Agricultural Knowledge Systems

This is a chapter from ‘Livestock management strategies and challenges’ Livestock production is the mainstay of the economy of many of the 14 countries in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. The climate, topography and level of development is far from uniform and this has given rise to a variety of livestock production systems. These include extensive grazing on rangelands in arid and semi-arid regions, through various agro-pastoral systems and more intensive (e.g., dairy) production systems that rely on irrigated forage/fodder. At the other end of the spectrum there are highly intensive systems to raise chickens, for eggs and meat. The chapter outlines the characteristics of these systems and discusses problems and prospects.

This paper examines the concept of indigenous knowledge and its role in the politics of indigenous movements from a political ecology perspective. It offers an empirical analysis of indigenous knowledge among the Mandi
(Mande/Garo), a matrilineal ethnic group in Bangladesh. This study shows that Mandi farmers do not identify their knowledge as indigenous although they identified themselves as different from the majority population of the country. Drawing from the literature and ethnography, I find that indigenous knowledge as a concept is untenable, both theoretically and empirically. However, the concept is very popular in the development discourse and in indigenous movement. At one hand, the international development organizations use it as a tool for making the indigenous habitat available for capitalist market penetration, on the other, the indigenous people regard this concept as a way to get their voices heard in the local and global development planning. Indigenous knowledge lives because it serves the role of a weapon for both sides of the development apparatus.

Este artículo tiene como objetivo precisar las relaciones de pertinencia entre el Sistema de Conocimiento Popular Agrícola (SCPA) y el Sistema de Conocimiento Académico (SCA), como base para promover la transformación de la dinámica productiva vinculada con un proceso de desarrollo local al nivel rural. Tales relaciones se delimitan a partir de la revisión de literatura especializada, considerando como marco referencial al conocimiento popular agrícola y la nueva ruralidad; así como el enfoque socioformativo basado en competencias y el desarrollo local como teorías de partida, en un estudio que se ubica epistemológicamente dentro del racionalismo deductivo. Los principales hallazgos teóricos dan cuenta que 64% de las 11 variables estructurales del SCPA (con valores de inconsistencia y baja inconsistencia) no presentaron contradicción para vincularse con las competencias que conforman el SCA. Por su parte, 70% de las 11 competencias curriculares resultaron ser compatibles (altamente consistentes y consistentes) con las dimensiones del desarrollo local consideradas. Con base en estos hallazgos se concluye que el modelo resultante podría aplicarse en cualquier contexto territorial donde se desee fomentar la transformación de la estructura productiva para alcanzar (o encauzar) el desarrollo local rural.
Palabras clave: conocimiento popular agrícola, conocimiento académico, desarrollo de competencias, desarrollo rural, desarrollo local

Popular agricultural knowledge and Academic systems
in the context of local development at the rural level
Abstract
This article aims to clarify relevance relationships between the (Popular) Agricultural Knowledge System (PAKS) and the Academic Knowledge System (AKS), as a basis to promote transformations on the productive dynamic linked to a local development process, at the rural level. Those relationships were delimited based on a literature review, taking popular agricultural knowledge and new rurality as theoretical framework, together with the socio-educational approach based on competences and the local development as starting theories; all these as a part of a study that is epistemologically located within the deductive rationalism. The main theoretical findings are that 64% out of 11 structural variables belonging to the PAKS (with values of low inconsistency-inconsistency) had no contradiction to bond with the skills and competences that make up the AKS. Meanwhile, 70% out of 11 curricular skills and abilities included by the model were found to be compatible (highly consistent-consistent) with the dimensions of local development considered. Based on these findings, it is concluded that the resulting model could be applied in almost any territorial context in order to promote the transformation of the productive structure to achieve (or to channel) local rural development.
Key words: Agricultural folk knowledge, academic knowledge, skills and competences development, rural development, local development

The rapid increase in the publication of knowledge bases as Linked Open Data (LOD) warrants serious consideration from all concerned, as this phenomenon will potentially scale exponentially. This paper will briefly describe the evolution of the LOD, the emerging World-Wide Semantic Web (WWSW), and explore the scalability and performance features of the Service Oriented Architecture that forms the foundation of the Semantic Technology Platform developed at MIMOS Bhd., for addressing the challenges posed by the Intelligent Future Internet.

