| dc.description |
Agriculture is a dominant activity globally as without which, food would not be produced,
consequently depriving human development. Despite the massive role of agriculture in food
security, its growth in crop production in Tanzania is being threatened by various challenges
including limited access to agricultural information. This study focused on developing a
mobile phone-based application for improved crop production recommendations. The study
survey involved a total of 156 simple randomly selected respondents in Arusha district to
assess whether or not they know how or can use mobile phones to search for internet-based
agricultural services as a base for developing a mobile phone-based agricultural information
app, and the data collected were analyzed by tableau software. The results show that about
three-quarters of respondents possess smartphones and nearly one-third (32.7%) of all
respondents use internet-based platforms to search for agriculture information. In terms of
the specific need for a well-structured system such as the use of agriculture apps that would
quicken access to agriculture information, 75.6% of all respondents said that they would
appreciate having it. Also, about 80% of all respondents indicate the readiness for such
platforms if availed online for the facilitation of processes in accessing agricultural
information. Following these results, a Rapid Application Development (RAD) model was
used along with software specific for the development of a mobile app and environments
such as Android Studio, PostgreSQL Database and PostGIS to develop an android
application. The developed mobile application takes into consideration soil types of different
locations found within the Arusha district. Moreover, the app provides the farmer with
information concerning soil type found in a specific location. Finally, a testing survey from
the farmer’s acceptance concluded that this mobile app was accepted to be used by the
farmers. Thus, the developed app is recommended for further testing and where possible,
improvement on wider coverage and more functions that farmers will need in the future. |
|