UGANDA MARTYRS
UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF
AGRICULTURE
PROGRAM: PhD IN AGRO-ECOLOGY AND FOOD SYSTEMS
PAF 7102:
KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS FOR AGRO-ECOLOGICAL INTERVENTIONS
Facilitator:
Prof. Johnnie. W. F.
Muwanga-Zake
Prepared by:
BAHAME.B.David
Reg No. 2018-Ph41-1003
Assignment: Identify an agricultural community (preferably your own
or where you might carry out your research or where might apply interventions)
and determine in that community:
1. Knowledge systems
2. Agro-ecological approaches
3. Epistemology
4. Ontology
5. Interventions and how were approached
KAKIIKA CROP-LIVESTOCK INTEGRATED FARMING
COMMUNITY IN MBARARA DISTRICT:
Introduction: In this community people’s economic
livelihoods is basically depending on livestock such cattle, goats, pigs,
poultry, beekeeping both cash and food crops coffee, banana, maize, millet,
cassava, potatoes, beans, ground nuts, fruits such as pineapples, oranges,
mangos, passion fruits, watermelon, mushroom growing, vegetables (Dodo, Cabbage,
egg plants, Tomatoes, Carrots, Green paper, onions) to some extent off-farm
activities like petty and barbershops in Mbarara town. Their settlement pattern
is a mixture of homesteads in villages and small trading centers, schools,
health centres and mixture of religions. Their social structures like families
are nucleated either male or female headed with few cases orphanage ones.
1.
Knowledge systems
The knowledge of this community is interest guided and
truly their briefs, such guiding interests are analytical which is empirical
knowledge that managing and controlling their nature, hermeneutic interests
because these people understand each other mutually, and critical theory this
is due to emancipation for all sorts of situations that enslave them as human
beings. Their historical or hermenentical discipline help them understanding
and relate to each harmoniously. Having staying in similar environment they
share same actual and Psuedo social problems.
This community knowledge system is pivotal to general
sources like traditional practices, local and indigenous knowledge, authority,
experience, intuition, trial and error. This community has complexity and
transdiciplinarity systems with various components. It has closed systems, open
systems, family systems, education systems, political systems, farming systems
etcetera. This community knowledge is shaped by conginitism, behaviorism and
constructivism because they learn from each other, peers and family members.
The societal grounded knowledge system theory is based on paradigmatic and
prescriptive approaches of knowledge.
2.
Agro-ecological approaches
In this community the population is growing tremendously
and sitting on limited natural resources (land) base means that if current and
future food and fiber needs are to be met, natural resources will have to be
used in a more agro-ecological sustainable manner. Promoting sustainable
agriculture requires that crop/farm management techniques foster synergies,
conserve nutrients, increase economic stability, and promote equitable outcomes
for crop-livestock production small-scale farmers. This overview summarizes the
basic underlying principles and approaches for planning investments in
sustainable agricultural production systems, including technologies to
intensify production while employing low external sustainable agricultural
inputs. These issues and investments complement investments needed for the
sustainable management of off-farm natural resources important to agricultural
production systems.
For this community
to offset their future food and fiber demand is expected to increase
substantially as populations grow and average incomes rise, but limited land
and water resources can be brought into production to satisfy this demand. If
past production strategies are used to double food production, their expected
ecological impacts could make production systems unsustainable. There,
agricultural systems must therefore intensify the use of land and water
resources through more sustainable methods and through changing current
production systems and diversifying into new, more productive enterprises.
Generally, this community should be associated with
increased use of external inputs, intensification as the means of more
efficient use of production inputs. Increased productivity comes from the use
of improved varieties and breeds, more efficient use of labor, and better farm
management (Dixon et al. 2001). Diversification, which represents a change in
the farm enterprise pattern to increase profitability or reduce risk, is one
option for sustainable intensification.
3.
Epistemology:
Epistemology
is about the way we know things
in otherworld’s are the way how this community knows things. What Constitutes Valid Knowledge and How Can
they obtain It? The source epistemological knowledge in this community is
obtained through past events, stories, folksongs, drama, traditional games,
briefs, opinions and genius inheritance. We can only arrive at
knowledge through sensory experience which is built on truth, brief and
honesty.
