Ontology for Alleviating Poverty among Farmers in Nigeria
Godspower Osaretin Ekuobase, Esingbemi Princewill Ebietomere · 2016
Most peasant farmers are still living below the poverty line when peasant farming is a supposed panacea to poverty and hunger. Farmers' market is capable of alleviating the poverty of peasant farmers particularly if this market is visible enough to eliminate the middle man in the supply chain. A decision support system that gives consumer-buyer precise information about crops quantity and quality in a given farmers' market can provide this visibility. The present need for the global visibility of Nigeria's cash crop farmers' market is dire. This paper lays a necessary foundation for such system by building ontology for cash crop farmers' market in Nigeria. Ontology is the state-of-the-art knowledgebase component of modern decision support systems. The ontology was built using the Noy and McGuiness' methodology and specifically created using Protégé OWL. The ontology was built, and evaluated by Protégé Tool Query and Export Tab plug-in, using a set of competency questions and found to be strongly aligned with its purpose of giving precise information about cash crop farmers' markets in Nigeria.