Application of ICT tools in food crops monitoring in Indonesia

Indonesian "Working Cabinet" 2014-2019 is placing more attention on agricultural sector, particularly self-sufficiency program for major food crops such as rice, corn/maize and soybean. The government has been planning to achieve self-sufficiency in rice production by 2016, corn production by 2017 and soybean production by 2018. Indonesian government has also inspired to renewed enthusiasm to use new information and communication technologies (ICTs) for agricultural services. Driven by significant role of ICT, research institute, universities, and related associations have actively involved in ICT application in agriculture for recent years. The aim of the paper is to review/analyze role, potential and contribution of ICT in agriculture and to explore opportunities for use of IT in various fields of agricultural sector in Indonesia. The paper reviews and analyzes various ICT-based information dissemination models application in agriculture. In addition, success story of ICT applications in agriculture are presented i.e. Application of Standing Crop for Rice Monitoring, Modeling of maize self sufficiency in Indonesia, KATAM: Cropping Calendar, Android based Tani Hub Application, Pantau Harga: Android application for agricultural prices monitoring, SMS based cropping area monitoring, e-Rice consultation services version 1.0, and e-IRKB: Online based Indonesia Rice Knowledge Bank. The findings provide a useful direction for researcher and practitioners in developing future ICT based information dissemination systems. ICT tools ensuring farmers and increases their capacity to make effective and informed decisions.