Managing agriculture knowledge: role of information

and communication technology

Ahmed Rafea
Computer Science and Engineering Department
American University in Cairo
The emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the last
decade has opened new avenues in knowledge management that could play
important roles in meeting the prevailing challenges related to sharing, exchanging
and disseminating knowledge and technologies. ICT allows capitalizing to a greater
extent on the wealth of information and knowledge available for Agriculture
Knowledge, Science and Technology (AKST). The ultimate objectives of AKST
activities are to come up with results that can advance research more in certain
areas, and engender technologies that AKST stakeholders can use to increase
production, conserve the environment, etc. The following paragraphs will discuss the
knowledge management challenges, explain how ICT could play a role in addressing
them, and highlight an example of an institution in the Egyptian Agriculture Research
Center whose main function is to conduct applied research in ICT in Agriculture.

Challenges related to sharing, exchanging and disseminating

knowledge and technologies
The first challenge is the poor mechanisms and infrastructure for sharing and
exchanging agriculture knowledge generated from research at national and regional
levels. Many research activities are repeated due to the lack of such mechanisms and
infrastructure at the national level. Researchers can find research papers published in
international journals and conferences more easily than finding research papers
published nationally in local journals, conferences, theses and technical reports. The
second challenge is the inefficient mechanisms and infrastructure for transferring
technologies produced as the result of research to growers either directly or through
intermediaries (extension subsystem). Knowledge and technologies fostering
agricultural production and environment conservation are examples. Although many
extension documents are produced by national agriculture research and extension
systems to inform growers about the latest recommendations concerning different
agricultural practices, these documents are not disseminated, updated or managed
to respond to the needs of extension workers, advisers and farmers. This is also true
for technical reports, books and research papers related to production. The third
challenge is keeping the indigenous knowledge as a heritage for new generations. It
is available through experienced growers and specialists in different commodities.
These inherited agricultural practices are rarely documented, but they embody a
wealth of knowledge that researchers need to examine thoroughly. The forth
challenge is easily accessing and availing economic and social knowledge to
different stakeholders at operational, management and decision-making levels, so
that those responsible will be able to make appropriate decisions regarding the profit
making of certain technologies and their effect on resource-poor farmers.

ICT Role in Agriculture Knowledge Management

Knowledge sharing, exchanging and dissemination are elements in a broader theme
which is knowledge management. The central purpose of knowledge management is
to transform information and intellectual assets into enduring value (Metcalfe, 2005).
The basic idea is to strengthen, improve and propel the organization by using the
wealth of information and knowledge that the organization and its members

collectively possess (Milton, 2003). It has been pointed out that a large part of
knowledge is not explicit but tacit (Schreiber et al., 1999). This is true for knowledge
in agriculture where a lot of good practices are transferred without being well
documented in books, papers or extension documents. To manage the knowledge
properly, ICT is needed. In effect, there are many information technologies that can
be used for knowledge management. The following paragraphs describe these
technologies and emphasize their roles in agriculture knowledge management.
Content management system in its wider sense including data bases and
multimedia, is the core technology of information and knowledge management. This
technology can be used in different applications:

Building a national agriculture research information system (NARIS) needs to

include research outcomes, projects, institutions and researchers in every
country, and a regional research information system that works as a portal for all
the NARIS. An example NARIS has been developed at the agriculture research
center in Egypt (ARC, 2007).
Developing an information system of indigenous agricultural practices can enable
researchers to examine this knowledge and decide on its usefulness for
sustainable development. Such a system will also keep this knowledge for future
generations before it disappears as a result of advanced technologies.
Developing an information system recording matured technologies that on a trial
basis have proven successful and success stories that have achieved economic
growth will strengthen the interaction between inventors and innovators. This will
lead to an innovation-driven economic growth paradigm.
Storing and retrieving images, videotapes and audiotapes related to different
agricultural activities.

Geographic information systems (GIS) are needed to store databases about natural
resources with a graphical user interface that enables users to access these data
easily using geographical maps.
Decision support system techniques are needed in many applications:
Simulating and modeling methods can be used to build computer systems that
can model and simulate the effect of different agricultural production policies on
the economy and the environment to help top management make decisions.
Using expert systems technology to improve crop management and track its
effect on conserving natural resources is elaborated in Rafea (1999). This
technology may also be appropriate for keeping indigenous knowledge (Rafea,
1995, 1998, 2000). Expediting the expert systems development by generating
agriculture specific tools to overcome the well known problem of knowledge
acquisition is addresses in Abdul-Hadi et. al. (2006). Enhancing the explanation
capabilities of expert systems developed for agriculture was also investigated by
Said et. al. (2009)
Modern ICTInternet and Web technologyis needed to make these systems
available regionally and globally. Accessing the Internet will bring a wealth of
information to all agriculture stakeholders in rural and urban areas and will help in
overcoming the digital divide. As most farmers in CWANA have no hands-on
experience or access to digital networks, leaders of national agricultural research and
extension systems should be encouraged to consider the ICT option. Training farmers
and extension workers, including women, in ICT will help them access a lot of useful

information if each country tries to develop contents in the language people are
using.
Text Mining is being currently investigated in two applications in the Central
Laboratory for Agricultural Expert System (CLAES) in Egypt:
Developing an Intelligent focused search engine which aims at extracting the
appropriate textual segments responding to a user query. In order to do that there
is a need to develop ontology or extend an existing ontology. In agriculture there
is the AGROVOC developed by FAO but we found many local concepts instances
that need to be part of this ontology. Some work was done by Hazman et. al.
(2009) to learn ontology from textual documents. It is also needed to segment
document into passages that are semantically coherent. El-Shayeb et. al. (2006,
2007) worked on segmenting html and textual documents. Annotating these
segments semantically using the ontology concepts is found necessarily (ElBeltagy et. al., 2007)
Mining growers problems database which is part of the Virtual Extension and
Research Communication Network (VERCON) (CLAES 2002; FAO, 2003) to discover
the best practices from the solutions provided by the human experts and find out
whether there are any discrepancies in their recommendations.

Using ICT in Agriculture in Egypt

In 1987, officials at the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and land reclamation
recognized expert systems as an appropriate technology for speeding development
in the agricultural sector. To realize this technology, in 1989, the ministry initiated the
Expert Systems for Improved Crop Management Project (ESICM) in conjunction with
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The project began in mid-1989 and the
Central Laboratory for Agricultural Expert Systems (CLAES) joined the Agricultural
Research Center (ARC) in 1991. Through the development, implementation and
evaluation of knowledge-based decision support systems, CLAES is helping farmers
throughout Egypt optimize the use of resources and maximize food production. A
dozen expert systems have been developed for horticulture and field crop
management. In 2000, the Virtual Extension and Research Communication Network
(VERCON) project was funded by the FAO Technical Cooperation Program (TCP) to
develop a Web-based information system to strengthen the link between research
and extension (CLAES, 2002; FAO, 2003). This network has been extended to include
other stakeholders, and other services through a project funded by Italian Debt Swap
Program and executed by FAO in collaboration with CLAES (CLAES, 2008). Several
expert systems have been made available on this network in addition to other
modules. In collaboration with ICARDA, CLAES has developed three regional expert
systems for wheat (CLAES, 2006c), faba (CLAES, 2006d) and barley (ICARDA, 2006).
CLAES also developed the National Agricultural Research Management Information
System (NARIMS) through a project funded by FAO/TCP. This system has five modules:
Institutes Information System, Researchers Information Systems, Projects Information
Systems, Publication Information System, and National Research Program Information
System (CLAES, 2007).

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