A Sufficiency Agriculture Learning Platform for the Development of New Agriculturists

Abstract

The agricultural industry has the problem of price reduction of products and market oversupply. The root cause comes from Thai farmers practicing monoculture, plant and cultivation of the same types of products at the identical time in a nearby area. To address this problem our team developed a mobile application “Kueakul”. This application serves a sufficiency agriculture platform for a new agriculturist to strengthen a cooperative society of agriculturists. The application is accessible through iOS and Android platforms. It provides eight major features: (1) login; (2) agriculturist profile; (3) preference of users; (4) advising services for basic agriculture; (5) allocation of land and plant model; (6) knowledge for mixed crops (7) crop nourishment (watering); (8) and a discussion forum. The applications “Kueakul” can help Thai agriculturists have better understanding of correct information to best-manage their resources. The application was successfully implemented and evaluated by 2 groups—target users and an expert. The results and evaluation found three most useful features: land allocation, watering scheduling and discussion forum with significant potential for sufficiency agriculture.