The Caribbean Forum, one of the seminar series of "Use of digital technologies for the provision of technical advisory services and marketing of family farming products: Experiences from Latin America and the Caribbean and in other regions of the world", co-organized by the FAO, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Latin American Network of Extension Services (RELASER), was held on April 28th, 2021. Professor Nie Fengying, Deputy Director-General of the Agricultural Information Institute of CAAS (AIICAAS), and Dr. Guo Leifeng, Associate Researcher of AIICAAS, participated in the forum online at the invitation of FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The aim of the seminar series is to promote dialogues among different regions or subregions by sharing experiences, as well as discussing opportunities and challenges during the implementation of the Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (ATER) and E-commerce in family farming, especially in the post-pandemic era.

Professor Nie Fengying made a presentation entitled "Digital Agriculture Extension in China" and introduced the National Agriculture Extension Cloud Platform (NAECAP) developed by AIICAAS as an example of using digital technologies in agricultural technology extension. She shared how this cloud platform enabled the smallholder farmers to have timely consultation with agricultural technicians and have training on agricultural products’ marketing online, and how it also served as a knowledge and information assistant to agricultural technicians with its various functions.

NAECAP and its story of transforming agriculture extension happened in Henglu, one of the villages that havebenefited from the cloud platform, was selected into the 23 examples of digital village prototypes around Asia and the Pacific by FAO in 2020.

By Hu Huameng (huhuameng@caas.cn)