CIMMYT Mexico

Owned by Andrew Hicks (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jun 07, 2022
6 min read

 

Proposed use cases:

 

Our Email q’s answered:

  • What is the current state (how is data collected, stored, transformed, shared) and what are the gaps which FarmStack will help address

Data is collected on a seasonal basis (twice a year) using an in-house customized system called e-Agrology (see short video here). The main gap Farmsatck will help address is sharing these data with donors (private companies such as Kellogg, Bimbo, Nestle, Heineken and others) including personal identifiable information from which we have proper informed consents.

  • What kinds of data controls are required

We require matching the informed consents with individual data flows to be able to share only those lines that have consent.

  • We're keen to learn about the farming communities the projects work with - are there clear livelihood, climate, and / or gender considerations

Small and medium farmers (between 0.5 – 15 Has) depending on agriculture as main economic activity, located in the Bajio region where water is scarce. We work with them to put in place sustainability plans that can help them produce more with less impact (water-use efficiency, soil quality, air quality, etc)

  • Are there timeline constraints / requirements we'd need to commit to

Ideally, we would start the pilot this season starting from June-july to be able to share seasonal data by the end of the year with the donors.

  • Could we establish CIMMYT as an FS steward and eventually build internal capacity within CIMMYT to utilize FarmStack for X more use cases reaching Y more farmers and Z more partners, etc. 

Yes. Absolutely. We have the team in place to be trained. Actually I heard from my colleague Steve Kemp within the Digital Initiative in the ONECgiar where I am Co-lead, that they are also having conversations obaout this so we coud put a set of global use cases togeher for this.

  • Is this a good opportunity for a sort of "showcase" collaboration that could lead to a beneficial communications and brand awareness campaign to support our advocacy work in this space

Yes


Call plan for May 18:

  • Hello, intros as needed

    • Two different ways of interacting - CIMMYT w/ some projects in Mexico, then the One CGIAR digital initiative has some additional use cases (Rwanda, India, etc) \

    • Andrea leads M&E at CIMMYT, ICT for Ag, info systems for data collection, cleaning, ETL processes etc

      • Leads the e-agrology system

    • Jelle leads the bi-lateral projects, hub system in Mexico, localized innovation networks, sustainable agrifood systems program

  • Dive into the more technical questions / clarifications from below

  • VNS:

    • Andrea share data sample and informed consent form they have

    • Andrea to put us in contact with the developers to work directly with

    • Scope out basic product, big and small picture, costs, and share

    • Prepare initial agreement of collaboration - CIMMYT is the owner here (step 1), in parallel we do the concept note with Dalberg

    • Set up recurring call to move this forward, create the requirements in a solution sketch, then come to how we will execute, baseline targets, and costs associated

    • Identify focal people from both sides, including who can address tech q’s for CIMMYT

      • What to do about the concept note with Dalberg? Focus on the use cases for now, or work on that concept note in parallel

        • Potentially focus on the use cases and drop the concept note

        • Or, if we pursue the concept note - more closely tie it with these use cases, understanding the other potential challenges this same solution can address?

  • We need to look at the level of effort which will be required from our team and determine if it is feasible to pursue this first phase pro-bono, on this timeline. We’ll come back with some specific options.

Our detailed q’s (from Vineet’s mail, May 16, 2022 plus some from Andrew in red):

  1. What data sets and who are providers/ consumers? - Sample if available would be good.

    1. Providers = farmers, consumers = private companies and researchers (in the future?)

    2. Ask for sample data

      1. Around 500 variables per plot

      2. up to 3 crops per season

      3.  

    3. What is the current approach for collecting consent? Is there a need for our support there to build in consent manager to e-Agrology

      1. Extension agent reads a general consent to the farmer when collecting the data

      2. In order to share that data on to donors they must go back to the farmer one by one to collect additional consent from the farmers

      3. Their need here is that sometimes the data requested by the donor is different - like relating yield with practices used etc, which needs specific informed consent

        1. Maybe they can do a more general high level consent to share with 3rd party individually, but tbd. trying to get back to farmers with concrete benefits for sharing that data.

      4. Agro-tutor is interface for the farmer, this will include privacy / consent built in >>> this is kind of a wallet, could push to it

        1. Opp to build in SDK (data wallet, consent, etc)

      5. Right now the donor has access to the general dashboards, but the outside access to the more dynamic dashboards need some control on the data sharing

  2. Where do the data sets reside? 

    • If servers then:

      • logistics of installing the FS instance

      • It is better that someone in our team is given access

      • They will need to maintain the access control and firewall setting

      • There are always surprises here - so if in the initial case this can be avoided then better

    • If public cloud like AWS/ Azure/ GCP then:

      • We create an test instance and give them the image

  3. Data access:

    • If APIs - any documentation or swagger hub link

    • If DB query - then access to the DB test instance

    • If file - then who will be uploading

  4. Data pipeline view:

    • What are the triggers for data sharing to start? - push vs pull 

      • When is data collected – you said twice per year, when exactly so we can understand the timeline better

        • Collection is May - Nov, by november have sharing in place

    • Custom applications to be written

 

 

Requirements:

  • Informed consent collection, reduce burden of doing this somehow and track the consent per Mexican law

  • Dashboard access to 3rd parties (sharing from CIMMYT to the donor)

  • Application where farmers can see, input, share their data from the app (farmer sharing data to CIMMYT or third parties)

 

What is the starting point? The consent piece can take time and we have a tight timeline. The connector w/ sharing to donors is lower hanging fruit but maybe less important.

  • Their priority is the consent manager, they already have consent signed for the season but might have to go and inform them about future consent. She’d like to have it in place to let farmers decide what to share or not

  • Need to design the overall process but likely looking at the consent manager first then the connector

 

 

 

Call on June 7

Discussed this plan and refined the scope

Scope discussion etc:

  • Additional request from Andrea for “training” - this is included in the handover

    • If additional support is needed we will need to define clearly the amount of time we’ll spend on this handover / training support, we don’t know their

    • the spanish consent form is an image, but we need the text

    • Can we use whatsapp instead of SMS? >> this is used instead of SMS / telegram etc

      • In our experience in India the whatsapp APIs have a significant cost

      • Alternative is to work with CIMMYT’s AWS partner, they have access to SMS and Whatsapp, so we need to explore this – this also has a cost

        • This will be costly, but less than WA, and it uses an international number like an OTP notification

  • DG tech will need to meet with the project team and tech team folks of CIMMYT to present the consent mgr thing to them and get their feedback

Other q’s:

  • Can we discuss the engagement in blog / social media? We can include a line on this in the collab agreement if needed, but we like to share these kinds of partnerships with our community

    • Outline it in the collab agreement and collaborate with their comms on messaging

 

VNS:

  • Shreya to share latest version of collab agreement w/ markups and notes (unless there is no newer version of this)

    • Add the list of tasks outlined to the agreement and share, it will take time

  • Andrea to share text of the consent form

  • DG team to put together the story boarding based on this

  • Andrea to get Vineet / etc in contact with AWS partner to look at SMS integration

  • Andrea to bring project team into the discussion to get their input on donor needs, consent mgr flow, interface with farmers etc

    • Vineet to provide some days / times which work to connect with these teams

      • 1.5 hours for overview and tech architecture

      • ~45 minutes for the project team to understand what the farmers / beneficiaries will get out of the process, Andrea to present