UGANDA
MARTYRS UNIVERSITY
Course: Knowledge Systems for Agro ecological
Interventions
Assignment
One
Lecturer:
Prof. Zake Whycliff
Student:
Ekwangu Joseph
Student
Number: 2018-PH41-1005
Question:
Identify an Agricultural community and determine in that community:
·
Knowledge systems
·
Agro ecological approaches
·
Epistemology
·
Interventions and how they were
approached.
Date:
15th November 2018
The
Agricultural community considered is the small holder farmers in Amuria
district
Introduction
Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding
of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions, or skills,
which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering,
or learning. Knowledge can refer to a theoretical or practical understanding of
a subject. (Wikipedia)
Knowledge is
a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such
as facts, information, description,
or skills which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving,
discovering or learning (Wikipedia)
Knowledge can refer to a theoretical or practical understanding
of a subject. It can be implicit (as with practical skill or expertise) or
explicit (as with the theoretical understanding of a subject); it can be more
or less formal or systematic. (Boghossian, 2007) In philosophy,
the study of knowledge is called epistemology;
the philosopher Plato famously
defined knowledge as "justified true belief", though this
definition is now thought by some analytic philosopher to be problematic
because of the Gettier problems, while others defend the platonic
definition (Oxford, 2010). However, several definitions
of knowledge and theories to explain it exist.
A
system is a complex or an assembly of components
interacting together with the relationships among them that permits the
identification of a boundary maintaining entity or process (Alexander, L., and
Krippner, S., 1998).
A knowledge system is a program for extending and/or querying
a knowledge base and a
knowledge base is a collection of knowledge expressed using some formal knowledge representation
language (Moser P.K., 1989). It
is therefore a collection/assemblage
of different knowledge bases (Boghossian, 2007).
According to Murugesan, (2009) knowledge systems are global systems for
sustainable development and acquired through experience, education, perceiving,
discovery and learning (Audi, R., 2010). In Amuria and specifically among the small
holder farmers, the existing knowledge systems identified include the
following:
Non-governmental
organizations (NGOs). These
organizations are a source of knowledge through discovery of new ideas,
learning and sharing of experiences from other NGOs, farmers and researchers.
Clans: This is a source of
heritage, where different cultural ways of doing things, learning and sharing
of experiences are done. It’s a very rich source of knowledge as it encompasses
diversity of cultural beliefs and knowledge. For example use of herbs for
treating a number of diseases including snake bites.
Traditional healers:
This is one big source of knowledge and as a system in encompasses different
beliefs from different traditional healers using different herbal medicines
thus biodiversity utilization and conservation. Knowledge is generated through
experience, believes and perceptions.
Primary, secondary and tertiary institutions
of learning: These provide majorly scientific source of
knowledge derived from experience, learning and research. It’s the main
knowledge system present in many communities worldwide.
Farmer and community based organizations:
In this type of knowledge system, knowledge is acquired experience, leaning and
through cultural beliefs and research.
Religious institutions: This
is one biggest knowledge system; they use different theories to explain
phenomena and knowledge. For example the theory of creation dated way back
before Christ which is metaphysical. They also ground their knowledge through
empirical evidence as explained in the teaching of Jesus Christ. In addition,
this knowledge base is ground on research, beliefs and experience.
Government
institutions like the lower local governments: This
is one of the existing knowledge systems. Knowledge is generated through
learning, experience and some bit of research.
Agro-ecological approaches in Amuria-small
holder farming community
Agro-ecology
is the study of the interaction between plants, animals, humans and the
environment within agricultural systems (Dalgaard et al., 2003)
Agro-ecology
has three practical forms; a scientific discipline, an agricultural practice,
and a social movement.
a) a scientiļ¬c discipline involving the holistic study of agro-ecosystems, including human and environmental elements
b) a set of principles and practices to enhance the resilience
and ecological, socio-economic and cultural
sustainability of farming systems
c) a movement seeking a new way of considering agriculture and its relationships with society
Amuria
community practice a number of Agro-ecological interventions, common in
practice are:
·
Crop
diversity, small holder farmers grow a variety of crops as a mechanism to guard
against crop failure, as means of nutrient recycling, dietary diversity and increasing
productivity per unit area.
·
Farmers
also practice application of both organic and in organic fertilizers is
increase productivity of the soil.
·
Farmers
are in groups to ease marketing of their farm products, in addition they save
lend money in these groups and therefore use these as mechanism of solving
social challenges they are faced with.
·
In
this farming communities there are churches and traditional healers that deal
with spiritual wellbeing within the communities
·
Farmers
also use local knowledge in solving problems they are faced with, for example
the use of neem tree extracts in the control of pests and diseases in crops and
also treatment of diseases in humans. There is still some aspect of
biodiversity conservation though its being threatened as land is getting
smaller and smaller. Community members have therefore started encroaching on
the marginal land areas where diversity of tree, shrubs and other planted species
had inhabited.
