Lasanthi N. C. De Silva

Farmer response towards the initial agriculture information dissemination mobile prototype

Timely and relevant agriculture information is essential for farmers to make effective decisions. Finding the right approach to provide this information to empower farmers is vital due to the high failure rate in current agricultural information systems. As most farmers now have mobile phones we developed a mobile based information system. We used participatory action research methodology to enable high farmer participation to ensure sustainability of the solution. The initial version of the application based on the preliminary studies focused on the crop choosing stage of the farming life cycle. This initial prototype was evaluated with a sample of farmers to check their willingness in adapting such technology, 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 prototype application and provided valuable insights for improvement.

Building social life networks through mobile interfaces : the case study of Sri Lanka farmers

The development of mobile applications is paramount to support users living in developing countries to improve their lives. One of the major research challenges is to develop a user interface suitable for such users. In this chapter we present the design process we applied in order to develop a mobile application oriented to farmers living in Sri Lanka. The application prototype developed so far has been evaluated against usability requirements and a usability evaluation framework has been devised, which can be used to replicate the tests as the application iteratively reaches its final release. This work represents a pilot study within a wider international research project aiming to provide real-time information to support activities related to livelihood delivered using mobile phone applications targeted to meet the needs of people in developing countries.

Digital Knowledge Ecosystem for Achieving Sustainable Agriculture Production: A Case Study from Sri Lanka

Crop production problems are common in Sri Lanka which severely effect rural farmers, agriculture sector and the countrys economy as a whole. A deeper analysis revealed that the root cause was farmers and other stakeholders in the domain not receiving right information at the right time in the right format. Inspired by the rapid growth of mobile phone usage among farmers a mobile-based solution is sought to overcome this information gap. Farmers needed published information (quasi static) about crops, pests, diseases, land preparation, growing and harvesting methods and real-time situational information (dynamic) such as current crop production and market prices. This situational information is also needed by agriculture department, agro-chemical companies, buyers and various government agencies to ensure food security through effective supply chain planning whilst minimising waste. We developed a notion of context specific actionable information which enables user to act with least amount of further processing. User centered agriculture ontology was developed to convert published quasi static information to actionable information. We adopted empowerment theory to create empowerment-oriented farming processes to motivate farmers to act on this information and aggregated the transaction data to generate situational information. This created a holistic information flow model for agriculture domain similar to energy flow in biological ecosystems. Consequently, the initial Mobile-based Information System evolved into a Digital Knowledge Ecosystem that can predict current production situation in near real enabling government agencies to dynamically adjust the incentives offered to farmers for growing different types of crops to achieve sustainable agriculture production through crop diversification.

Interplay of Requirements Engineering and Human Computer Interaction Approaches in the Evolution of a Mobile Agriculture Information System

Very high adoption of mobile phones in developing countries can be used to empower people engaged in various sectors such as agriculture, fisheries and healthcare by providing timely information in right context, thus facilitating them to make informed decisions. Having identified lack of such information is badly affecting farmers in Sri Lanka we embarked on a project to develop a mobile based agriculture information system. We had to combine different theories and methods both from Requirements Engineering (RE) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) on a need basis to successfully gather the requirements. When we retraced the process we saw a definitive systematic pattern as to how RE and HCI can be used to enrich such an artefact; highlighting the strong interplay between RE and HCI. Discovery of this pattern enabled us to generalise the process.

Design science research based blended approach for usability driven requirements gathering and application development

Extracting user requirements in designing innovative ICT based solutions for emerging vague problems is a challenge. We successfully addressed this challenge by blending several techniques in Software Engineering (SE) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) within a Design Science Research (DSR) framework. These techniques were traditional surveys and interviews, causal analysis, scenario creation and transformation, use of paper-based and functional prototypes for communicating with users and capturing their feedback, user centered design, and incremental development. This approach enabled us to better capture requirements based on usability aspects and guided us to design a successful solution. We present a framework derived from this research for wider applicability.

A HOLISTIC MOBILE BASED INFORMATION SYSTEM TO ENHANCE FARMING ACTIVITIES IN SRI LANKA

Information technology has proved to be the most vital part in sustainable development of any domain. In the next era, mobile technologies will create a greater impact on the humans due to inbuilt sensors and processing capabilities. Thus, by identifying this trend we have designed a holistic mobile based system to aid the information needs of farmers throughout the farming life cycle. This system is aimed at addressing the information gap among farmers and other stakeholders of the agriculture sector such as traders, government and private organizations. While diagnosing the problem domain, it was identified that, not only the static information such as pest and diseases, but also the dynamic information such as market prices, should be made available to the farmer to take correct decisions at the right time. Thus, our system would gather data from different sources to create better linkages among the stakeholders of the agriculture domain while increasing the information transparency of the farming life cycle. Further, the intended design will open up opportunities for predictive models to strengthen the decision making process.

Extending DSR with Sub Cycles to Develop a Digital Knowledge Ecosystem for Coordinating Agriculture Domain in Developing Countries

Still a large percentage of the world population, especially in developing countries are depending on agriculture for their livelihood. The agriculture domain in many developing countries is not well coordinated leading to over and under production of crops resulting in widely fluctuating market prices, waste and economic hardship for farmers. Rapidly growing Smartphone usage among farming community has opened new possibilities to develop a mobile based artefact to coordinate the agriculture production. We have developed an overall artefact; a Digital Knowledge Ecosystem using Design Science Research (DSR) methodology to solve this complex problem. The main project had many research challenges to solve and they were assigned to several sub-projects to address. The outputs of sub-projects created several artefacts. They were integrated to develop the overall artefact to achieve the main goal of the overall project. Managing the complexity of the overall project was a challenge. For this, we had to split three main cycles of DSR: Relevance, Design and Rigor into 6 DSR sub-cycles; Relevance – Problem Understanding and Relevance – Suitability Validation, Rigor – Learning and Rigor –Contribution, Design - Heuristic Search and Design - Functional Validation. This split enabled us to better coordinate the activities to address different aspects of the problem performed by different researchers, often in parallel at multiple geographical locations. The resulted mobile based Digital Knowledge Ecosystem initially developed for farmers in Sri Lanka is now being trialled in India and adapted to develop a Mobile based Information System for Nutrition Driven Agriculture for African Countries.

Digital Knowledge Ecosystem to Reduce Uncertainty and Coordination Failure in Agricultural Markets - Study of “Govi Nena” Mobile-Based Information System

2)This paper presents how Digital Knowledge Ecosystem such as “Govi Nena” (translates as agriculture intelligence) can be used to provide a more effective and practical solution to eliminate the inefficiencies in agricultural markets and achieve higher productivity and price stability. In order to establish the framework to analyze the system, this paper uses a set of hypothetical scenarios faced by value chain actors based on a review of the literature, established knowledge and recent developing country experiences. The scenario analysis reveals that “Govi Nena” enables farmers to make effective production decisions, deepens the level of value chain integration, and enhances the level of welfare for the society as a whole.