SMART-Indonesian-Agriculture

Given the economic uprising and increase in population, the competition for land is fierce, therefore, simply expanding dairy and fish production is not an option. The central question in this project is therefore: can we improve efficiency, animal welfare and environmental impact of dairy and fish production by making better use of SMART farming technologies?

Smart-In-Ag aims to introduce and expand novel SMART farming technologies in Indonesian agriculture, more specifically fish and dairy production. Ibnu Budiman will focus his research on the uptake of innovations in dairy production that is crucial for long term effectiveness. Therefore, together with farmers and other stakeholders, the social system, usability and (dis)advantages of adopting/implementing technologies will be explored.

Studies about farm innovation adoption often focus on individual factors and fail to consider socio-institutional factors and the interaction of factors. This lack of consideration often led to discontinued adoption. