Uzma of Ahmedpur Lama village, Punjab province, using her mobile phone at home. Credit: Irfan Ulhaq/IPS

By Irfan Ulhaq
RAHIM YAR KHAN, Punjab, Pakistan, Jun 28 2022 (IPS)

Farmer Abdul Waheed, 32, has been using his cell phone for everything but work for the past seven years. But after a recent training session he has installed six farming apps and says the move has paid off.

“I mostly use one mobile application to sell and purchase cattle, which has enhanced my earnings,” says Waheed, from Ahmedpur Lamma village in eastern Punjab province. “I am also using another app that provides me with information about the weather forecast, soil health, equipment and most important, the use of bio-pesticides. This has helped me to cut costs by 10 percent as conventional pesticides are more expensive because they are imported,” he adds in a recent interview.

During the Covid-19 pandemic the use of online tools accelerated in every domain in Pakistan — from finances to health, education and services. This transition is also creating opportunities for digitalization of agriculture

Pakistan is considered an agricultural country. As per the 2017 census, 64 percent of the population is rural and 36 percent urban. Agriculture, centred in Punjab and Sindh provinces, contributes 19 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 38 percent of workers. Today, 90 percent of farmers (7.4 million) are categorized as ‘smallholder’ as they own less than five hectares of land.

And now agriculture can be seen through a different landscape — a digital one. During the Covid-19 pandemic the use of online tools accelerated in every domain in Pakistan — from finances to health, education and services. This transition is also creating opportunities for digitalization of agriculture.

Against this backdrop, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched its 1,000 Digital Villages Initiative (DVI) in Pakistan. To date it is taking the shape of a pilot project in Punjab and Sindh.

In late May and early June, FAO Pakistan did a baseline assessment of 22 villages in seven districts of the provinces, which included 54 local women and 100 men. About two weeks later it trained more than 1,000 farmers and villagers on six different digital applications related to agriculture, water conservation and online markets for buying and selling agricultural products.

IPS visited four villages in Rahim Yar Khan, a district in Punjab, to meet men and women who attended virtual and in-person training sessions organized by FAO Pakistan in collaboration with local non-profit organisations Food & Agriculture Centre for Excellence (FACE) and Rural Education and Economic Development Society.

Farmers from Ahmedpur Lama village, Punjab province, during an online training session. Credit: Irfan Ulhaq/IPS

Men and women interviewed said they had been unaware about how digital technology could help them in their work. Many were eager to show the applications they have installed and started using on their phones. Most are related to services for farmers — timely information about weather and market rates, crop health, soil fertility, water usage and accessing markets. Women were accessing information about sewing, stitching and embroidery, health and hygiene.

“I managed to increase my household income by more than 20 percent by selling stitched garments online and my traveling expenses to meet customers and buy materials dropped by more than 25 percent because I started using one social media app,” says Uzma, 32, who has used a cell phone for six years but was unaware of the apps, which are now key components in her business.

Besides using popular social media apps to market her clothes and receive orders, Uzma, from Ahmedpur Lama village, says she buys her raw materials online. With her newfound digital literacy, she is also using her bank’s mobile app to make payments and helping her children with their studies, especially science and maths.

FAO Pakistan’s Project Lead for DVI, Muhammad Khan, said the response from trainees has been better than expected. “We are surprised to see the level of interest shown by the villagers when they were trained. To scale up implementation of DVI in minimum time, FAO Pakistan has decided to integrate it as a component in existing and future projects.”

Most villagers trained say that they are also now regularly using popular social apps. That access opened the door to a new livelihood for Muhammad Sajid, 33. “I learned mobile repairing skills by watching different tutorial videos and this helped me to open my mobile repairing shop in my village,” he says. Using his online skills to help fellow villagers buy and sell agricultural products and livestock is his next goal, he adds.

Abdul Waheed of Ahmedpur Lama village, Punjab province on his farm. Credit: Irfan Ulhaq/IPS

All the farmers who IPS spoke with said that mobile phone connectivity boosted their operations. “With an agriculture app I learned the differences among many fertilizers, which ones are best for my crops, and how to apply them. Now I am getting the maximum yield from my crops,” says Muhammad Haseeb, 29.

Shahid Hussain says that after attending a meeting about digital tools for farmers in his village he converted his manual pesticide spraying machine into an automatic one, saving valuable time. Using one app, he learned more about fodder for his cattle and changed their feeding practices. “My livestock now produces more milk than before,” he adds.

