Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), P.O. Box 447, Arusha, Tanzania.
ScientificWorldJournal. 2022 Jun 30;2022:6944151. doi: 10.1155/2022/6944151. eCollection 2022.
Smallholder dairy producers account for around half of all African livestock ventures; nevertheless, they face challenges in producing more milk due to an insufficient framework and infrastructure to maximize their output. Smallholder dairy producers in this scenario use a variety of tactics to boost milk output. However, the attempts need multiple heuristics, time, and financial investment. Furthermore, because of a lack of extension officers, smallholder dairy producers become trapped in failure cycles, unsuccessful attempts, and a diminished motivation to continue farming. Therefore, the interventions were more straightforward as smallholder dairy producers with comparable characteristics grouped. This research aimed to create a rule-based engine that automatically assigns smallholder dairy producers to predefined clusters. About 78 stakeholders were interviewed, including 69 smallholder dairy producers and 9 extension officers from Meru-Arusha, Tanzania. The 10 production features and 6 predefined clusters were adopted from the previous study. Therefore, a rule-based engine used the selected 10 production features. As a result, the rule-based engine automatically assigns the smallholder dairy producers to their respective clusters. Therefore, smallholder dairy producers share their farming skills and experience to increase milk output through these clusters. Furthermore, extension officers in the system provide timely assistance to smallholder dairy producers with farming concerns.
小农奶牛养殖户占非洲所有牲畜养殖企业的一半左右；然而，由于缺乏充分的框架和基础设施来最大限度地提高产量，他们在提高牛奶产量方面面临挑战。在这种情况下，小农奶牛养殖户采用了各种策略来提高牛奶产量。然而，这些尝试需要多种启发式方法、时间和财务投资。此外，由于缺乏推广官员，小农奶牛养殖户陷入了失败循环、不成功的尝试以及继续务农的动力减弱。因此，干预措施变得更加简单，因为具有类似特征的小农奶牛养殖户被分组。本研究旨在创建一个基于规则的引擎，该引擎可以自动将小农奶牛养殖户分配到预定义的群组中。大约采访了 78 位利益相关者，包括坦桑尼亚 Meru-Arusha 的 69 位小农奶牛养殖户和 9 位推广官员。10 个生产特征和 6 个预定义群组来自之前的研究。因此，基于规则的引擎使用了选定的 10 个生产特征。结果，基于规则的引擎自动将小农奶牛养殖户分配到各自的群组中。因此，小农奶牛养殖户通过这些群组分享他们的农业技能和经验来提高牛奶产量。此外，系统中的推广官员为有农业问题的小农奶牛养殖户提供及时的帮助。