Epistemology is a field of
science that tends to describe the many approaches we can chose to understand
our world. It is by definition the science of knowledge and consequently is
often understood as a meta-science: the science of defining what the “scientific
way” is. Mostly, it studies the fundamental choices or givens you take into
account when you attempt to know something. It is against this background the
Kakiika farmer’s community also describe their appropriate technological
knowledge based on scientific tested applied research from national research
stations, on farm trials and extension worker’s technology transfers tracings.
For example, cybernetics
use the model of a system as an epistemological approach to explain facts and
phenomenons. Derived from it, science today uses widely the network model as a
premise to understand various things, for instance weather changes and
forecasts. When they say: "Ok,
let's try to understand the structure of climate change, weather episodes and
agro-ecological zones as a network" this is epistemology in
practice to choose a predisposition. This leads the Kakiika community to focus
its epistemology's personal concern as to investigate the ways that leads them
to think like that.
4.
Ontology:
Ontology is about what things are. What Constitutes
Reality and How Can the community in question Understand Existence? Briefs,
morals, perspective, facts, past events, experienced problems, measurements,
reasoning, culture, social events, meetings, trainings etc. Ontology in this community
is about describing things and their relationships to answer the question like "What is it?" is it a real problem
or pseudo- problem experienced by them. This community was hit by Banana
bacteria wilt disease which wiped utmost significant fields of Banana
plantations. Long spell of dry seasons, less rainfalls etc. Imagine the
community ontology perspective saying "This is that",
and then the epistemology will answer:
“How can you be so sure of what
it is if you don't even know how
you know it? "It is like this or that" and the
other saying "It is just because
you look at it that way". This happens all the time in the
community in question and relatively tries to answer what was discussed under
epistemology section above. Let us take a famous quote from Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:"The world is the totality of facts,
not of things”. This is an ontological assertion - it challenges the
nature of the world (what it
is) - then it leads us to an epistemological consideration - to reconsider how we have looked at the world
before in other words how I have looked at Kakiika community before
According to this community,
actually, ontology to some extremes can be regarded as a particular
epistemological posture. After all, ontology implies that you first accept that
things can "be", i.e. can be defined by their own beings. Even if it
seems obvious, many languages don't have such definitive verb about the nature
of things. Some community members/farmers could absolutely oppose to this idea
in saying that things are fully made of unforeseen events, that context
prevails, or that things exist in their personal experience as (W. James)
postulated in its radical empiricism.
So finally, it seems like
the overlap of those two questions are in fact the origin of metaphysics. The
question: "Are things really like
this or is that just the way community see them?" will always be a
fruitful one. Personally, I have sometimes the feeling that we are in a very
"ontological" period where people loves to define things very
precisely using "data" as an epistemological alibi. Some place, some
time, it should be some other way to know studied community and then things
could get different. That is usually why people come to ask question like yours
- and why others try to answer it :)
5.
Interventions and how were approached
The intervention employed should be s
supported by the following conservation ecology approaches: that is an
ecosystem-based strategy that seeks to control pests or their damage through a
combination of techniques (biological control, pest monitoring against economic
thresholds, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, use of
resistant varieties), using less toxic chemical pesticides only after pest
monitoring indicates their need; Conservation farming like intertwined management practices:
minimal soil disturbance maintenance of a permanent vegetative soil cover,
direct sowing, and sound crop rotation: Uses farmers’ knowledge and a range of
management practices (agro-forestry, Integrated pest management, intercropping,
crop-livestock integration, microclimate management, weather forecast for
future planting seasons) to minimize the need for purchased inputs. It has been observed that an
adjustment of the overall or whole farm enterprise pattern is practiced in
order to increase farm income or reduce income variability by reducing risks of
emerging and re-emerging crop and livestock diseases, natural catastrophes, by
exploiting new market opportunities and existing market niches, and
diversifying not only production but also on-farm processing and other farm
based, income-generating activities in the community.
