Nobel prize winner Michael Kremer calls for digitalizing agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean to overcome the impact of covid-19 and alleviate poverty, during a webinar entitled “Opportunities for Digital Agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Prompt Response to COVID-19”.
In a conversation with Manuel Otero, Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the economist, Nobel prize winner and Gates Professor at Harvard University, noted that “The current pandemic is an ideal time to begin investing in digital extension, which is an effective means for supporting farmers during the spread of Covid-19 while also laying the groundwork for a very valuable long-term system”.
He also explained that, because of the pandemic, extension workers may not be able to visit farmers, “but these services enable them to collect data from farmers to better understand how they have been affected by Covid-19, as well as get a sense of disruptions with respect to market and supply chains, access to credit opportunities, and so on. This, in turn, can help policymakers to design better policies”.
Watch the seminar here and engage in the dialogue on this interesting topic by posting your comments to this post.
Michael Kremer is Professor of Developing Societies, Department of Economics, Harvard University and 2019 Nobel Laureate for Economic Sciences.
Note: The opinions expressed in this seminar are the responsibility of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of IICA.
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