ITB Lecturer Helps Thousand Farmers in Indramayu with a Rice Planting Calendar App
BANDUNG, itb.ac.id – Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) is moving toward Entrepreneurial University through several efforts, including through creating real, applicable works for the community. One of those works comes from a lecturer in Meteorology study program of ITB, Dr. Armi Susandi. He created an android-based, rice planting calendar app that helps farmers in Indramayu to overcome losses due to crop failure in previous years.
According to the study by ITB research team and Ministry of Agriculture, the total loss of farmers in Indramayu reached 478.8 billion rupiah every planting season (or 957.6 billion rupiah a year) due to crop failure. The application, named Sistem Informasi Cerdas Agribisnis (SICA), allows farmers to predict the right time to do all agriculture activities, from planting, fertilizing, until harvesting.
“SICA was initially developed when we discovered a model called Smart Climate Model (SCM) which predicts monthly weather for the next five years. With the request of farmers, we enhanced the app to show prediction for every ten days and apply it to the apps,” Dr. Armi Susandi explained.
From SICA, farmers can get information on the right hour, day, and month to plant, fertilize, and harvest. This android application runs dynamically through overlaying between ten-year rainfall predictions and google maps on the server. Besides planting calendar, SICA also has other features, such as weather predictions, climate predictions, feedback to facilitate users to input disaster report on their villages, and market information that connect farmers and buyers, making it easier for farmers to sell their crops while reducing promotion cost. The web version of SICA is available on http://smartclim.info/sica/.
*the SICA Application developed by Dr. Armi
Previously, Dr. Armi and his team developed SICA on web version. With farmers’ request, SICA is developed on android version which is more accessible to the farmers. “This app is very easy to use. Every farmer can use it. If the farmer cannot operate it (smartphone), their children usually can. This will create a pattern where the children help their parents in farming, and hopefully the younger generation will also be farmers in the future,” Dr. Armi said.
He said that many similar apps are available in other countries, but SICA offers a system that is easy to understand. “There are also other planting prediction calendar available in other countries. However, farmers have to interpret the apps first. SICA, on the other hand, is easy. Users only have to open their phone and they will know how to use it right away,” he explained.
“Currently, there are seven million people in Indonesia who use SICA and it has proven to improve their yields due to successful crop,” Dr. Armi said. On the initial development, Dr. Armi and his team give SICA free to farmers in Indramayu, including the tablet computers. Currently, SICA is distributed commercially since it attracts agriculture companies.
SICA will also be developed in several agriculture centers in Indonesia such as Sumatera, Kalimantan, Central Java, East Java, Karawang, and Merauke. Neighboring countries such as Timor Leste has stated its interest in using SICA. Dr. Armi and his team are also developing other applications relating to weather and climate in cooperation with Indonesian Navy, BNPB, PMI, and BPJS.
Reporter: Nur Faiz Ramdhani (Forestry Engineering 2015)
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