OPEN FIELDS | ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies

"'Today, nearly 800 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition around the world. For the first time in human history, we have the knowledge and the tools to put an end to it. Open data makes that knowledge available to everyone [1].

At the 2012 G-8 Summit, G-8 leaders committed to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the next phase of a shared commitment to achieving global food security. As part of this commitment, they agreed to 'share relevant agricultural data available from G-8 countries with African partners and convene an international conference on Open Data for Agriculture, to develop options for the establishment of a global platform to make reliable agricultural and related information available to African farmers, researchers and policymakers, taking into account existing agricultural data systems.'"