Tech for Food

12 January 2007

Among its many goals, the United Nations aims to reduce by half the proportion of the world’s population suffering from hunger between 1990 and 2015.

Representatives of NGOs, research programmes, the United Nations, experts and local coordinators will be coming together to share their experience and know-how. The forum intends to give the world’s southern nations an opportunity to voice their needs and to look at initiatives already in place around the globe with a view to sowing the seeds for cooperative projects.

CNES is already working with stakeholders in the farming sector. For example, the agency’s satellites SPOT and Meteosat are assisting the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in mitigating locust swarms in the Sahel region of Africa.

Desert locusts are not the only insects satellites have in their sights. Satellites are also being used to map risk zones where mosquitoes bearing the Rift Valley fever virus, which infects livestock, are likely to proliferate. Other applications include an initiative in Mali using satellite imagery and field data to help Tuareg and Fulani pastoralists to guide their flocks toward pastures.

The Tech for Food forum hopes to speed take-up of the many opportunities—for monitoring, hazard mitigation and resource management—afforded by technological innovations to fuel agricultural development.

Entrance to the forum is free and open to allcomers. Tickets will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis. Those wishing to attend must register before 29 January.

^{1 Fondation pour l’Agriculture et la Ruralité dans le Monde
The FARM foundation was set up by French and European firms and professionals to promote farming and agri-food business in developing countries.}

Keeping an eye on epidemics from space
^{News - 5 December 2006}

High tech working to feed populations
^{News - 30 March 2006}