Using Agricultural Information System to enhance the Sustainability and Forcastability in the Ellanga Traditional Cascade Tank-Village System in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper attempts to suggest that an Information Technology assisted networking program can be introduced to systematize and rationalize the Ellanga Agricultural Model alas Cascade Tank-Village System that is developed as an alternative and sustainable agricultural system instead of the existing mass cultivation framework. The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has accepted the Ellangawa Agricultural Network as an efficient and sustainable system of agriculture that least harms the eco-system and least causes the health hazards (Dharmasena 2017; Bebermeier et al 2017; Jayasena et al 2011; UNDP 2017); UNFAO 2018; Raymond 2018; Geekiyanage 2013). Therefore, this system that has been practiced in Sri Lanka for centuries has its own topographical methods and strategic utilities when it comes to implementation. The Information Technology model that is supposed to introduce can enhance the efficiency and the forecasting ability of the system when it comes to varying and fluctuating waterfall in Sri Lanka. Water management, tank capacity and capacity development, subsequent agricultural area, crop and harvest, marketing variables as well as settlement capacity, forest growth, catchment shading and many other components can be arranged, systematized and forecasted alone with this IT system. Preliminary data are gathered by visiting some of the Ellanga model villages that are practicing this method and interviews are conducted with the Irrigation Department, Meteorological Department, Agriculture Officers and the respective communities. This IT based mathematical-statistical model will help to modernize agriculture, maximize the utilization, enhance traditional agricultural heritage, preserve the biodiversity in traditional ontology when it is coupled with IT ontology. This will also help resuscitating the traditional knowledge in the evolving Sinhala-Buddhist village system in the face of modern post-global context.