Given results to date, FAO’s Khan predicts that in the next five years most villages in Pakistan will be connected to a digital ecosystem with farmers and their neighbours managing their work, and other aspects of life, using digital applications and technologies.

A global initiative inspired by FAO’s Director-General, Mr QU Dongyu, the DVI is being piloted in the Asia-Pacific region. The villages in Pakistan are among many being showcased and sharing their advancements with other villages and areas in Asia and the Pacific as well as other regions of the world.

A student working on the Al Ittifaq farm, Ciwidey, West Java, Indonesia, June 2022. Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

By Kafil Yamin
CIWIDEY, West Java, Indonesia, Jun 24 2022 (IPS)

It appears to be business as usual at the Al-Ittifaq pesantren, the local term for an Islamic boarding school. Yadi and Rezki, both 18, join the subuh, pre-dawn prayer, in the local mosque. After a session of religious meditation, along with other santris, or students, the two study science in a pre-dawn class for about 30 minutes.

Once the session ends, the students know where to go and what to do. They pick up a hoe, shovel and machete and walk together to the school’s farm. The ustadz, or teacher, divides them into groups and issues instructions.

Soon the students no longer look like learners but like young farmers working the land. “This is part of our class lessons. We do this every day,” said Yadi, who is busy planting seeds. “I am planting green onion. But my friends are harvesting it in other side of this farm.”

Soon more business, job and career opportunities will be available in villages than in cities. With digitalization the future for the young generation is in villages

Ridwan Kamil, West Java Governor

The pesantren environment seems ideal for farming. Located in a hilly, mountainous area of Ciwidey, West Java, 170 kilometres or about a 4-hour drive from Jakarta, Al-Ittifaq compound is surrounded by green, in a temperature that hovers between 18C and 22C – cold by tropical standards.

Orange grove — with a surprise

Senior teacher Anwar Mustiawan shows a reporter an area where leafy orange trees with white trunks are growing — and what makes the pesantren unique is revealed. Arranged in neat rows, some trees are over two metres tall, others less than one metre. The soil under each one is covered with a tarpaulin, and under it is a sensor that measures the temperature and humidity of the soil. A water hose is attached to each tarpaulin and connected to an auto-watering machine, which joins a huge water tank.

“The machine decides, based on the soil temperature, when to water the soil,” Anwar said. “This is what digital farming technology is all about,” he added.

He also pointed out that the auto-watering machine isn’t used for all crops. “Our students should know the soil temperature and when it is time to water them,” Anwar said.

Also on hand is Aziz Elbehri, the senior economist who leads the 1,000 Digital Villages Initiative (DVI) at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We are promoting sustainable, resilient and digitalized agricultural and farming practices by assisting policy makers, national and local government to meet the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030,” Elbehri told IPS as he visited the pesantren on 27 June.

“This use of technology needs to be spread and replicated to other rural communities,” he added.

While Al-Ittifaq is at the heart of a thriving farming community, digitalization is giving its inhabitants a further boost.

Everything produced on the farm goes to the Ittifaq cooperative, where students sort, grade, pack, wrap and label items. The enterprise supplies local supermarkets, malls and wholesalers with vegetables and fruits. It also purchases produce grown by local farmers, who have been its business partners since it was established in 1977.

The organization sends at least five tonnes of various vegetables daily to major cities in Indonesia, said the cooperative’s head, Agus Setia Irawan. “The demand is increasing because our product is highly competitive, which suggest that local farmers are capable of producing quality vegetables and fruits.”

That Al-Ittifaq practices organic farming is what makes the difference. “It is public knowledge that our products are planted, grown and processed in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way,” Agus added.

Orange trees growing with the help of a digital watering system attached to the water tank on the right side. Al Ittifaq farm, Ciwidey, West Java, Indonesia. Credit: Kompas

Self-financing farm

The proceeds of the business are used to finance the Ittifaq educational operations. “Our syeikh taught us that a good person is financially self-reliant and does not hope for charity. He makes it into reality. This pesantren is financially self-financing,” said Rezki, another student.

Al-Ittifaq also employs local residents to work on its 14-hectare farm, so that students and local residents toil together. “There are hundreds of people, most of them women, working with us in shifts. We are like a big family here,” Refky added.

The cooperative also partners with five farmers’ groups, each one consisting of 300 farmers who work 70 hectares of land.

