Pests – they are good for almost nothing! Well, maybe this is not true in all cases or for everyone. Troy Weekes and Mortimer Seale from Barbados have been inspired by pests to develop a promising agricultural application called CropGuard. As the name suggests, it is an app that provides information that helps defend produce against pests, identified as a key problem in agricultural activities in Barbados.

About 25 young professionals, youth champions from ACP countries and partners from international organizations working on Youth in Agriculture and Rural Development were brought together by the CTA from 14th to 16th November 2012 in Wageningen, The Netherlands, to participate in its Strategic Youth Stakeholder Workshop.

The first part of the workshop consisted of different panels, whereby the objective was to learn from the partners.  To open the day, CTA presented key elements of its 2011-2015 Strategic Plan.

We are pleased to announce the names of the 15 finalists for the YoBloCo Awards – individual category, resulting from the voting process that took place from 5 to 31 December 2011. During this period, for the individual category, we received a total of 2214 votes, from 2080 people (voting for two blogs was possible) and more than 600 comments for the institutional category. This is a great outcome, and we would like to thank voters and everyone again for your support and your interest in this initiative.

The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), in collaboration with FARA, Yam-Pukri, CAFAN, AYF, ANAFE, SPC/PAFPNET is organizing the Youth in Agriculture Blog Competition (YoBloCo Awards). This contest is launched in the framework of the ARDYIS initiative which aims to raise youth awareness and improve their capacity on agricultural and rural development issues in ACP countries using  Information Technology.

Tackling Jamaica’s Two Main Agricultural Plagues with ICT: Praedial Larceny and Information Asymmetries/Poor Marketing

By Tyrone Christopher Hall, from Jamaica : Caribbean Regional Winner and overall all ACP Winner of the CTA ARDYIS Essay contest.