Social Life Network for Farmers in

Sri Lanka

Professor Athula Ginige

School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics

University of Western Sydney, Australia

1

• What are Social Life Networks

• Information Flow Issues in Sri Lankan Agriculture Sector and resulting problems

• Initial Solution and Research Methodology

• Participatory Design and Evolution of the proposed Solution

• Current Solution

• Next Step

Outline

2

Social Networks

Ref: Ramesh Jain 3

Mobile phone used to be a phone. It is now a:

– Phone– Camera and an album– GPS– Music system– Video Game console– Communication device– Personal BUTLER– Computer– Information source– … much more

A Mobile Phone based Solution

A Sensor in a Hand of a Human4

Middle 3.5

Billion

Top 1.5

Billion

Bottom 1.5 Billion

MOP: Strengthening

Information

Environment

TOP: Strong Information

Environment

BOP: Deprived

of Information

Middle of the Pyramid

Ref: Ramesh Jain 5

Going Beyond Social Networks

Current

Social

Networks

Important

Unsatisfied

Needs

6

Connecting People

And

ResourcesAggregation

and

Composition

Situation

Detection Alerts

Queries

Information

Health Education Agriculture Transportation Social

Ref: Ramesh Jain

7

N’Eliya carrot

farmers in the

dumps:

Bumper harvest, but

prices lowThe Sunday Times, April 22, 2012

Over Production problem in Sri Lanka

8

9

10

11

Current Information Flow

Farmer

Agriculture

Extension

Officer

Agriculture

Department

Collected

farmer data

Government

Organization

Research

institutes

Web Pages

Reports & Static

information

Data on cultivation extent, crop types etc

Static knowledge on

crop varieties,

solving pest &

diseases etc

Initial Solution: System Architecture

12

SLN4MOP Research Methodology

Exploring possibilities

using Action

Research

Requirements for Aggregation Unit

Aggregation Unit

Requirements for Processing Unit

Processing Unit

Requirements for User Interface Unit

Mobile App

Evaluation

Stakeholder Needs

SLN for Farmers

Requirements

Artefacts

Evaluations

13

Collaborative Research Team

14

Mobile User Interface by the Italian

research groupInformation Aggregation

Unit by the American

research group

Empowerment Model by Macquarie University

KM and Query Engine by UWS

Agriculture Ontology and localisation of application for SLN by the Sri Lankan research group

SRI LANKA

Participatory Design

Scenarios Transformation

Current Practice Scenarios

Usability Specifications

claims aboutcurrentpractice

analysis ofstakeholders,field studies

metaphors,informationtechnology,HCI theory,guidelines

iterativeanalysis ofusability

claims andre-design

ANALYZE

PROTOTYPE & EVALUATE

DESIGN

Scenario Based Approach

Interviews and Surveys

Number % Number %

Young(<36) 4 33% 0 0%

Middle aged (36-45) 4 33% 2 15%

Old(>46) 4 33% 12 92%

Graduate 1 8% 0 0%

A/L 4 33% 0 0%

O/L 7 58% 3 23%

Above 8th Grade 0 0% 4 31%

Below 8th Grade 0 0% 6 46%

Ability to Read 12 100% 12 92%

Ability toWrite 12 100% 11 85%

Ability to Read 1 8% 0 0%

Ability to Write 1 8% 0 0%

Basic 11 92% 12 92%

Sophisticated 0 0% 0 0%

Taking calls 11 92% 12 92%

Sending sms 11 92% 9 69%

Playing games 0% 1 8%

Model

Purpose

Mobile Phone

Usage

Respondants

Survey 2

Respondants

Survey 1CharacteristicsUnit of

MeasurementCategories

Age Years

Year of

Schooling

R/W

Capability

R/W

Capability

Literacy Level

16

Actors - Sirisena

• Sirisena is a 45 years old farmer withlong experience in truck farming.

• Is part of Sinhalese ethnic group. • Attended the primary school, and has a basic knowledge of

English. • Does not have advanced technical skills, • Is pretty distrustful of the technological support and• During his work, is accustomed to rely on his farmer

experience. • Manages the crop production of his family farm.• Takes decisions on the kind of production and the time to

start . Moreover he establishes an indicative selling price.

Actors - Premasiri

• Premasiri is a 40 years old low price

fertilizers seller.

• In order to raise his revenues he also

acts as market middle man.

• He can speak English as good as Sinhalese and has a basic knowledge of Tamil, so his intermediary role is well recognized by the farmers of the area.

• During the market activities his responsibility is to negotiate the best selling price of the product trying to match the expectations of his clients.