Not only has the pesantren made big steps in the agro-industrial business, it has also become the centre of agricultural and agribusiness training for residents, in collaboration with 20 other pesantren in West Java.

And as part of the digitization drive, Ittifaq has started online marketing. Agus said the cooperative has adopted the so-called business-to-business-to-consumer model (B2B2C). By partnering with other businesses, its online e-commerce efforts are able to reach new markets and customers.

“Our virtual marketing is made through an online agricultural store called Alifmart, which offers several features, including a catalogue of products, purchasing mechanism and customer service,” he said.

FAO Representative in Indonesia Rajendra Aryal said that with more and more people having access to the internet, digital agriculture is becoming a main vehicle for transforming Indonesia’s food system.

“Indonesia is an archipelagic country that is struggling to give its people wider access to economic resources. Digitalization of agriculture is coming into play now,” he said.

Target — 104 digital villages

West Java’s administration has set the target of digitalizing 104 villages in the province in 2022.

“The villages are selected because they don’t have access to the internet yet. But we have been building internet infrastructure during the last two years. Soon, they are not in the blank spot anymore,” said the head of the West Java Communication and Information Office, Ika Mardiah. “And soon the villages’ potential and products, will be in e-commerce, online transactions and promotion,” she added during a meeting with FAO officials on 26 June.

To date, Mardiah’s office has incorporated 4,225 village enterprises in West Java into the digital business network under her management. “This involves more than 400 products, 12.8 million customers and a huge amount of money,” she said.

According to West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil, soon more business, job and career opportunities will be available in villages than in cities. “With digitalization the future for the young generation is in villages,” he added at the meeting.

Kamil’s administration has succeeded in building three thematic digital villages: one focused on health, which use technology to address the lack of health facilities and specialized doctors. Patients in five pilot areas are able to consult a family doctor online.

The multimedia digital village provides capacity building in digital content-making skills for villagers in the province, while education digital villages are equipped with a so-called Smart Router as a source of education materials that can be accessed by all village residents. The materials are regularly updated.

A global initiative inspired by FAO’s Director-General, Mr QU Dongyu, the DVI is being piloted throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Ciwidey is among many communities being showcased and sharing its advancements with other villages and areas in Asia-Pacific as well as other regions of the world.

Men working for Edy Prasetyo harvesting catfish in Indramayu, West Java, take a break on a recent day. Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

By Kafil Yamin
INDRAMAYU, Indonesia, Jun 24 2022 (IPS)

For years Indramayu has been known as one of Indonesia’s rice centres. The district in West Java is the country’s number one rice producer, generating 1.3 million tonnes of husked rice in 2021, according to Indonesia’s Centre of Statistics (BPS). The country’s total rice production was 54 million tonnes.

What we witness as we drive to the district confirms the rice-dominant economy. Paddy fields stretch on the right and left as far as the eye can see. This is early June, traditionally the start of the harvest, but the plants are still green, indicating that the harvest is still months away.

It is also a clear sign that the paddy growing cycle has changed, due to a shift in climate.

Ironically, Indramayu was one of the five poorest districts in West Java in 2021, according to the BPS report, which also revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic increased the number of poor in Indramayu by 13 percent.

Even before the pandemic, Indramayu was a pocket of poverty in Indonesia. The majority of people in the paddy-dominant district are not land-owning farmers but farm labourers or landless growers.

Paddy fields are labour-intensive only during planting season and harvest, which take place three times a year on average. That leaves three to four months as free time for landless farmers. Both men and women migrate to the capital Jakarta, 240 km away, to find temporary jobs, before returning to Indramayu for the harvest.

Labour migration decreasing

Global climate change has been disrupting these patterns — of planting, harvesting, and migration. But one silver lining of this disruption is that landless growers have begun to find alternative livelihoods without migrating to Jakarta. Fish farming is a popular choice in the coastal district.

Indramayu farmers started making ponds along the seashore to raise tiger prawns, a popular commodity. But this farming is vulnerable to incursions from the ocean, including tidal waves.

That’s why Edy Prasetyo, 46, chose to enter the catfish farming business in 2001. Twenty-one years later, Prasetyo has 69 ponds in Soge village, Kandanghaur sub-district.

In recent years catfish has become a favourite street food for middle and low-income people in almost all major cities in Indonesia. Demand is so high that in the Jakarta area, where most Indramayu catfish is sold, shortages are common. Seeing the opportunity, some young local growers have become rich quick.

