1. Project Summary
Project Title: ICTs Serve for Agriculture and Rural Development in a Prototype County

Funding Organization: IDRC (PanAsia R&D Grant from PanAsia Network)

Applicant: Dr. Zuorui Shen of China Agriculture University

Status: The project was initiated in March of year 2003. It was designed as a one-year project, which would be completed at the end of year 2003. The preparation work was on selecting the proper county to serve as the example on how the information technology and communication technology (ICTs) may help on farming community to achieve the additional economic growth. The selecting criteria were set to accomplish the goal. The chosen county must have obvious advantages on geography that can be correlated to great demonstration effect. Meantime, it must have abundant information sources and sufficient communication and Internet hardware, which would be the foundation for implementing the project. The local farming community must be capable of accepting the new technology and willing to try the different approaches on information transformation. At the same token, the local government must encourage the application on information technology that is used in agriculture and farming.

Based on the conditions, we have selected Kunshan as the prototype county to implement the project, in replacement of Qingdao or Rizhao (Shandong province) as potential options in original plan of the project. And the first half-year period was expanded to eight months, because the SARS epidemic in China, especially in Beijing, from May and June 2003 for a two-month vacation during which no one could be permitted to travel freely for controlling spread of the disease.

2. Implementation

We started to work with the local government in early March and we had gained the support from the Kunshan Municipal Information Office, Kunshan Agriculture Bureau, Kunshan Science and Technology Bureau, Kunshan National Agriculture Demonstration Park and Kunshan Direction Development Corporation. We had held many meetings with the above organizations and decided on the implementation methods.

We have designed work schedule and implementation process to assure the quality on completion of the work. We also had set the deadline to suit the project date. However, not everything went as we had planned.

The following process were pre-determined during the early planning phase. The completed work is listed in next section.

1. On-site investigation and negotiation with local government for project feasibility;
2. Discussion on project implementation plan and timetable;
3. Coordination with local cooperation organizations;
4. Construction on agriculture information service platform;
5. Selection on demonstration townships, villages, and farmers;
6. Technological design on database and software program;
7. Research on TV-Web platform and completion on testing and demonstration versions;
8. Completion on agriculture information collection, distribution and service systems;
9. Construction on Kunshan agriculture e-commerce platform;
10. Service of agriculture information to designated farming community;
11. Monitoring on the effect of provided information on decision making process and economic return;
12. Application on connection for message via mobile phone system;
13. Completion on mobile phone message service system and platform.

We had planned to complete all the work by the end of this year. And the initial work had progressed smoothly as we planned. We had a team of four starting work with the local government and associated organizations in early March. Unfortunately, the SARS epidemic broke out in mid April and lasted two more months. The SARS epidemic greatly affected our progress. All our local research team members were stranded in Kunshan National Agriculture Demonstration Park and none could move even within the premises of Kunshan municipality, since all members were from Beijing. Beijing, where the China Agriculture University is located, was considered as one of the infested centers in China and every person who went in and out of Beijing had to be quarantined for at least fourteen days. So our team was restricted in the park and the only communication channels were telephone and Internet. Many proposed work were delayed indefinitely. By the end of June, the China Agriculture University called all faculty, staff and students who were assigned out of Beijing during the spring returning to campus for another two weeks of quarantine. Then the university resumed the normal daily work, so did the country. We lost valuable time as well as the momentum for our project. All we had done were mostly on the technological aspect for the project. Please see the next section on the completed work.

3. Completed Work

We have completed some work and are still making progress towards the final goal of the project.

1. Gained full understanding on Kunshan agriculture production and its future development;
2. Researched the needs for agriculture information and their formats;
3. Identified the current local agriculture information structure and its utilization situation;
4. Visited all agriculture related government bureaus for administrative purpose;
5. Researched the current existed local agriculture web sites and its modes of operation;
6. Discussed the possibility on consolidation of their sites into our system;
7. Coordinated the Morning Glory Digital Technology Company (a subsidiary of Kunshan Direction Development Corporation) on construction of www.ChinaAg.com web site.
8. Assisted Morning Glory on building the TVWeb for information exchange platform;
9. Selected the demonstration townships and villages;
10. Completed the implementation procedure for the local government.

Many work were done with the capital and manpower supports from cooperation companies. So far, a solid foundation has been laid. We need to move forward for the completion.

4. Future Plan

We would like to extend the project timetable into next year (2004) so we may complete the project with satisfactory results. We would suggest that the project is allowed to continue at least until the end of June 2004 for the same achievable result as proposed at the end of this year.

We have picked up where we have left since September. We are still working with the local government for more support. There are still many work need to be done in order to have a good results for the project.

We will concentrate our effort in the following areas in the next few months:

1. Municipal government support;
2. Township and village information platform;
3. Farming community information exchange platform;
4. TV-Web application;
5. www.ChinaAg.com promotion;
6. Mobile phone message broadcast system;
7. Follow-up on economic return;
8. Locate another under-developed partner county.

We are combined the work forces from IPMist Laboratory in China Agriculture University, Morning Glory Digital Technology Company and Kunshan Direction Development Corporation to push forward the progress of the project. We hope for a six-month extension for the first phase to report for the final result on the project.

Read the Abstract of Project
Read the Project Proposal