KAKIIKA CROP-LIVESTOCK INTEGRATED FARMING COMMUNITY IN MBARARA DISTRICT:

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.