The International Conference on Statistics and Informatics in Agricultural Research was organised by the Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics as its 66th Annual Conference during 18 - 20 December 2012 at Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute, New Delhi -110012, India.

 

The broad objective of the conference was to provide a platform for exchange of ideas among the researchers in advances in Statistics and Informatics for Agricultural Research. This also provided a platform for interactions among the researchers. It also focused on a very important issue of concern to all Institutions and Research Organizations about the loss of interest in the discipline of Statistics by young students. Another important objective of the conference is to provide an opportunity to young researchers to interact with established researchers in their respective fields.
 

During a session on Knowledge Management, it was realized that current state/public sector organizations in agricultural development provide knowledge services that address only farmers, scientists and policy makers. Even these users are not fully covered, for example, farmers in high value crop production and more capital-intensive agriculture are not covered effectively and do not find information from public sector organizations useful. Policy makers are perceived not to use available information and knowledge in policy making. Scientists selectively cite their information sources that sometimes bias further innovation and development and publish their work in journals that bring them greater reward than those that serve communities. It was a general perception that public sector organizations of India, the hosts of the Conference, have not coped and are even now coping very slowly to new challenges of knowledge management and are failing to inspire confidence among other actors in the private and community sectors that add value in information and knowledge chains. The problems lie in making content available and accessible more openly and in enabling effective use through learning, in capacities, coordination, collaboration and partnerships with other actors in the information chain. There is little encouragement and investment by the public sector to support and facilitate new actors outside its own sector in improving agricultural information and knowledge chains. This limits the transition of an agricultural society to one that is knowledge based.

 

The Workshop on Knowledge Management concluded that there is an immediate need to initiate Institutional transformation, especially of the public sector, so that they facilitate, support and encourage rapid transition to agriculture and agribusiness that is knowledge based and enable innovation in farming systems and agricultural commodity value addition chains. Institutional transformation would require new and changes in existing policies, regulatory mechanisms, strategies, organizational structures and work processes so that they are conducive to enabling transiting countries more efficient transition to more knowledge based agriculture.