A KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM TO TRAIN THE SOUTH AFRICAN RURAL FARMERS THROUGH A VSAT-ENABLED INTERNET SERVICE

Year 2008, Volume: 18 Issue: 2, 159 - 164, 01.12.2008

Nomusa Dlodlo Lawrance Hunter Cyprian Cele

Abstract

This paper describes an infrastructure to facilitate training the rural farmer and its impact on agricultural income. It describes a distributed communications architecture that connects VSAT-enabled rural telecentres to a central agricultural centre which disseminates information and provides training to farmers on agriculture. This paper recommends the integration of an intelligent tutoring software system for training rural farmers. Taking into consideration that rural areas might not be close to the National Electricity Grid, the project proposes solar energy as an alternative source of energy to power the remote telecentres. This paper looks at wool contamination as an example. Due to limited access to communication and information rural farmers are not well informed on the effects of high levels of contaminants on the price of that wool. When wool, is contaminated the auction prices are decreased

Keywords

Wool contamination, VSAT, Internet, Knowledge-based, Intelligent tutoring, Expert system

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