DA to pioneer use of Nokia's data gathering solution

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Agriculture (DA), along with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-Philippines), will pioneer the use of the data gathering solution of mobile phone giant Nokia to enable collection and sharing of critical data anytime and anywhere in the Philippines.

“The applications are practically boundless – from tracking regional temperatures to comparing provincial fish yields. Eventually we wish to apply the technology to health, agriculture, education, emergency services, census and so forth,” said Greg Elphinston, director of the corporate social investment department of the Finnish firm.

“Nokia E71 mobile phones with the Nokia Data Gathering solution will be deployed in 100 pre-identified areas. Our ambition is to service all 1,500 Philippine municipalities within a decade,” he pointed out.

The Nokia Data Gathering solution and its initial outputs will be presented at a six-country Coral Triangle conference in Manila this September.

Nokia, DA and WWF officials are hoping that the technology will be adopted soon by other government agencies and private organizations.

In Manaus, Brazil, the software had greatly helped the Brazilian Ministry of Health to fight dengue fever.

The Nokia Data Gathering solution allowed Brazilian provinces to craft effective response strategies using data that established both the epidemic’s extent and the responses to treatment.

“If it can be used to avert outbreaks, it can also be used to avert a looming food crisis brought about by climate change,”said WWF-Philippines CEO Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan.

Rice is the staple food in the Philippines, where over four million hectares are devoted to cultivation. But over-population, droughts, storms, wasteful processing methods plus the uneven cost of seeds and fertilizer have hurt local production, forcing the government to import a part of the nation’s rice needs.

“We are trying to develop realistic solutions to this problem,” Agriculture Secretary Bernie Fondevilla said. “However, the current wave of climate change impacts – from massive droughts spawned by the El Niño phenomenon to more destructive typhoons – has greatly hampered our efforts.”

“The Nokia Data Gathering solution will augment and eventually replace our data-gathering systems so we can concentrate on crafting programs and solutions to further boost farm yields despite the erratic weather patterns,” he noted.

Regularly updated market supply-and-demand data will lead to the swift analysis of basic agricultural commodities such as rice, coconut, meat and vegetables.

“The Philippines is an archipelago with over 1,500 municipalities, most of which are separated by water,” Fondevilla said. “Tracking each area’s grain and water distribution, monitoring productivity and market prices – all in real-time – pose a huge logistical challenge to the DA,” he added.

“The lack of fresh data often hampers the decisions and policies we so badly need,” he stressed.