Digital Transformation in Agriculture and Rural Areas.

Whenever mentioning about agriculture, our mind straight away imagines farmers who are working hard with their sweats dropping as well as their very basic farmhouse. That is perhaps the stereotype of the common people towards agriculture, and it may also cause to the reluctance of the younger generation in many countries to devote themselves into the agricultural economy! Li Wei, a poet of the Tang Dynasty in his poem entitled “Sympathy for the Peasants” wrote “In the afternoon under the hot sun, sweats of the farmers dropped onto the earth. Is there anyone being aware that every single rice on the plate is full of extreme hard work.” describing the labour effort of the farmers. For thousands of years, the lyrics of that poem has been a well-known piece to nearly all primary school pupils to the families of the Chinese ethnics. The writing of that poem has unequivocally reflected the realistic picture of the farmers of Indonesia. Nevertheless, such phenomenon has been progressing with improvement in silence.

With various sophisticated agricultural technologies from overseas having been brought in and introduced by the National Federation of Rural Co-operative (Induk KUD) into Indonesia, the gap between agriculture and technology is getting smaller and smaller, people no longer hold on to previous impression towards farmers. The ultimate goal is to transform the farms towards full-automation over time without needing to rely on human labour. In the new century, farmers no longer carry out their farming merely with physical labour work, but more decision-making choices with brain are required, which such need requires a lot of human resources to implement trainings with long period of supervision, in order to achieve the impact. Only with allowing the smallholders to liberate themselves from the tedious and hard physical labour work, we be able to create greater value for the outlook of agriculture industry.

The digital transformation among enterprises has reached its tipping point. The digital transformation of agriculture industry is indeed unavoidable.Hence, should Li Wei, the poet during the Tang Dynasty travel to the present century through a time machine, he is likely to see a completely different situation: Under the hot sun, automatic machines operate steadily in traction at the agricultural land, one single instruction can be set for the actions of farming, watering, fertilization and harvesting. A drone is patrolling the crop above the farmland, and the captured image data is transmitted on the real time back the ground. Sensors are installed at the field to measure and record the environmental conditions at all times. Regardless of what problems occur in the crop, it can be traced instantly.

The above description is no longer a fantasy without ground, but it is a goal that the world’s scientists who are concerned about agricultural technology are working together currently. That is because, with the help of technology, the farmers going forward, will not need to work as hard as they are doing now. According to a report released by a US agricultural investment platform – AgFunder in February this year, from 2010 to 2015, the amount of investment in agricultural science and technology has been rising. The amount of investment in 2015 was nearly double that of the previous year, recording at USD 4.6 billion. Among the top three most notable areas are agricultural e-commerce, water supply, as well as “Precise Agriculture” that comprises of drones and automated machinery.

The Wall Street Journal has also highlighted the wave of agricultural investment boom. The Wall Street Journal stated that due to the low price of wireless networking technology, tools for collecting data and monitoring crops are getting more and more sophisticated, added with entrepreneurs looking for new market demand as well as consumers’ attention on food safety, making the food supply chain be more transparent. The report also identified five key investment areas, namely “Precise Agriculture”, indoor farms, food safety, farm robots and alternative food solution.

The development of agricultural science and technology is largely related to the aging of rural population. Because in the case of reduced labour, it is imperative to use technology to improve farming efficiency. The agricultural population over 55 years old has risen from 33% in 2002 to 42% in 2012, indicating relatively higher rate of aging. Therefore, several countries have called for a higher ratio of young people and women devoting to agricultural industry in order to cope with the rising global population and increasing food demand.

With the arrival of big data era, agricultural technology added with the development of data processing, we strongly believe that technology has helped to connect smallholders farmers with the market and transform the way of smallholders villages doing business. Therefore, it is very likely to realize the vision of improving the livelihood of the farmers from the fundamental aspect of social economy.

Today, digital is no longer part of the economy, but is the economy itself. According to a study conducted by the MIT Sloan School of Management, companies that can comply with the digital trend are 26% more profitable than other companies in the same industry. Therefore, a correct use of digital technology can help to transform the rural areas and establish a thoroughly new ecosystem for the rural areas to surpass the traditional direct supply chain and hence move towards the direction of agricultural Internet of Things.