Accurate Digital Agriculture Database

The weather in Cibluk Kidul Village, Margoluwih, Sayegan District, Sleman, Yogyakarta, was quite sunny on Saturday morning, February 25, 2023. Wartono and two other farmers were busy in the rice fields.

The 55-year-old man walked to the center of the rice field, checking when his paddy plants would be ready to harvest. Meanwhile, his two friends fertilized the chili plants. "Harvesting time will come soon, at least by  the fasting month (Ramadhan)," said Wartono, who has been a farmer since 1998.

Wartono cultivates 1.3 hectares of land. Of this land, about 1,500 square meters are planted with chilies. "One hectare can yield an average of six tons of rice, and more during the dry season," he said.

Not long after, a woman approached him. She is named Pity Pertiwi Murni, an agriculture extension officer for Margoluwih Village from the Sleman Regency Agriculture, Food and Fishery Agency.

This 42-year-old woman is in charge of collecting data of farmer groups, commodities planted, when to plant, seed varieties and post-harvest. But in doing her job of collecting data, currently Pity does not need paper or stationery.

She only needs  a smartphone to collect data on Wartono's land. "Now it's digital, so we enter through the data collection platform (DCP) application, the data is immediately recorded," said Pity, who has been an agricultural extension worker for 15 years.

Pity said that in the past, she used to collect data manually by visiting farmers at their farms and preparing the forms herself. "At that time I worked one by one, form by form, farmer by farmer," she said.

For her, routine field work has become easier since using DCP in 2022. She can also complete tasks quickly. "This platform makes it very easy, because work is now more effective and I can arrange schedules easily with farmer groups for data collection," said Pity. "I conduct interviews using the app, the work is quicker".

Not just Pity, Wartono also reported DCP is very helpful. This is because there is an early warning system, which is a land profile data collection system that can help monitor conditions that occur on the farmland. The monitoring system can notify farmers if there is a disaster threatening their farmland. "Alhamdulillah, with the DCP, it is now easier for farmers, data collection at PPL is also shorter," he said.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) together with the Data and Information System Center (Pusdatin) of the Ministry of Agriculture initiated a national e-agriculture strategy. It uses information and communication technology to overcome various challenges in the agricultural sector.

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The goal of the e-agriculture national strategy program is to help identify, design and develop a variety of sustainable digital solutions. "This strategy is a digital solution for agriculture. One of the main programs is to create a database of farmers, farmland and all their activities through data collection platforms," said FAO Representative/Country Director for Indonesia and Timor Leste, Rajendra Aryal.

Gadjah Mada University (UGM) fellows are instrumental in developing the DCP app. The DCP Project Manager who is also Operations Manager of Desa Apps UGM, Nurul Trya Wulandari, said the development of DCP platform starts with real-time data collection in the field, especially for the agricultural sector.

The results of the platform development were then submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture. "Because the Ministry of Agriculture already has vast data which is the Agriculture War Room," said Nurul.

Suparmono, Head of the Agriculture, Food and Fisheries Agency of Sleman Regency, Central Java, expressed his appreciation because Sleman was chosen as a pilot project for the data collection platform by FAO. "We need a platform that can collect real-time data that can be used to make decisions," he said.

He hopes the cooperation will not stop at the pilot project for digital data collection. "Hopefully the Ministry of Agriculture can follow up or continue so that this system can develop and be used in the agricultural sector at large," he said.

At the launch of the National e-Agriculture Strategy in Yogyakarta on February 27, Secretary General of the Ministry of Agriculture Kasdi Subagyono said in his speech that the Ministry appreciated the National E-Agriculture Strategy. "The Ministry of Agriculture is currently drafting regulations that can make this national strategy of E-agriculture widely applicable," he said.