The main aim of the report is to provide a comprehensive description of the effectiveness of advisory
services for small-scale farmers, providing a picture of the services from the perspective of the farmers
and some key advisors. In Portugal the case study focused on new small-scale farmers in small fruit
production, in the central-north region of Portugal, specifically blueberries. The report includes a general
description of the case study, methods and data collection, results, discussion and conclusion.
This report represents an output of the PRO AKIS project (Prospects for Farmers’ Support: Advisory
Services in the European Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems’). It is one of 4 country reports
that were produced, in 2014, by project partners (Portugal, UK, Poland and Bulgaria) compiling a
description for advisory services to small-scale farmers. The Advisory Service is one component of the
Agricultural Knowledge and Information System (AKIS) and provides support to farmers. Findings from
the 4 country reports for the Work Package 4 (WP4) will be presented at a regional workshop in Bulgaria
during January 2015, and the result will be discussed with stakeholders and experts, and the feedback
integrated in the reports.
In Portugal, Blueberry production is a new crop that has been introduced in the central-north region
(Sever do Vouga County) during the 90s, when the Carel Lockorn Foundation experimented with blueberry
plots in the municipalities of Sever do Vouga and Trancoso. They verified that this area had conditions to
ensure the production of blueberries. The county of Sever do Vouga has ideal conditions, associated to
good characteristics of soil, availability of water and an adequate microclimate. After the initial wave of
blueberry production, in the 90s, there were another two waves: a rebirth in 2006 and a boom in 2011,
giving new impulses to blueberry production. This study includes basically, the last two cycles, a period
that has been marked by a weak national economy in financial crisis with a high unemployment rate. To
fight against this situation and the desire by local leaders to cooperate together to alter the rural
economy, the alternative for many people has been to take advantage of family lands (that in many cases
had been abandoned) and create their own employment or supplement their current professional income.
As a result, the region within the study witnessed an expanding adherence to blueberry production
requiring additional knowledge needs and demands for this "new crop" in Portugal.
In response, today, the farmer advisory service is a mix of private enterprises, farmer based organizations
(FBOs) and public institutions that provide advice and services about how to plant, grow, produce and
harvest blueberries, as well as how to package for sale, and provides a central location to store and next
sell the product from the contiguous production area of the Portuguese central-north region. This interconnected
system resembles a commodity-based extension (UNDP, 1991) or advisory service that is
predominately privatised. The private-public mix is also promoting the entry and installation of farmers
into the blueberry production area.

The pursuit of a competitive “knowledge-based society” in Slovenia has shaped a new mission of academic institutions in their transfer of knowledge to practice. These institutions are expected to link basic and applied research to the rapid transfer of their academic results to knowledge users and consumers in order to contribute to economic development. Such reasoning is also implicitly involved in the imagining of knowledge transfer to agricultural practice. The Slovenian strategy of agricultural development highlights knowledge and its transmission to practice as a key driver of increased labour productivity and competitiveness of farm holdings. However, the academic institutions of a relatively well-established network of formal and informal agricultural education have substantially reduced their transfer of knowledge to practice. What determines such a curtailed transmission of knowledge was the basic research question of the targeted research project entitled Challenges and Needs of Agricultural Knowledge Transfer in Slovenia. This article is limited to the understandings of the functioning of knowledge transfer among the knowledge providers from the faculties and secondary schools. The results show that irrespective of the primary mission of educational institutions, i.e. the transfer of knowledge into practice, the institutions reveal two cases at either end of the spectrum: a self-contained faculty educational system and the open consortium of agricultural secondary schools. While the faculties have adopted the working strategy ‘The more efficient you are as a researcher, the less concerned you are with the transfer of knowledge to practice,’ the secondary schools for agriculture have cooperated on joint projects that have accelerated and improved knowledge transfer to the “real environment”.

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to analyse the use of Communities of Practice and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to enhance knowledge sharing between researchers and advisors. The associated research question is to what extent ICT supported a virtual Community of Practice and has been effective in counteracting fragmentation between esearch and advisory systems in terms of knowledge sharing between these two pillars of the Italian Agricultural Knowledge System (AKS).
Design/Methodology/approach: The paper uses a mixed methods approach: a questionnaire submitted to the Community of Practice participants on their experiences, observation of interaction between Community of Practice participants and data on the use of the ICT platform.
Findings: The ICT supported Community of Practice approach appears to improve knowledge sharing between researchers and advisors, and also draws in other actors of the broader Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System in which the AKS is embedded. However, ICT based tools alone are not sufficient and need to be complemented with face-to-face (non-virtual) interactions. A clear theoretical implication of this study is that this is an iterative process in which virtual and non-virtual interaction mutually reinforce each other: ICT interaction spurs real life and face-to-face interaction, and ICT supports follow-up on real life face-to-face interaction.
Practical Implications: Communities of Practice can be a useful tool for knowledge sharing between research and advisory systems, but should have a degree of flexibility in terms of the topics they address and should accommodate new members when appropriate. ICT is supportive, but should be complemented by real life meetings.
Originality/Value: The paper connects recent frameworks of the use of Communities of Practice with literature on ICT in agriculture and adds insights on the contribution of combining virtual and non-virtual interaction in Communities of Practice aimed at knowledge sharing.