Abstract:
The strategic role of the agricultural sector is shown by
its role in food supply, feed and bioenergy, industrial raw
materials, employment absorber, source of foreign exchange
and income sources, including environmental conservation.
As an agricultural country, Indonesia, through the Ministry
of Agriculture, is currently prioritizing five key points
to support food system development, namely production
capacity enhancement, logistics, agriculture modernization,
and export promotion. Related to agriculture modernization, Indonesia is accelerating
the transformation of the agricultural sector by improving and strengthening the
technologies and digital approaches in agriculture in a comprehensive perspective. It
is known that one of the important factors affecting plant growth is soil fertility,
and Indonesia has varied soil types with different levels of soil fertility. Due to this
condition, we have developed applicable technology to support improving plant and
soil productivity. The technologies are rapid soil test kit for lowland, upland and
swampland which are provided with fertilizer recommendation; rapid plant test kit for
sugarcane; rapid fertilizer test kit for inorganic and organic fertilizer, and the latest
one is smart soil sensing kit based on near infrared (NIR). This smart soil sensing
kit is an advanced technology based on NIR that could be used for measuring soil
chemical and physical properties and is equipped with fertilizer recommendation. In line
with those technologies, development of system information for agriculture is needed,
and the Ministry of Agriculture has published an information system of integrated
cropping calendar. This system initially estimates paddy planting time, and the user
can obtain other information as disaster prone areas such as drought, flood, pest attack,
recommended varieties, seed requirement and fertilizers. The latest system information
that has launched is SISCrop 2.0, an information system that is developed based on
radar, and provides data of plant growth stages every 15 days for all locations in
Indonesia. It is expected that applicable technologies could be replicated at national
level to improve and optimize agriculture production and farmers’ welfare.
