Abstract
Recent researches have shown that a food security strategy that dependent entirely on exotic crops, which are greatly affected by sporadic rainfall, is not sustainable. There is a need to shift to indigenous crops that are more tolerant to unpredictable weather patterns. Little shareable knowledge exists on the production of these crops; the production knowledge is passed by word of mouth and demonstration across generations, and sometimes lost in the process. This research seeks to show how this gap can be addressed using a knowledge management system (KMS). One of the key factors that distinguishes the intelligent production process of the 21st century is the emphasis on data, information and ultimately knowledge. The importance of KMS in agriculture cannot be over emphasized. This research started with an exploratory pre-study to identify the key functionality that needed to be captured by the KMS. The pre-study brought to the fore the need for the use of technology information in improving the sorghum production process. Three key themes emerged from the pre-study, namely identification of best practices, convenient way of disseminating information to stakeholders, and finally enhancement of research processes through use of information technology. These functional needs formed the basis for the development of the KMS. Further works can be undertaken to expand the solution to include more weather tolerant crops patterns, in order to provide a wider crops option to smallholder farmers.
Highlights
Food insecurity is a real issue in Sub Saharan African Countries
We carried out an exploratory study to identify the key aspects of the sorghum production process, which needs to be captured by the knowledge management system (KMS)
The secondary data was explicit in nature, from research publications and publicly available data sets on sorghum production from organizations such as Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and the Ministry of Agriculture of Kenya
Summary
Food insecurity is a real issue in Sub Saharan African Countries. The level of food insecurity in these countries is about 27.7% [1]. Researches have progressively shown that traditional crops such as cassava, sorghum, millet and African peas have the potential to end severe food insecurity due to their tolerance to drought and ability to thrive under different types of soils [4]. These crops build a socio-economic resilience into the community in the sense that they guarantee poor communities will feed themselves. Traditional crops farmers tend to know more about their local agroecosystems than anyone else does This kind of knowledge is usually preserved by adults and passed down to younger generations by word of mouth, practice and informal educational system originating from the elaborate social interaction systems. This paper aims to develop an approach for collecting best
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