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Apply: Inspire Challenge 2019

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The application for the 2019 Inspire Challenge is open from 10 April to 17 June 2019

Data is much more than simply information: in expert hands, it is intelligence.

Global agriculture is increasingly driven by data. Advances in computing power, data storage, and data communications over the last 30 years have given rise to powerful tools for helping make farming and food systems more precise, profitable, and adaptive. Newer digital innovations — including machine learning, the expansion of connected sensor technologies, and robotics — promise more dramatic changes in the farming landscape in the near future.

However, digital agriculture worldwide has not realized its full potential. Despite very active promotion from industry, to date, the real rates of adoption of precision agriculture have been slow in most industrialized economies, where market offerings tend to favor large farms or high-value specialty crops.Farmers, and those who serve them, must navigate an array of competing standards for equipment and services. Farm data ownership and, as a result, the best way forward for the free flow of data, remains unclear.

The rapid growth in processing power and global connectivity means we can now quickly collect, share and analyze enormous amounts of data to reveal new ways to reduce hunger and poverty and develop robust responses to climate change, disease, and land degradation challenges.
The CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture serves to provide leadership in organizing open data, convening partners, and demonstrating the power of big data analytics through inspiring projects.

The Challenge Grant

We are challenging partners, universities, and others to use CGIAR data to create innovative pilot projects that will scale. We’re looking for novel approaches that democratize data-driven insights to inform local, national, regional, and global policies and applications in agriculture and food security in real time; helping people–especially smallholder farmers and producers–to lead happier and healthier lives.

Winning teams will receive $100,000 to put their ideas into practice. Teams will have 12 months to implement small-scale proof of concept pilots to demonstrate viability. Successful pilots will be placed on the trajectory to wider-scale implementation, including the possibility of receiving an additional $250,000 of scale-up funding. Successful pilots will also have additional help in finding continued funding and widespread adoption within CGIAR, to ensure that these innovations become a part of how we operate system-wide.

Learn more on CGIAR Website

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