The Ministry of Economy (MOE) is spearheading an ambitious action plan to catalyze growth across the agricultural sector and to advance rural development, ultimately improving Armenia’s competitiveness in the global economy.
The agricultural sector is one of the key strategic sectors of Armenia’s economy contributing to the nation’s economy, security, the productivity of land use, and quality of life. The Government’s vision is to have a competitive, high-quality agricultural sector, supported by cutting-edge digital and agricultural technologies, and ensuring Armenia’s global competitiveness in the critical export and food security area for the country
The Challenge
Armenia’s agricultural sector faces many serious challenges. One of the main challenges is the expanse of abandoned land (approximately one-third of all agricultural land in the country) and the prevalence of small land plots that constrain agricultural development and act as barriers to efforts to intensify production and attract investment in the agricultural sector.
Optimizing the use of one of Armenia’s greatest assets – its land – is of critical importance, hence, MOE prioritized the aggregation of smallholdings and the reduction of abandoned lands as strategic principles and goals. To attain these goals, with this effort, the ministry aims to monitor and identify the abandoned agricultural lands in addition to creating a digital land registry system.
Monitoring and surveying around two thousand two hundred hectares of agricultural land will impose a significant financial burden on the government, especially, if it will be repeated every year, hence it will not provide a sustainable solution in the long term.
The Solution
The MOE, in collaboration with GEOVIBE cjsc within the framework of World Bank funded Project, initiated a project, to utilize Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) for agriculture policy monitoring and capacity building.
GEOVIBE consultants in collaboration with MOE leadership and staff developed a comprehensive Geospatial Strategy, aligned with MOE’s short term and long term plans. The goal of the Geospatial Strategy is to plan a roadmap for effective utilization of GIS and RS in MOE to maximize the impact of the investment and solve strategic challenges using spatial insights and analytics.
A proof of concept (POC) Geoportal was established, using Esri’s ArcGIS online cloud platform, to provide a framework to host spatial data, run analytics, and engage with the stakeholders. Agricultural land registry data model was developed and field survey forms were configured using ArcGIS Survey123. As part of the POC, data was collected from 100 farms, the collected data was hosted on the POC Geoportal and visualized using ArcGIS Operational Dashboards.
Furthermore, Sentinel 2 imagery was used to analyze agricultural land activities in Janfida village in Armavir Marz over 16 months, to identify unutilized lands and reduce the number of lands that require field surveys.
At the conclusion of the project, MOE staff were trained, over four days, to visualize, analyze and communicate geographic information using different tools and applications available for them through the project.
The Results
MOE staff realized the potential benefits of utilizing GIS and RS in optimizing operations, enhancing the quality of services, and providing new capabilities and services for their stakeholders.
Using Survey123 and Operational dashboards will optimize the field surveys, reduce human error, and provide the team leaders the capability to monitor field operations and performance and access to the collected data instantly.
Remote sensing will reduce the number of field surveys dramatically, allowing MOE specialists to monitor the lands remotely in a sustainable method, utilizing freely available satellite imagery.
