ISSN 2348-1218 (print) International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Innovations ISSN 2348-1226 (online) Vol. 9, Issue 2, pp: (71-77), Month: April - June 2021, Available at: www.researchpublish.com
“I can make use of a manual water-pump to enhance smart farming”: voices from Lira City, mid-North Uganda 1 1
James Bond Opok, 2David Mwesigwa
MA researchers, Discipline of Public Administration and Management, Lira University, Uganda
2
Senior lecturer, Discipline of Public Administration and Management, Lira University, Uganda
Abstract: Smart farming has become a world-wide sensation and Uganda is no exemption to this movement. In Uganda, the impact of climate change presents farmers with new challenges and so is the aggregate demand for food in the country. Farmers, in Uganda, represent the biggest constituency and the situation is less likely to change for many years to come. However, there have been a substantial amount of studies, reports documented as well as investigations being circulated with a consistent inference that there are tenacious dangers facing the farmer in Uganda. Thus, evolving and executing proper policies, guidelines and programmes that are aimed to alleviate dangers facing the farmer need to become a pre-eminence for the government than it presently does. Winning the farmer into water-pump technologies as one of the means to enhancing smart farming is one such optimism seeing that the dry spell is now overriding the wet season and the farmer can no longer rely solely on rain fed agri-production. In this study, we examine the budding potential enshrined in this endeavour by looking at manual water pumping in Ober parish in Lira city, mid-north Uganda. It is concluded that this technology has the prospect of transforming a smallholder farmer into a smart farmer thereby the aggregate output per unit. Keywords: Water pump, smart farming, smallholder farmer, farming.
1. INTRODUCTION This part of the survey report handles background of the selected technology and is mainly comprised of related literature from different sources. According to Collins English dictionary (1979), farming is the activity of growing crops or keeping animals on a farm. Farming is an activity that requires water throughout. Farming takes place in various forms. It entails crop growing which very much need water, animal production where different species of animals are kept, fruit growing, and flower gardening. Farming is of different types which include chicken keeping, goats keeping, mushroom production, urban farming and cultivation of food crops. Farmers involved in animal production and other agricultural production need water for irrigating their crops and for animal consumption. Unfortunately, water becomes scarce during some times of the farming seasons because of climatic changes. In the absence of rain, crops do not do well and this requires farmers to have reserves of water for use in their farms during times when it is not raining. Smart farming is now used as a solution to problems that affect farmers as a result of unfavourable climatic changes. Smart farming according to Bernstein (2019) is a management concept focused on providing agricultural industry with the infrastructure to leverage advanced technology including big data, the cloud and the internet of things for tracking, monitoring, automating and analysing operations. Other scholars referred to smart farming as the 4.0 green revolution in the field of agriculture combining agriculture methodologies with technology sensors and Actuators, information and communication technology, Internet of Things, Robotics and Drones to achieve desired efficiencies of production with managed cost. According to a survey, eighty % of farmers in the United States of America and twenty four % of farmers in the United kingdoms have already started using smart farming tools. Smart irrigation is thus part of the smart farming systems that are being used by farmers today.
Page | 71 Research Publish Journals