Picture 1. Farmer Utilize Smartphone for Agriculture Activity Purposes
Source: AFP Mertani
"Incentive will move everyone to take action."
The lockdown in the agriculture sector will have a long-run impact: the decline in production, the closure of markets and borders, the logistical disruption and farmers' access to financial resources. However, COVID-19 opened new opportunities: accelerating digitalization, expanding the international market, and increasing agricultural labour. 34% of respondents experienced decreased demand during COVID-19. The following issues cause this problem: fewer off-takers coming to the village, off-takers reduced their buying volume, difficulties in selling harvest yield to other cities (such as to Jakarta and Bali), fewer social events (such as parties and religious activities), food vendors or restaurants closed, government subsidies, particularly on rice led to decreased demand for commercial rice, and the traditional market is not as active as in normal condition
. Pandemic makes farmer difficult to connect with agriculture extension (PPL), private agronomist from the company, agricultural input, even among the farmers. The reasons are reduced subsidized fertilizer quota due to a 10% decrease of government-subsidized fertilizer, disruption on logistics that cause delay and unavailability of inputs, and financial pressure that hampers kiosk owners to maintain sufficient stocks. Social gathering restrictions also led to the disruption of farmer groups activities and information flow. To overcome it, some farmers started to shift from regular farmers group discussions to WhatsApp groups.
Due to difficulties in accessing agricultural input from the kiosk, farmers started to buy more input online. Private agronomists also try to reach more farmers through digital marketing. However, farmer's technology adoption constraints are smartphone ownership, technology usage, network, and internet bill. 28% said that they do not have a smartphone. 27% do not know how to utilize the smartphone and internet, 14% have problems with the network, and 17% said internet bill is costly. This lack of smartphone ownership can be a big opportunity to tap by telecommunication companies to enter the rural market, especially farmers. The telecommunication company, both in smartphone manufacturer and internet provider, must collaborate to make a customized smartphone package for the farmer in the form of affordable smartphones for farmers with the internet bundling within the box. Of course, the implementation is not easy because farmer digitalization need support from the user (farmer itself), government, and other market actors.
The farmer must be open to innovation and have the ability to learn. They must optimize the technology usage (especially smartphones and the internet) to access information and agriculture input (such as buying fertilizer online), leading to higher productivity. To accelerate the technology utilization, the stakeholder can promote the new technology to the early adopter group, in this case, is the key farmer. Then, the key farmer will introduce it to the other peer farmer. This strategy will be helpful because many farmers more trust and are eager to learn from the peer farmer rather than other agriculture market actors. Private agronomists must map the location of farmers and connect it with the nearest kiosk. They also can use this map for increasing the product distribution to the kiosk. Government must provide better infrastructure (such as BTS tower) and financial support for farmers during a pandemic, such as by soft loan. The private sector in the telco industry may tap this opportunity by increasing smartphone access to farmers in rural areas and selling special edition smartphone bundling with internet packages for farmers.
References
Haggag, W. M. "Agricultural digitalization and rural development in COVID-19 response plans: A review article." International Journal of Agricultural Technology (2021): 67-74.
Kaminskyi, A. B., M. V. Nehrey, and L. M. Zomchak. "COVID-19: crisis or new opportunities time for the
agricultural sector of Ukraine." IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. Vol. 628. No. 1. IOP Publishing, 2021.