Smart-In-Ag (short for Smart Indonesian Agriculture) is a joint research program between Wageningen University and Research in The Netherlands and IPB University in Indonesia, together with State Agriculture Polytechnic in Kupang, and the industrial partners: Single Spark, e-Fishery, WorldFish, and Dairy Pro Indonesia. It is funded by INREF and LPDP. Additionally, project partners add to the funding by in-kind contributions.

Given the economic uprising and increase in population, the competition for land is fierce in Indonesia. Therefore, simply expanding dairy and fish production is not an option.

The central question in our project is therefore: can we improve the efficiency, the animal welfare and the environmental impact of dairy and fish production by making better use of SMART farming technologies?

Smart-In-Ag will work on this objective through 5 important steps:

  1. SMART farming technologies such as sensors, information and communication technologies (ICT) systems, global position systems (GPS), internet of things (IoT), management information systems (MIS) and cloud computing will be combined to collect, store and analyse data from fish and dairy farms in Indonesia.
  2. Information on the health of the animals, on the production parameters, the current management practices and potential risk factors will be collected at the farm for a longer period of time.
  3. Using the collected information, software (apps) that can be used by farmers to support their daily farming routines will be tested at the farm. For example, a deep learning algorithm is trained from pictures taken on dairy farms, to be able to get a diagnosis or treatment plan for a sick cow from a distance, based on that picture. Dynamics between weather, water quality and feeding regimes will be studied, so that feeding regimes can maximize pond and fish health based on water quality and weather data.
  4. Uptake of innovations is crucial for long term effectiveness. Therefore, together with farmers and other stakeholders the usability and (dis)advantages of implementing technologies will be explored.
  5. Economic benefits of improved health and ecology, including a trend towards the future, will be made visible using bio-economic models. The impact on the environment will be analysed.  This can support long term development of policies in Indonesia.

In this project, international scientists of at least ten different disciplines, ranging from computer scientists to environmental scientists to social scientists to veterinarians, will collaborate together with industry. We are sure that this multidisciplinary structure will make this project a great success!