ISSN 2348-1218 (print) International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Innovations ISSN 2348-1226 (online) Vol. 9, Issue 2, pp: (78-86), Month: April - June 2021, Available at: www.researchpublish.com
Deconstructing smart farming from the perspective of beekeeping technologies: voices from Lira city, mid-north Uganda 1 1
John Baptist Ogwal, 2David Mwesigwa
MA student, Discipline of Public Administration and Management, Lira University, Uganda
2
Senior lecturer, Discipline of Public Administration and Management, Lira University, Uganda
Abstract: Smart farming in less-developing nations and or societies has been discouraged with a pretext that it is an impossible venture to undertake yet every community in the world can be empowered to embrace smart farming for sustainable development and food security. Examining smart farming openings using bee keeping, builds upon our understanding of traditional systems and provides a lens to examine contemporary mechanisms to transformation while applying smart farming initiatives to practice. We identify three key values of bees, namely medicinal, economic and organic, which provide a clear-cut entry into the thinking of smart farming necessary for examining such technologies. This article presents bee-keeping as implemented by Trained Apiary Farmers (TAF) Agri- Tourism Farm in an urban setting of Lira city, and examines it along the three dimensions of medicinal, economic and organic. We conclude that adoption of bee-keeping technologies offers a great hope for the city’s economy, therapeutic supplements, and organic needs in countless ways. The study is a huge boost to the academia seeing that medics are now turning to herbal curation, in which bee-keeping is a potential resource. Keywords: Bee-keeping, smart farming, economic, medicinal, organic.
1. INTRODUCTION A visit to any smart farmer to identify any technology being practiced covering key issues and aspects of such a technology. It is upon this background that in February 2021, a visitation was made to Trained Apiary Farmers (TAF) Agri- Tourism Farm located in Telela cell, Telela Ward, Lira City - Uganda. The Farm however is venturing into organic farming practices of many enterprises such as Apiary, Local Chicken Farming, Piggery, Rabbit rearing, Fish farming, citrus farming among others. Trained Apiary Farmers (TAF) Assured Mixed Enterprises started as a small scale farm in 2008, with a primary intention of increasing the honey production, fruits production and mixed farming as a business. TAF Assured Mixed Enterprises is registered with the Uganda Registration Service Bureau (URSB) as a Limited liability Company, whose Managing Director is Mr. Tom Anyii Okello. The farm is seated on twelve acres of land partly traditional and partly bought due to the increasing growth of the farm. However, for the purpose of this study a deeper look was carried out into Apiculture which is the rearing of domestic bees. Background The origin of Beekeeping is as old as the history of human beings. In the 15000 BC, cave paintings shows drawings related to beekeeping. There are Sumerians and Hittites in Anatolia, in China and India in Asia, in Egypt civilization in Africa and in Europe, there are beekeeping information on tablets, hieroglyphs. Rudimentary and primitive hives were used in the practice of beekeeping before and in the middle Ages, and even in some regions. Beekeeping, which was carried out under primitive conditions until the 17th century, gained a scientific quality during these dates. The biology of bee and bee colony started to be understood and modern bee hives started to be used. Africa is more fortunate than other continents in terms of variety of flowering plants and richness of bee breeds. However, it lags behind the World ranking in
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