Scenario of Current Practices

Crop SelectionCrop

Production

Getting to the

local market

Farmer

Activities

Middleman

Activities

Harvest selling

Mobile UI Development

Causal Analysis

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Revenue

New Methods

FertilizerPest and Diseases

Weather

Surplus / OversupplyShortage / Undersupply

DemandSupplyYield Quality

Selling Price

No of Suppliers

Previous Year

Prices

Seeds Quality

Gov’mnt. Policies

No of Buyers

Is determined by

Is determined by

Leads toDepends on

Control

Crop choosing pattern Crop selling patternCrop growing pattern

ControlControl

Depends on

Depends on

User Empowerment

Given some information

How can we assist user to act on that information

From user action

How can we extract useful information

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Farmer Centric Model

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• Seeds

• Soil

• fertilizer

• Weather

• Pest

• disease & remedies

• places to buy

• places to sell

• Prices at markets / economic center

• traditional knowledge and practices...

Knowledge Management

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Existing

Sources

Semi Structured /Unstructured

Knowledge

Extraction &

Representation

SLN4FarmersFarmer

Agriculture Officers / Farmer

Associations

Processing

Input

Capture

Output

Visualisation

Information

Identification and

Extraction

Connecting Farmer with Information

Farming

Process Decision Points

What crop to

grow?

Which Pesticide?

Which Fertilizer?

When to

Harvest?

Questions to

System

What are Suitable

Crops?

What are the

relevant Govt

Policies?

What are the known

pest problems?

What is the

predicted weather

condition?

What was the last

years selling price?

What is the current

production level?

Contextual

Information

Variable: SoilValue: Clay

Var : Season

Value: Maha

Var: Elevation

Value: Up

Phases

Pre-sowing

Storage &

Packing

Post Harvesting

Transport

Selling

Information in Context

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Proposed Architecture of SLN Farmers

Query

Expansion

and

Aggregation

Module

Agriculture

Ontology

Real time

data

aggregation

module

Mobile

Crop

Soil

User profile

DB

Current

Cultivation

information

Past harvest

data & prices

WeatherUI

Management

Module

Language

Translator

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Farming Phases

Crop Selection

Pre Sowing

Packaging & Storing

Harvesting

Growing

Selling

• Crop Colour, Weight, size

• Elevation, Zone/ Rainfall, Season

• Soil type, pH level, Temperature, Harvesting time,

Expected yield

• Nursery Mgt – Suitable period, Bed preparation, water

requirement, Seeding,

• Transplanting, Watering, Weed control

• Symptoms, Harvesting time, method

• Fertiliser recommendation, Pest control, Disease control

• Seed suppliers

• Post harvesting treatments

• Storage requirements

• Packaging methods, Transporting

methods

• Markets, Prices, Transporting

Existing Information about Crops

Farmer Preferences

• Elevation - Up/Mid/Low country

• Zone – Wet/Intermediate/Dry

• Season – Yala/Maha , Month

• --------------------------

Controllable Factors

• Soil Type

• pH Level

Pre-determined Factors

Crop Requirements/ Characteristics

Agroecological

regions

Elevation (m)

Elevation (m)

Mean temperature

(°C)

Rainfall (mm)

Wet zone

Up country

Mid country

Low country

1000-2000

500-1000

0-300

10-15

20-15

20-25

2500-5000

2000-3000

2000-3000

Intermediate zone

Up country

Mid country

Low country

1000-1500

350-500

0-300

15-22

24-26

25-29

1500-2250

1500-2250

2000-2200

Dry zone

Low country

0-300 28-30 900-1000

Crop Selection – What Crop to Grow?

Agriculture Ontology for Sri Lankan Farmers

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Populating Databases

Department of Agriculture, Srilanka, Retrieved 20 August, 2012, from

http://www.agridept.gov.lk/31

Knowledge ExtractionTomato prefers deep well drained sandy loam soils. The upper

layer needs to be permeable. Soil depth of 15 to 20 cm is needed

to grow a healthy crop.

Syntactic

Analysis

Tomato

Soil

Needs

Prefers

Noun

VerbSemantic

Analysis

Ontology

Formulation Relationship

between Entities

Output

Word Net

{Domain specific}

Agriculture Ontology

Parser

32

Mobile User Interaction Model

33

• Design and implement End-to-End system V0.

• Explore ways to collaborate with the Department of Agriculture in Sri Lanka.

• Field trial the initial system with farmers in December 2012.

• Interesting secondary project

– Collaborative development and knowledge sharing.

Next Step

34

Spread of Disciplines

Core Technologies

Infrastructure and the System

Human Mobile Interactions

Social and Business Aspects

WWW.SLN4MOP.ORG

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