Nicaragua Creates Innovative Agricultural Information System With Open Source

johanneswilm writes "Nicaragua is the second-poorest country of the Americas. It is now also the Latin American country with the most capable web-based information system for agriculture, thanks to open source software. ALBAstryde itself is open source, and it is based on Django and jQuery. It allows the user to play with the data, and its reach is further extended by a net of radio stations which are broadcasting the numbers to remote peasants, who thereby, for the first time ever, get up to date data on prices and general production levels in the country. The implementation for the ministry of agriculture of Nicaragua already contains live data."

Comments

hmmm.

[gandhi_2]

$('plant .coca').harvest('fast');

Re:hmmm.

[Abreu]

Nicaragua's climate is not best suited for coca... Pot would probably be best

North America Ag systems

[inKubus]

It would be an interesting exercise to check out the U.S. systems and review how they could be improved. Especially the market systems. The USDA does a lot of monitoring of various local markets for everything from cattle to hay to everything in between. Conditions at all these markets contribute to the commodities price at the main trading markets in Chicago. If you look at the USDA data though, it's all still old mainframe stuff with tab delimited all caps formatting. The data is all fairly disjointed and it's not possible right now to mine the data unless you want to collect and translate it all into your own data warehouse. These market reports often contain interesting information about why the price is being affected, such as weather conditions, etc. I think the government should do a better job of making this data available to the public. You know the big trading houses have negotiated direct feeds to this data, and I think that gives them unfair advantage in determining market pricing.

Re:North America Ag systems

[BJ_Covert_Action]

...of various local markets for everything from cattle to hay to everything in between....

I didn't realize there was a market for bovine stomachs and intestines....then again I don't really eat at McDonald's....

Re:North America Ag systems

[inKubus]

Everyone determines their own market price, and either you buy or you don't. You are right, big houses do make the largest contribution to the actual pricing, but everyone makes that decision on their own. The small players (consumers), although individually insignificant, together make a huge contribution to the market price. But that usually isn't based on information about the futures market but rather their current economic state. Apples have a price at the grocery store, and what they now cost is what they cost. You have to make the decision at the time you're in the store whether to buy or not. But (and especially for food) this is not a good free market. Consumers should be able to plan when they buy the apples so they will . If you have access to the market information for the next month's apples, and you see that you can get them for half what you could get them for now, you could defer your purchase (if you can) and get more for less. A true free market depends on ALL participants having full access to all the information in the market. Instead, it's largely decided by traders, which means we are subjected to these massive bubbles which are all making a few people a lot of money and its us who suffer. Now, there are fringe benefits to this. In general it smooths out pricing, because the public will constantly over pay which enables higher inventories and that acts as an insurance policy when prices rise (more supply is then dumped). That's fine, I don't care about the public, it's the domination of the market information by a few big guys when there are a lot of people who are interested in investing in this market.

Re:North America Ag systems

[TheLink]

Supermarkets where I am actually sell stuff like liver and gizzards just the way they sell chicken wings, fillets etc.

I think that's why in my country they often have to import stuff to make sausages, nuggets or patties. The fresh "misc" meat has enough value and actually gets sold in significant quantities.

Whereas in more "squeamish" countries, they have to disguise the stuff, or convert them to pet food.

If you eat more of an animal without having to disguise it, it means less wastage and better efficiency. A single animal can feed more people, and there's less spent on hiding the "unsightly" bits.

Should be vry interestng to see how this works out

[KarmaOverDogma]

If small time farmers can prosper using this system in one of the poorer country in Latin America, this could bode very well for fair-trade types of practices and businesses, as well as micro-lenders, all over the world.

Good luck, amigos!

Good Job

[royallthefourth]

So Nicaragua comes out and does something really interesting and in response we subject their 400 mhz K6-2 server to the Slashdot Effect. Whose idea was this? Henry Kissinger?

Re:Good Job

[jedidiah]

Geeks are a scary lot when they hate you.

They're even a scarier lot when they LOVE you.

So...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

How long before Microsoft announces "Microsoft Hinterland ShareCrop Server 2010" to compete?

Vaporware

[mi]

It is now also the Latin American country with the most capable web-based information system for agriculture [...] already contains live data.

Shut up and report back, when agricultural output in the country increases by, at least, 50%...

For benchmark, this source reports: During 1990-2000 the agricultural output grew by a yearly average of 5.7%. In 2001, the agricultural trade surplus was $85.2 million. But that was when the Sandinistas were out of power. They are ruling the country again since 2006, when Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency with 37.99% of the vote.

In 2007 they were afraid of a famine blaming a hurricane. Unless their policies are drastically different now, they aren't going to achieve much good, even if they use Linux for their command-and-control implementation of economy — for the Greater Good (TM).

Re:Vaporware

[hyades1]

Yeah, those hurricanes never do as much damage as those Third World socialist creeps try to claim (cough) Katrina (cough). If they weren't socialists, there wouldn't be a problem.

Re:Vaporware

[Xveers]

But would you expect ANY sort of technological improvement like this to boost output by 50%? Such infrastructure improvements can take years to properly pay off dividends, so we may be waiting for some time before we get real results. That of course will be attributed to other inputs (either because cause/effect cannot be determined, or because it serves a political master better to have something else as the cause).

Re:Vaporware

[mi]

Yeah, those hurricanes never do as much damage as those Third World socialist creeps try to claim (cough) Katrina (cough).

