Towards an agriculture knowledge ecosystem :A social life network for farmers in Sri Lanka

We have developed and successfully trialled a Social Life Network (SLN); a Mobile Based Information System to support farming activities in Sri Lanka. It provides information required to support activities such as crop selection and cultivation planning in the context of farmer, farm location, season and task being performed. The system also provides a facility for farmers to sell farming related products and services to other farmers. The final system architecture evolved through a series of iterative relevance and design cycles based on Design Science Research methodology. In the first relevance cycle we identified farmer information needs, their current decision making patterns, and some possible ways to enhance their decision making process. In the first design cycles we developed the initial prototype to visualise a possible solution and in subsequent cycles a crop ontology to reorganise published crop information that would be queried in context and processes to empower farmers. Next we went through 2 cycles of creating functional prototypes, field testing with farmers and improving these to arrive at the final system. We noted that this system can enhance the flow of information in the agriculture domain by aggregating or disaggregating information produced by some stakeholders to be consumed by others. Based on this observation the overall architecture was reconceptualised as a Digital Knowledge Ecosystem

Context based content aggregation for Social Life Networks

Better decisions can be made in the profession of the users if they can filter out the relevant information from all the available information sources. The mass availability of the mobile devices has enabled the users to quickly access timely information from any location. The aim of this work is to identify a suitable way to provide timely information in context by capturing contextual information through the mobile device, to support the activities of the user. The context model tries to identify the context of the user by identifying the task being performed by the user. The system is aware of the information need and the information source for each task of the user and the relevant information is filtered out of the information source, by using the users context. The context model was designed and tested for the farming domain, to support the livelihood activities of the farmer, by extending the concepts of Social Life Networks. Social Life Networks aggregates information from various sensors on a mobile phone, other published data sources and micro blogs such as Twitter to detect evolving situations and make that information available to the users in real time. This initial prototype was evaluated with a sample of farmers to check usefulness of provided information and usability of the application in order to support their day to day decision making process. The sample group strongly endorsed the various aspects of the proto-type application and provided valuable insights for improvement. The current application is a specific instance of the SLN project and we plan to create more application for SLN to test and refine the context models

Design requirements for an online data exchange platform to bridge the gap between farmers and researchers in India

The rising awareness of information transparency and the increasing trend of citizen participation in the agriculture sector has created new opportunities for information sharing. There are numerous information resources available for farmers from private, government sources and industry stakeholders. There are also various farm surveys by which farmers contribute towards the agricultural sector. However, no such platform connects farmers and researchers in which data exchange happens simultaneously between them. This gap in information exchange contributes to slow growth in the advancement of the agricultural sector. Research results do not reach the end-users in time to adopt agricultural improvement practices. Often researchers do not get the opportunity to engage and encourage farmers to be citizen scientists to contribute to the research. In this thesis, we develop design requirements for an online web-based prototype data exchange platform to bridge the gap between researchers and farmers. The platform can serve as a way to build farmers’ trust in researchers and encourage them to contribute more towards agricultural research to develop the sector. We believe that the findings of this study will prove helpful to interface designers and researchers to inform and guide future work in this critical area

Design and Evaluation of a Mobile-based Cultivation Planning Application for empowering Sri Lankan Farmers

We have field tested a profit calculator for Sri Lankan farmers as a part of our investigation to develop mobile-based tools for empowerment. Lack of access to information to support livelihood activities is creating economic hardships for the farmers. Though the majority of the farmers use mobile phones there aren’t many useful mobile applications for them. In the field test we captured farmers’ experiences of using the profit calculator and a revised set of requirements. When reflecting on these observations we realised that instead of developing ICT applications just to provide information or perform tasks, we need to develop applications based on user goal-oriented empowerment processes. Based on this insight, we reviewed our original design of the profit calculator and designed a new Cultivation Planning Application

Analysis of information quality for a usable information system in agriculture domain : a study in the Sri Lankan context

In creating a usable Information System (IS), the quality of information is crucial for making the right decisions. Although, many Information Quality (IQ) features have been identified in a broader context, only certain IQ features would become applicable for each domain from the usability perspective. This study focuses on a theoretical analysis to identify the IQ features which would be significant to produce a usable agricultural information system with respect to the developing countries. Accuracy, Credibility, Context-specific, Completeness and Timeliness are identified as the essential features of the IQ for IS in agriculture which was substantiated through the preliminary analysis of user reviews on the agriculture mobile applications

Information dissemination for farming communities in Thailand

The use of information and communication technology tools has been applied in many disciplines, including agricultural sectors. It may be applied in many modules such as data gathering, data processing, information management and information dissemination. One issue that cannot be neglected is the readiness of technology service users, or farmers in this case. It was found that most Thai farmers were poor and illiterate; therefore, offering them the best available tools and services may not be always what they would like to use. To answer the research questions, action research methodology was selected in this study to find a practical way to deliver agricultural information to Thai farmers. Groups of participants from two villages in a northern Thai province were targeted; as a result, case study methodology was also used in this study. Accordingly, a needs analysis using a survey technique, in conjunction with an analysis of the current situation and relevant documents, was conducted in order to find answers about the types of information truly required by Thai farmers. Additionally, questions about how Thai farmers currently received agricultural information, and factors affecting their information requirements, were to be answered. Then, information dissemination through the short message service on mobile phones was found to be the most appropriate alternative for Thai farmers in this study. The free-of-charge experimental service was offered to participating farmers for a period of eight weeks. After that the user satisfaction survey and group interviews were conducted to determine the effectiveness of the system framework. A number of findings and discussion points will be useful for policy makers, relevant government agencies and other researchers who attempt to conduct viable projects in the actual field. This study revealed that income, age and education were significant factors related to the success of the agricultural information dissemination project. Also, relationships between agricultural information extension workers and farmers affected the preferences for, and attitudes to, receiving information among Thai farmers. Subsequently, a new framework was proposed and was obtained comments from agricultural extension workers in order to improve the framework for a wider scale. Finally, the main objective of this research, which was to find out how information and communication technologies can be used to enhance information dissemination to Thai farmers, was achieved. In summary, these outputs are likely to be useful and workable in practice, together with collaborations with third parties such as local councils, mobile phone service providers or academic sectors

Manual on prototyping methodology and multifunctional crop rotation

This VEGINECO manual is one of a series of publications resulting from the VEGINECO project. VEGINECO specialises in producing tested and improved multi-objective farming methods for key farming practices – e.g. crop rotation, fertilisation and crop protection – to facilitate the integration of potentially conflicting objectives like economy and ecology. This report consists of two parts. The first part describes the prototyping methodology and how it was used in the VEGINECO project (Chapters 2 - 5). The second part describes the methodology for developing crop rotation strategies with examples of its application under different conditions in Europe (Chapter 6 - 11)