Role of Technology Stewards to Promote ICT-Enable Technologies for Knowledge Sharing Among the Smallholder Farming Communities

Abstract

Agricultural knowledge plays a pivotal role in the process of transforming the livelihoods of those farmers relied on subsistence agriculture towards agricultural systems with enhanced productivity and sustainability. For this purpose, the farming communities should be enriched with both 'indigenous' and 'scientific' knowledge so that they can attain the competitive edge in their operations. Development of credible approaches to "share" the knowledge in hand with them has become a challenge at present. This paper explores the applicability of the concept of 'Technology Stewardship' in order to promote sustainable knowledge sharing among the smallholder forming communities in Sri Lanka. A community consultative process adopted with those officials ("Sponsors") and a cross section of smallholder agriculture farmers (n=183) in the Batticaloa and Kurunegala districts through a series of structured questionnaire-based face-to-face interviews and key-informant surveys helped to gather baseline data/information and to select and train six Technology Stewards (TEs). This was followed by a number of field experiments ("Campaigns") conducted with smallholder farmers (n=260) "with" and "without" the assistance of those TEs during April 2014 to July 2015. The 'FrontlineSMS' (a low-cost, user-friendly, free and open source text messaging software) was applied to evaluate the effectiveness of knowledge sharing through the TEs work with these communities, it was found that the use of "Texting" and "Voice" facilities for communication purposes has been increased by 22% and 8%, respectively, when the process has been assisted by the TEs. This implies that TEs can effectively be utilized, with capacity development through intensive training modules, to reduce the transaction costs associated with sharing of information with formers, starting from the lowest socio-economic category in such communities (i.e. the "Base-of-the-Pyramid").