To increase ICT utilization, the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (MCI) has launched the "Digital Transformation Program of Strategic Sectors". Strategic sectors consist of agriculture, maritime, health, tourism, and logistic. This program collaborates with many stakeholders such as ministries/institutions, local government, and startup digital companies. Demographers predict that around 9.8 billion people will live on Earth in the year 2050 – and with today’s agricultural methods it is not possible to provide for such an enormous number. Agriculture must use digital tools and close cooperation with industry.
Now that digital technology is applied not only to digital applications but also to the harness of the Internet of Things (IoT) like soil and weather sensors, water discharge sensors, land mapping, and drone surveillance. The Digital Transformation Program of the Agricultural Strategic Sector focuses on the utilization of digital technology in the agriculture field for farmers who have less than 2 hectares of land and plant rice, corn, chili, and onion. Implementation of digital technology in the agriculture field has a value chain from upstream to downstream that is expected to increase production yield and carry out the efficiency of production cost. This is due to digital technology can provide information in real-time about the environmental conditions and giving recommendations based on necessity (precision farming).
The value chain in the agriculture sector has four primary activities namely provision of inputs (provision of capital, material, and technical land preparation), production (technical planting and maintenance), post-production (technical harvest), and sales (retail/e-commerce). Four activities have digital solutions for commodities of food and horticulture crops that can be implemented in Indonesia for example provision of capital and material, technical land preparation, technical maintenance, and e-commerce. Last year, MCI facilitated farmers to harness soil and weather sensors in West Pasaman Regency, Malang City, and Central Lombok Regency.
Soil and weather sensors can provide fertilization recommendations, irrigation, and preventive action. The preventive actions include pesticide provision to control pests or diseases through automatic daily logging parameters such as soil temperature, environment temperature, wind speed, wind direction, electrical conductivity, and soil humidity. All parameters can be accessed with android devices by each farmer.
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