ORAL - International Conference of Agricultural Engineering

Children As Field Sensors – A Trial in VietnamSeishi Ninomiya 1 *, Yumi Mori 2 , Toshiya Takasaki 2 , Yasukazu Okano 2 , TakaharuKameoka 3 , Takashi Togami 3 , Kyosuke Yamamoto 3 , Akanae Takezaki 4 , RyoichiIkeda 5 , Toru Ishida 61 ISAS, The University of Tokyo, Nishitokyo, Tokyo 188-0002, Japan2 NPO Pangaean, Kyoto, Japan3 Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnam4 NARC, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Tsukuba, Japan5 Tokyo University of Agriculture, Tokyo, Japan6 Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan*Corresponding author. E-mail: snino@isas.a.u-tokyo.ac.jpAbstractAgricultural decision support is becoming more important particularly in developing countriesas the sustainability of agriculture needs to be achieved nowadays in addition to itsproductivity and necessary technologies and knowledge are becoming rather complicated.Because of the site-specificity of agriculture, the decision support also needs to be optimizedfor each location and the experts need to know the site-specific conditions to provide properadvices. However, site-specific information is insufficient in rural areas of developingcountries. In this study, we propose a totally new idea of collecting site-specific fieldinformation which utilizes children as field sensors. We conducted an initial study as a part ofa project for the YMC (Youth Mediated Communication) model which is an idea to transferinformation to illiterate parents through their children who are educated at school.Key words: illiteracy, technology transfer, youth mediated communication1. IntroductionIn the 20 th century, agriculture was successful in terms of providing sufficient food for humanbeings, causing explosive growth of the population. It was, however, extremely dependent onexcess use of chemicals such as fertilizer and pesticide and seriously damaged environmentby the end of the century. In the 21 st century, we are requested to realize a paradigm shift ofagriculture to achieve its real sustainability while securing its productivity and farm levelprofits. Accordingly, agricultural decision support is becoming more important particularly indeveloping countries as the technologies and knowledge are becoming rather complicated torealize such agriculture.Because of the site-specificity of agriculture, the decision support also needs to be optimizedfor each location and the experts need to know the site-specific conditions to provide properadvices. However, in rural areas of developing countries, number of experts is short andweather observatories are often unavailable, resulting in lack of site-specific information.Recently, reasonably low-cost field monitoring systems to collect site-specific meteorologicaldata and images are available (Fukatsu and Hirafuji 2005) and one idea would be to deploythem in such rural areas. We, however, need certain level of skill to maintain such systemsand it is rather difficult to have it in rural areas of developing countries. Moreover, suchsystems can provide us only limited information and we still need human visual observationsto collect some of site-specific field data to lead to optimal advices.In this study, we propose a totally new idea of collecting site-specific field information whichutilizes the capability of children, asking them to act as field sensors and conducted an initialstudy in Vietnam as a part of a project for the YMC (Youth Mediated Communication) model