Background Paper: Icts for Agricultural Development. an Exercise in Interdisciplinarity

This paper focuses on a concrete, non-mainstream example of bringing ICTs to rural agricultural areas. In elaborating on this example of ‘ICT for Development’ (ICT4D), it tries to provide insights into the integration of the natural sciences, the technical communication sciences and the social sciences in a project called: Open Source Simple Computer for Agriculture in Rural Areas (OSCAR). The objective of the OSCAR project is to initiate cooperation between European and South Asian Institutions with the view to learn about appropriate applications of ICTs in rural agricultural areas. More specific the project is envisioned to the development of a decision making tool for weed identification and control that will address the issue of the declining agricultural productivity in South Asia. In the end, the long-term objective is to contribute to the betterment of rice and wheat productivity in the Indo-Gangetic Plains by improving decision-making capacities in crop management with an emphasis on weed management and control. The Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) form an important region for South Asia as it provides the natural resources for rice-wheat cropping systems. The partners in OSCAR are: Centre Coopération Internationale Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) from France, French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) from India, Rice-Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains (RWC) from India, and Wageningen University (WU) from The Netherlands. The project is co-funded by the European Commission under the ASIA@IT&C programme.