Youba Sokona will participate to Tech For Food second edition: technologies to fight against hunger in the world, which
will take place in a month at the International Agricultural Show in Paris. He will make us the honour of pronouncing a
speech as the Sahel and Sahara’s Observatory executive secretary (OSS), an international organism working in
desertification prevention. To promote a sustainable agricultural development in the South, Tech For Food’s second
edition will get onto the central contribution of new technologies to natural resources management. Initiated by TV Agri,
renowned partners rapidly joined up the symposium, from which the French National Space Centre (CNES), the
Foundation for agriculture and the rural world (FARM) and the Research Institute for Development (IRD).
Preventing desertification thanks to satellites and the Internet
As they rationalise human and financial resources, new technologies revolutionise natural resources management. For
instance, as they can localise livestock and control vegetation evolution, satellites prevent excessive pasture, the first
human cause of desertification.
Furthermore, capable of identifying farming areas, satellites also enable to estimate a
national water demand to enhance irrigation management. Youba Sokona will introduce the OSS’s activities that uses
both spatial technologies and the internet to form a co-ordinated and efficient objectives are to prevent soil degradation
and adapt human activities to it. The OSS conduct its projects in collaboration with the IRD and the CIRAD (International
Agronomic Research Cooperation Centre for Development) and has always been supported by the CNES both
materially and as an institutional bridge.
Technologies to enhance agricultural profits in the South
Agriculture being the first income in developing countries, Tech For Food 2008 will host a working session on virtual
agricultural trading platforms which already showed they could raise farmers profits.
Experts from the whole world will
think on the conception of these platforms: which strategic partnerships? Which information to broadcast? What
problems do they meet in the field? The answers to these questions will be returned in the afternoon to all the
symposium participants and will account for guidelines to any new project of the kind.
Registration is available online until February 15th
Online Registration and detailed programme: www.techforfood.com
Registration is free and subject to availability.
To request high definition photos or an interview of Jean-Paul Hébrard, Tech For Food forum’s initiator, please contact Fréderic Sov.