There was no famine in New Orleans. There was a major break down in law and order and other failures of the local government. A Socialist needn't be from "Third World" to be a disaster — the US is hit by hurricanes regularly, but you don't get reports about shots fired at rescue helicopters from low income housing... You can blame Bush all you want, but I think, the mismanagement of the city (and the entire State of Louisiana) by the Democratic party, which ruled there exclusively ever since the Whigs have left the political scene, is too blame... It was a peculiar, but unpleasant city of high crime and racism long before Katrina struck.

If they weren't socialists, there wouldn't be a problem.

Yep, that's true... I invite you to compare, yet again, Katrina striking a Socialist-ruled New Orleans and all other hurricanes striking normal parts of the US. (Heck — there was no famine, nor threat thereof, in Thailand after tsunami either!) I also invite you to compare the riots in a Democratic-(mis)managed Seattle, vs. absence of anything like in the Republican-controlled New York during a Republican Convention of 2004. Or, the massive looting in the Democratic-(mis)managed New York during the power blackout of 1977 vs. the calm of the Republican-managed New York during the power blackout of 2003.

I don't think, you expected this many facts in response to your snide missile... It is good for you, though.

Re:Vaporware

[DavidShor]

With all due respect, I invite you to compare to stop cherry-picking and do an actual comparison of the living standards in states run by democrats vs by republicans. See admittedly partisan http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/red-blue-states-summary.htm , http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2009/09/red_states_have_higher_crime_r.php, and FuckTheSouth.com .

To sum up the data: Per Capita Income in "Blue" states is 20% higher then in Red States and Graduation rates are 5.4% higher. Violent and Property crime are 11.1% and 10.1% higher respectively in states controlled by Republican Legislatures. In terms of taxation, "Blue" States overwhelmingly pay far more in taxes then they receive in federal outlays, with the money going to "Red" states. Interestingly, under pretty much every measure of administrative efficiency, Democratic governments do better then Republican ones, by a sizeable margin.

Brush it off as the price of hedonist sin? 9 out of 10 of the states with the lowest divorce rates are blue states, while all 10 out of 10 of the top 10 states are red states. All of the top 16 states with the highest abortion rates voted for Bush, while 9 out of 10 of the states with the lowest rates voted for Kerry.

Unlike you, I'm not going to be a dick and assume Correlation-->Causation, but for what it's worth, the evidence is on my side, not yours.

Other nitpicks:

1) When my home state, Florida, got hit by Hurricanes in 2004, crop yields fell by 40%. But unlike Nicaragua, we were part of a large country, most of which was not hit by a Hurricane, that was able to carry us through for our eating needs. Nicaragua meanwhile, is roughly the size of Miami-Dade county. When it gets hit by a hurricane, the entire country gets hit. And so without importing food from elsewhere, famine is inevitable. It's a little inexplicable that this didn't occur to you in your analysis.

2) "There was no famine in New Orleans. There was a major break down in law and order and other failures of the local government."

Don't rewrite history. I remember when it took days and days for the government to get *anybody* to the Superdrome as 20,000 people were in dire need of food and water. We spend more on our military then literally every other country combined, but we couldn't air drop food and water onto a large stationary target on our territory? (And don't mention security. Our National Guard manages to run humanitarian efforts in Fallujah under heavy weapon fire). It was a terrible display of incompetence, and voters saw it too, with the disaster triggering a huge structural decrease in Bush's approval ratings.

3) Unless the pre-Katrina government of New Orleans engaged in policies that nationalized the means of production, then calling them "Socialist" makes you look like a dumbass.

Hopefully it works out

[future assassin]

and show that giving poor countries technology so that their people can learn, grow and prosper will work out better then just throwing food and money at them just too keep their miserable, go nowhere lives going.

Give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime.

On the other hand it would be in best interest of big corporation that these poor countries don't move up and prosper as this kills cheap labor.

Re:Hopefully it works out

[0100010001010011]

Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Re:Obligatory...

[hullabalucination]

we will kill you and install a brutal military dictator who will slaughter your people for generations to come.

Citations needed

Here you go:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/867178/posts

Project Cybersyn

[Anonymous Coward]

About boosting output, have a look at what Chile did with Project Cybersyn during the Allende reign.

Of course, when the CIA-backed coup took place (Project FUBELT/Track II, the first thing the USA-installed puppet dictator Pinochet did was to dismantle the project.

The Cybersyn project itself was not a reason for the coup. It was collateral damage. But having a more efficient way of governing and routing around damage such as outside-sponsosred strikes in this little leftist country was obviously anti-business, and therefore anti-USA.

A note from the 2009 reconstruction of Cybersyn:

Cybernet was a technology at hand that helped the government to respond to a damaging strike of retailers and truck owners. At the time it dawned that CyberNet could be a tool to increase their capabilities for decision making; with it their decisions could flow and reach each other in almost real time.

Interestingly enough, the coup happened at September 11. The year was 1973.

Re:Sixty Thousand Dead under Operation Condor

[spun]

Oh, since Pinochet only murdered around 3000 people, that doesn't count as slaughter? And the fact that these murders went on for decades somehow doesn't count as generations?

Your tired of this thread because I've handed you your ass on a platter.

If you ever care to try your hand at debating me again, I have posts I can link back to to show what kind of a person you are. Mi the Murderer, that's what we'll call you.