILRI, Bioversity , ESRI , and Google Kenya. Stanley Wood, Jawoo Koo, Zhe Guo, and Ma. Theresa Tenorio organize and convene the CGIAR-Consortium on Spatial Information (CSI) annual meeting in ILRI campus, Nairobi, Kenya. The meeting is held in partnership with the newly launched “Geospatial Technology for Agricultural Development in Africa” program (dubbed AGCommons) funded by the Gates Foundation , and is attended by more than 60 participants from CGIAR centers as well as key technology and development partners. Over100 participants attend at the final day (WhereCamp) of the meeting, mostly Africans from GIS consultants, software developers, Google, Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI), universities, and mobile phone platform companies.

Stanley Wood holds a teleconference with Ruth Campbell, ACDI/VOCA , and Jeanne Downing, USAID , to discuss the use of HarvestChoice data and analysis in USAID value chain work in West Africa.

Jawoo Koo conducts a tutorial "Droppr like it's hot! Google Maps mashups for HarvestChoice data.” Droppr is an interactive drag-and-drop mapping tool developed by Jawoo to work with Google Maps. Jawoo demonstrates how the Droppr tool works and talks about its impact in promoting research data in an interactive and visually-oriented manner.

Philip Pardey travels to Washington, DC, to collaborate with Stanley Wood and Jawoo Koo at IFPRI on the HarvestChoice website and plans for Phase II of HarvestChoice.

Philip presents a paper at the annual NC 1034 meeting at USDA-ERS.

Stanley Wood and Zhe Guo meet with Carmelle Terborgh, Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI) , Washington, DC, to discuss ESRI’s role at the upcoming CGIAR CSI meeting, and to review the CGIAR’s Enterprise License Agreement, as well as the prototype “AgMarketFinder” tool that ESRI is developing for HarvestChoice on a pro bono basis.

Stanley Wood meets with Carrie Stokes, geospatial information technology adviser, USAID , to discuss common spatial data and spatial analysis interests of USAID and HarvestChoice.

Jawoo Koo presents at the Integrated Assessment of Agriculture and Sustainable Development conference in Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands.

Syngenta personnel, Jonathan Shoham, Head of Business Intelligence, Global Business Strategy Group, Surrey Research Park, United Kingdom, and Ray Riley, Head Corn and Soybean Product Development, Golden Valley, Minnesota, meet with Jason Beddow, Brian Buhr, Terry Hurley and Philip Pardey at the University of Minnesota to explore partnership prospects for Phase II of the HarvestChoice initiative.

HarvestChoice retreat at Airlie Conference Center in Warrenton, Virginia, for the team (Stanley Wood, Liangzhi You, Jawoo Koo, Kate Sebastian, Ulrike Wood-Sichra, Zhe Guo, Williams Ojo, Nanga Kaye, Ma. Theresa Tenorio) to work together on strategic planning and deliverables for the HarvestChoice 2009 workplan/outputs.

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FEBRUARY

Stanley Wood has brainstorming meeting with Michael Johnson to explore collaboration  between HarvestChoice and IFPRI’s Development Strategy and Governance (DSG) Division.  This could potentially cover all sub-Saharan Africa, not just West Africa.

Philip Pardey gives a seminar on “A Review and Rethink of the Productivity Potential of Agriculture and the Role of R&D” at IRRI .

Jason Beddow, Robert Sutherst and Philip Pardey visit IRRI to review mapping and associated documentation efforts for rice pests and diseases being led by Serge Savary and Laetitia Willocquet with assistance from Rene Pangga. 

Philip Pardey presents “A Review and Rethink of the Productivity Potential of Agriculture” at a luncheon at Morgans 401 sponsored by the The Centre for the Study of Rural Australia at Marcus Oldham College in Melbourne, Australia.

Jason Beddow joins Robert Sutherst to collaborate on pest and disease mapping work at the University of Queensland . While in Brisbane, Jason meets with representatives of CSIRO (including Neil Macleod and Sukumar Chakraborty) and with representatives of various University units, including the School of Economics, the Ecology Center and others in the School of Biological Sciences.

Stanley Wood is a panelist at the launching of the GlobalSoilMap.net initiative convened by Jeffrey Sachs at Columbia University . Stanley speaks on the potential value of improved soil information for increasing food security in Africa.

Stanley Wood and Philip Pardey hold a teleconference with Gary Fitt and Darren Kriticos to discuss possible collaboration with CSIRO for HarvestChoice Phase II.

Philip Pardey and Jason Beddow travel to Canberra for consultations with ACIAR , CSIRO , AusAID  and GRDC .  Pardey presents “A Review and Rethink of the Productivity Potential of Agriculture and the Role of R&D” at ACIAR and CSIRO.

Jason Beddow and Philip Pardey attend and present papers at the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES) 53rd Annual Conference held in Cairns, Australia.  They visit with Graeme Doole and David Pannell to discuss prospective HarvestChoice collaboration on modeling weed constraints to agricultural productivity.

Stanley Wood meets with Jeanne Downing and Judith Payne of USAID and Hannah Schiff of ACDI/VOCA to discuss HarvestChoice collaboration with USAID’s Global Food Security Response in West Africa .

Philip Pardey participates at the Humboldt Forum for Food, Agriculture and Nutrition (HFFAN) Inaugural Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

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JANUARY

Jawoo Koo presents at the conference Biotechnology in Developing Countries at UC Berkeley, California. The conference addresses the causes of stalling biotechnology adoption and the potential for stress-tolerant traits to improve agriculture in poor countries.

Stanley Wood participates in the project launch and workshop of Africa Soil lnformation Service (AfSIS) at ICRAF . Stanley presented a HarvestChoice project that will collaborate on evaluation of upscaling improved soil management technologies and practices. Stanley also made a presentation on spatial data harmonization and web support for Gates Foundation grantees.

BBC News article

Stanley Wood, Liangzhi You, Jawoo Koo and Zhe Guo meet with Don Larson and Uwe Deichmann from the Development Research Group of The World Bank , to discuss the collaborative work and data sharing between HarvestChoice and The Bank’s study on “An African Green Revolution: Finding ways to boost productivity”.  They meet again on Jaunuary 13.