Dr George Chirima, the Acting Programme Manager for AGIS explained that AGIS is a collaborative computer system initiative between DAFF, provincial Departments of Agriculture and the ARC. The purpose of AGIS is to provide vast amounts of agricultural information to the farmers such as soils, weeds, locust outbreaks, invasive plants, etc. He reported that AGIS also provides information through dynamic maps to the general public, the agricultural sector and decision makers via the internet. The reported key challenges of the system were that it has become a large project that needs continuous effort to keep it up to date; limited funding from DAFF; and several private companies also setting up parallel systems. He concluded that despite the challenges, there is a need for an enhanced and collaborative Government-funded system, as rural and developing farmers may never get access to expensive privately-owned information systems.