Could Open Data Help Solve World Hunger?

"As significant as our (technology industry) embrace of open source has been, should we also focus more directly on the need for open data? GODAN says we should and it is a move that could help solve world hunger issues. But what is open data… and who or what is GODAN? UK headquartered non-profit organization Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) supports the proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the challenge of ensuring world food security. The organization reminds is that we face the challenge of feeding nearly 10 billion people by 2050. What is open data? Open data is data that is freely available to anyone in terms of its use (the chance to apply analytics to it) and rights to republish without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The Open Data Institute states that open data is only useful if it’s shared in ways that people can actually understand. It needs to be shared in a standardized format and easily traced back to where it came from...."