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Subsistence agriculture is when a farmer lives on a small amount of land and produces enough food to feed his or her household and have a small cash crop. The goal of subsistence agriculture is to produce enough food to ensure the survival of the individual family. If there is excess food produced, it is sold locally to other families or individuals. Subsistence agriculture varies greatly from industrialized agriculture in terms of the farming methods used. This type of agriculture is very labor-intensive because humans and animals do all of the work and only hand tools and simple machines are used. It has been the leading sector in production of high consumption of farm products over the pass years.
This study comes in, after realizing that farmers within the regions undergo agricultural production challenges, their needs for having a harmonized system that should be used for supply of their products for a wider range of consumers who are spread across the county. The research carried out (according to FOA 2011) shows that they are few technological advancements that focuses on the management of subsistence agricultural production activities and also there is no any web-based systems developed to address on the issues of what farmers want to sell, their prices on the farm produce, what type of crops are mostly sold, where are they sold and where are they grown within Nyeri county. Therefore, employing the powerful tools of GIS in the development and management of agricultural subsistence product will be of great importance to the county’s development plan.
This research has focused on the development and implementation of a Web-based agricultural subsistence management system for the county that will have a custom-made, comprehensive and user-friendly geovisualization interface that will integrate and manage data from several small agricultural enterprises. Therefore, the approach taken to achieve the set objectives will involves carrying out several steps: farmers and consumers need evaluation, data collection, data processing, database development and maintenance, analysis, system development and implementation. Intended to provide information that will influence agricultural productivity in a variety of ways and also be of use to the farmers, consumers, government agricultural planners and decision makers in making better agribusiness decisions. |
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