Participant’s name: Mr. Heydar Binaliyev , Senior Specialist at Department of Information Systems of Agricultural Research Center under the Ministry of Agriculture
Program’s name: ICT (INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY) FOR AGRICULTURAL INFORMATION USE–Aiming at practical skills acquisition-
Program’s period: February 17 – April 23, 2020
Participating in the ICT(Information and Communication Technology) course and getting acquainted with Japanese culture was an important step in my IT career.
As it is known, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is widely used in every sector in recent years. The role of ICT in the field of agriculture is also irreplaceable and is widely used in our country’s agriculture’s sector. In the field of agriculture, use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) has proved its importance and gain credibility. In order to effectively use information and communication technologies, it is necessary to be well acquainted with the information about it, and it was very useful for me to participate in this course, the purpose of which is this. I hope that I will be able to effectively apply the information learned in this course as someone working in the field of agricultural information and communication technologies.There were eight participants from eight countries Azerbaijan, Gambia, Rwanda, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Laos, Myanmar attended in this training.
Participants provided opportunities to have lectures, practical trainings, site visits and discussions also formulate an activity plan (draft action plan) to describe what the participants to do after they go back to home country applying the knowledge and skills acquired and discussed in Japan.
We started by presenting the Inception Report, which we prepared in our country before coming to Japan.
Picture from İnception Report Presentation
As practical trainings we had trainings about Microsoft Office programs like Excel, MS Access, Excel VBA, Creating Websites using HTML, CSS and other free tools, Android programming, Drone management, Embedded programing, GIS and etc.
Training lecturers was from private sector to Obihiro University professors and lecturers. Some of the private sectors lecturers was company owners and company workers that specialized on ICT(Information and Communication Technology) for agricultural use. One of that companies was providing GIS solutions for local farmers and that lecture was one of the especially usefull and good example of applying ICT to agriculture.
During the course period I had some site visits. One of that visits is TOKACHI Federation of Japan Agriculture Cooperative as farmers organization involve the local community with the objective of mutual cooperation, sustainability, protection of nature and the environment, protection of culture and the sustainability of farming industry with the future generation. They introduced us their business models comprises of supply, marketing, developed applications for fertilizers management, milk production management etc. web applications for farmer’s use, credit and facilities as a service to the farmers and the local community. At visit to SARABETSU VILLAGE visit we got information about regional revitalization, smart agriculture, current status and future of smart agriculture. We learned about population transition at the village, and how they deal with farmer’s count decreasing, aiming to become Japan’s Silicon Valley and how they work for this, also we visited farming area which smart agriculture applied with 5G technology in SARABETSU.
Picture from SARABETSU Village
I want to express my deep gratitude to the JICA and government of Japan giving me opportunity to take part in this training course and also thank to for the people’s hospitality of Japan.
Picture from closing ceremony