It’s demanding work, Prasetyo tells an IPS reporter on a recent visit. “We have to stick to a fixed feeding schedule, including during the night and when it rains. Imagine walking around the ponds in heavy rain and throwing catfish food into them. I have 69 ponds. I need at least 10 people to do it.”

But now, new technology is making the farmers’ lives easier. In October 2020, FAO Indonesia and Bogor Agriculture University (IPB) introduced technology known as eFishery to Prasetyo’s village. After a short training he and other catfish farmers began to adopt the system, particularly a digital automatic fish feeder.

Invented by a graduate of Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Gibran Huzaifah, the auto-feeder connects through the internet to farmers’ smartphones. There they can set the breed of fish, feeding schedules and the amount of food pellets to drop into the ponds.

Gunawan, 47, a catfish farmer in Ciseeng, West Java, has been using the auto-feeder since 2019. Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

Detects level of hunger

The auto-feeder is equipped with an in-water, vibration-based sensor that is able to read the movements of hungry versus full fish. Guided by the farmer’s feeding schedule, when the artificial intelligence detects hunger, it releases the amount of feed required. This avoids over or underfeeding the fish.

The auto-feeder connects through the internet to farmers’ smartphones. There they can set the breed of fish, feeding schedules and the amount of food pellets to drop into the ponds

The eFishery’s sensors collect and store real time data, such as feed volumes and consumption levels. Farmers can access this through eFishery’s web and mobile apps on their smartphone, tablet or computer and make any needed changes to the feeding.

“This is the kind of technology we need,” says Prasetyo. “It cuts time spent for feeding the catfish and saves a lot of energy.”

With eFishery, production has increased 25-30 percent, says the farmer, adding that he has more time to spend on other things. Additional benefits of the technology include that the size and weight of the catfish can be controlled and the water quality is monitored.

While Prasetyo spoke, several men placed buckets of catfish on weighing scales and then transferred them to a small truck, which soon drove out of the village, bound for Jakarta.

Losarang sub-district has now become Indramayu’s catfish centre, with the majority of residents farming the species. Catfish ponds dominate the landscape. “Sixty percent of Indramayu’s 200 hectares of catfish ponds are in Losarang sub-district,” said Thalib, the village head.

The technology and knowledge has spread throughout the area, and Prasetyo’s success story has drawn fishermen from other villages to learn about eFishery.

“This is what Member Nations want. This is what this project is designed for,” said Aziz Elbehri, senior economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s Regional Office in Bangkok, who leads the 1,000 Digital Villages Initiative (DVI) for Asia and Pacific.

A global initiative inspired by FAO’s Director-General Mr QU Dongyu, the DVI is being piloted in the Asia-Pacific region. Soge village is among many being showcased and sharing its advancements with other villages and areas in Asia and the Pacific, as well as other regions of the world.

“A successful undertaking in one village should be copied, or in popular terms, replicated to other villages. And this is what is happening here now,” Elbehri told IPS as he and his FAO team visited Soge village on 26 May.

“Indonesia is one of the success stories,” Elbehri said, pointing out several female catfish farmers who joined his visit. As eFishery is a national innovation, the project is also driving national excellence, he added.

Challenges remain

Catfish farming is not without challenges. Mardiah, 52, has been farming the species for 26 years. “Sometimes we go through lack of water during prolonged drought, which has caused many of our catfish to die. At other times, we get flooded during heavy rainfall and our ponds are destroyed,” he told IPS, adding that farmers can do little about such natural occurrences. Disease is another serious threat.

But what gives farmers their largest headache is the soaring price of catfish food. “More and more people make fish ponds, while catfish food production remain the same. This make its price soar,” Mardiah said.

Head of the Indramayu Fishery and Marine Office, Edi Umaedi, told IPS that fish ponds cover 560 hectares in his area, more than half of it is used for catfish farming. Last year, Indramayu’s catfish production reached 85,000 tonnes.

Setting up the business is not difficult, added Umaedi, and farmers prefer it because unlike rice, catfish can endure a water shortage and do not require irrigation. “Fish ponds, particularly catfish ponds, do not need a vast amount of land. One pond of 100 or 200 square metres is enough to farm catfish.”

To date, FAO and IPB have established eFishery in 30 villages in West Java and there are plans to expand to other Indonesian provinces.