Chapter 6
KNOWLEDGE AND DATA
Achieving Food and Nutrition Security through Open Access Data
Indira Yerramareddy and Suresh Chandra Babu
Key Findings
- Open data can improve the performance of food systems and help achieve global food and nutrition security.
- Accessible data are critical for decision making, from the farm to the retail level of food systems.
- Open data increase both the visibility and utility of research, allowing researchers to create more knowledge products and support decision making.
- Open data allow governments to make evidence-based policy decisions and push governments toward increased accountability.
- Data quality and ease of use are essential for putting data to use, but datasets are often too large or complex to be easily handled.
- Inequality in access to knowledge is increasing. Data policies, commitments, and investments can improve access to and use of knowledge, but current commitment and action on open data are uneven.
Key Recommendations
- Democratize data access and improve livelihoods by putting data tools, such as cell phone apps, into farmers’ hands.
- Increase the efficiency of knowledge transfers to prevent loss of information and ensure uptake in the field.
- Make government “big data” public to drive high-quality analysis of food systems and better policy and decision making.
- Build open data initiatives, including to reduce inequality and address issues of data quality, use, storage, and dissemination.
- Increase data quality and ease of use through better data collection, new tools, working groups, capacity building, and improvements in big data platforms.
- Empower citizen stakeholders to demand open data through capacity building and access to data tools.
