Evaluation of Existing Architecture for M-Mining Market Access Information Among Sugarcane Farmers in Migori County, Kenya

Abstract

The application of mobile technology in agriculture is expanding rapidly, with new devices and applications being available for everyday use. However, the absence of seamless architecture required to integrate mobile devices with server has limited its use. Ideally this kind of architecture would enhance mining and dissemination of expert information to reach farmers on time. Consequently, farmers can hardly set prices and market their sugarcane products on time hence low income characterized by widespread poverty and low living standards. Although mobile data mining has been applied in other sectors of the economy such as transport and stock market, its application in agriculture is still wanting. There is therefore a need to upscale service oriented mobile data mining techniques to improve discovery and dissemination of agricultural market access knowledge. The objectives of this study were to: (i) examine existing architectures for m-mining agricultural resources; and (ii) evaluate their challenges using scenario and experienced based methods. Results showed the existence of predominantly manual system which was limited by various socio-economic and technological challenges including, inconsistency, error prone, poor internet connectivity. The results also showed that the choice of market for sugarcane greatly depended on the price and mode of payment. The study adopted service oriented architecture as the guiding model. The study recommended integration of mobile phones (SMS technology) as suitable architecture for m-mining and dissemination of market access information.