·
Within
these farming communities, there are churches and spiritual leaders that help
farmers meet their spiritual wellbeing.
·
Farmers
also practice crop rotation and intercropping cereals and legumes as a way of
increasing crop yield and improving soil fertility.
·
Lastly there are a number of cultural practices performed
for example training young men and boys to do hunting and gathering while girls
are trained on how to cook traditional foods maintain a house, welcome and
entertain visitors.
Epistemology: The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge
itself, its possibility, scope, and general basis (Scotland, 2012). More broadly: How
do we go about knowing things? Or how do we separate true ideas from false
ideas? Or how do we know what is true? Or "how can
we be confident when we have located 'truth'?" "What are the
systematic ways we can determine when something is good or bad? Epistemology
may be understood in general terms as a branch of philosophy that deals with
searching for knowledge (ttp://www.webpages.uidaho.edu, 2018).
On the other hand, Alston,
(1989) and ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,'' (2018), defined epistemology as the study of knowledge. Epistemologists are concerned with a number of tasks,
which we might sort into two categories.
First, we must determine
the nature of
knowledge; that is, what does it mean to say that someone knows, or fails to
know, something? This is a matter of understanding what knowledge is, and how
to distinguish between cases in which someone knows something and cases in
which someone does not know something. While there is some general agreement
about some aspects of this issue, we shall see that this question is much more
difficult than one might imagine.
Second, we must determine
the extent of
human knowledge; that is, how much do we, or can we, know? How can we use our
reason, our senses, the testimony of others, and other resources to acquire
knowledge? Are there limits to what we can know? For instance, is some things
unknowable? Is it possible that we do not know nearly as much as we think we
do? Should we have a legitimate worry about skepticism, the view that we
do not or cannot know anything at all?
Ontology: The branch of metaphysics (philosophy concerning the overall
nature of what things are) is concerned with identifying, in the most general
terms, the kinds of things that actually exist (Staab and Studer, 2009). In other words addressing the question: What is
existence? And what is the nature of existence? When we ask deep questions about "what is the nature of
the universe?" or "Is there a god?" or "What happens to us
when we die?" or "What principles govern the properties of
matter?" we are asking inherently ontological questions (ttp://www.webpages.uidaho.edu, 2018).
The
word “ontology” is used with different meanings in different communities.
Following (Guarino and Giaretta, 1995), we distinguish
between the use as an uncountable noun (“Ontology,” with uppercase initial) and
the use as a countable noun (“an ontology,” with lowercase initial) in the
remainder of this chapter. In the first case, we refer to a philosophical
discipline, namely the branch of philosophy which deals with the nature and
structure of “reality.” Aristotle dealt with this subject in his Metaphysics (Borst and Borst, 1997) and defined
Ontology as the science of “being qua
being,” i.e., the study of attributes that belong to things because of their
very nature. Unlike the experimental sciences, which aim at discovering and
modeling reality under a certain perspective, Ontology focuses on the nature
and structure of things per se, independently of any further considerations,
and even independently of their actual existence. For example, it makes perfect
sense to study the Ontology of unicorns and other fictitious entities: although
they do not have actual existence, their nature and structure can be described
in terms of general categories and relations. In the second case, which
reflects the most prevalent use in Computer Science, we refer to an ontology as
a special kind of information object or computational artifact. According to (Gruber, 1995, 1993), the account of
existence in this case is a pragmatic one: “For AI systems, what ‘exists’ is
that which can be represented.”
Ecological interventions and how
they were approached
Soil and water conservation
Practices
such as intercropping, crop rotation, incorporation of organic residue to the
soil, fertilizer application and cultivation across the slop and leaving grass
bands in between the fields are meant to reduce water run of, conserve
Bio-diversity conservation
A
variety of crops are planted either in one garden or in different gardens and
trees and shrubs on bands separating fields. These trees and shrubs also play a
role in reducing the speed of weed.
Credit and loan associations
Most
of the farmers who are in groups also belong to savings and loan association.
This is a mechanism of providing financial solutions to the needs of the small
holder farming households.
Pest and disease control and
management
Farmers
often use their indigenous knowledge in predicting the outbreak of pest and
diseases for example presence of some vegetation and wind as an indicator of
army worm outbreak. They also use tree and shrub extracts to control pests and
diseases for example neem and Mexican marigold extracts are used in the control
of aphids and leaf hoppers in legumes.
Climate smart agriculture
Climate
smart agricultural technologies are demonstrated to farmers by NGOs and
government extension workers. The farmers capacity is being built on practices
such as sack gardening, kitchen gardening bucket gardening and green house
gardening as a mechanism to adaptation of climate smart agriculture.
Conclusion
There
are a number of knowledge systems in the communities that can be integrated to
the known/mainstream ecological practices to contribute to the sustainable
management and productivity of the eco-system for the benefit of the next
generation.
References
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