Unit 1- One Minute Paper

-

Systems Thinking
From its etymological meaning, a system is the uniting or putting together of different units or components to form a new whole. A system is a set of interacting or interdependent parts coming together to form a complex whole. The essence and the idea of systems is the “bringing together of interdependent components and sub-components with the view of creating a new whole to achieve a set goal or objective”
The structure of a system is static whiles the behaviour is dynamic due to the effect produced by a system in operation. (Kreps, 2016)

An efficient system should be self-regulating to allow for the sub-components to provide feedback to the other interdependent components.

Sub-components of an information system should be arranged and fitted in an environment to enable them to become self-organizable and governed by feedback.

In his publication, SYSTEMS THINKING: WHAT, WHY, WHEN, WHERE, AND HOW? Michael Goodman further espouses “systems thinking as also being a sensitivity to the circular nature of the world we live in; an awareness of the role of structure in creating the conditions we face; a recognition that there are powerful laws of systems operating that we are unaware of; a realization that there are consequences to our actions that we are oblivious to”.

References

Kreps, D., 2016. Introduction to Systems Thinking. [Sound Recording] (Salford University).




Location: Unnamed Road, Ghana

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction- Information Systems in Agriculture

-
Agriculture is a knowledge-intensive industry. Value-chain actors need to obtain and process financial, climatic, technical, market and regulatory information to manage their activities   (Just & Zilberman, 2002) . Though it may not be considered as an aspect of agriculture which has been isolated as an autonomous study area, Information systems and management can be considered as a productive resource, potentially limiting and influencing the efficiency of production, marketing, processing and administration in Agriculture.   (Blackie, 1979) .  At the production level, the role of information hardly has been defined and in practice the processing of raw data to provide useful information is informal and crude.   (Blackie, 1979) Agricultural information  interacts with and influences  agricultural  productivity in a variety of ways. It informs decisions regarding land, labour, livestock, capital and management. Relevant, reliable and timel...
Read more

Subsidy Management in Agriculture

-
Image
Application of granular fertilizer on seedlings Subsidy systems have been a mainstay of development countries government's long-term policy of promoting social equity and political stability. This policy attempts at sharing national natural resource wealth (Akhter, et al., 2001) Governments in most Developing Economies offer social interventions through subsidy systems. It is estimated that Africa loses the equivalent of $4 billion worth of soil nutrients annually, thereby weakening its capacity to sustain plant life. Given the poor natural attributes of the soils, coupled with poor management practices, there is consensus that significant increase in inorganic fertilizer use is necessary to restore and maintain their fertility in order to enhance productivity. (Minot & Benson, 2009) To tackle the inefficiencies in the subsidy distribution programmes, systems must be put in place to arrest the bottlenecks such as fraud, diversion, etc. In order to develop succe...
Read more

Smart Farming- Information Access to the Smallholder Farmer

-
Image
Agriculture has undergone a series of revolutions that have driven efficiency, yield and profitability to levels previously unattainable. This included the introduction and implementation of mechanization between 1900 and 1930; the green revolution of the 1960s that saw the development of new, more resistant crop varieties and the use of agro-chemicals; and the rise in genetic modification from 1990 to 2005. 10,000 years of agricultural evolution can be largely grouped into just four development eras: Paleothic (early domestication of plants and animals), Antiquity (roughly the 2000 years BCE, in which more efficient farming systems were developed), the Modern Era (roughly 1700 to 1900 when mechanization and fertilizers emerged) and the Green Revolution (1930s-60s, when transformative crop genetics and fertilization practices developed). Smart farming technologies offers agriculture value chain professionals the tools to reduce costs, maximize yields and profits, and thereby increa...
Read more