Welcome!

We are excited to invite you to our first annual CGIAR Big Data in Agriculture Convention taking place in Cali, Colombia, from 19 to 22 September 2017.

The Big Data in Agriculture Convention of 2017: An Alliance for a Data Revolution, will be hosted with the aim to align the international scientific community to inspire a data revolution and to celebrate the intersection of big data and agriculture.

The event will be hosted by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, (CIAT) and gather together the international community of scientists, researchers, technologists, development experts, policy analysts, donors, advocates, change agents, last mile implementers, and many others to a convention at the intersection of big data and agriculture.

They will discuss ways in which big data can transform smallholder agriculture, enabling farmers to boost food production and respond to pressing challenges such as climate change. Approximately 300 attendees are expected.

The Inspire Challenge

The event will also announce the winners of the five US$100K research grants, as part of the Platform’s Inspire Challenge. This campaign called for proposals that use big data approaches to advance agricultural research-and-development. The aim is to promote next-generation ideas to develop solutions faster, better and a greater scale than ever before.

More than 120 proposals were received from all over the world and across the four Inspire Challenge categories: Revealing Food Systems, Monitoring Pests and Diseases, Disrupting Impact Assessment, and Empowering Data-Driven Farming.

The winning proposals must have potential for social impact, while using open data to solve development problems.

Twelve finalists were selected on 12 September and will be presenting their proposals to a panel of judges, including industry leaders such as  Robin Lougee from IBM, Syed Raza from the UN Foundation, and Stanley Wood from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

During the course of the Convention, there will be various opportunities for interested individuals to submit questions and engage in conversation with the event speakers and attendees via the Big Data platform’s social media.

See our 5 Inspire Challenge winners

Judges

Judges will be asked to come to the Convention with a provisional score and encouraged to spend the 3 days we have at the Convention in Cali to learn more about the Inspire submissions and their teams.  They will finalize their rankings after the final presentation/pitch session. 

Robin Lougee

Robin Lougee

Research Industry Lead, Consumer Products, Business Solutions and Mathematical Sciences, IBM Research

Stanley Wood

Stanley Wood

Senior Program Officer, Agriculture Development Program Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Dr. Peter Richards

Dr. Peter Richards

Global Engagement and Strategy Team Bureau for Food Security U.S. Agency for International Development

Gerrit Hoogenboom

Gerrit Hoogenboom

Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering University of Florida

Jawoo Koo

Jawoo Koo

Senior Research Fellow and Big Data Platform Co-Pioneer, International Food Policy Research Institute

Syed Raza

Syed Raza

Senior Director, Data Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) at The United Nations Foundation

Andy Jarvis

Andy Jarvis

Program Leader Decision and Policy Analysis and Big Data Platform Co-Pioneer, International Center for Tropical Agriculture

Media

Presentation Materials & Livestream Recordings

Want a refresher on some of the quality topics discussed during the convention? We’ve collected all the presentation materials here for your viewing pleasure.

Media Kit

Please see our CGIAR Big Data in Agriculture Convention 2017: Alliance for a Data Revolution Media Kit for text and images.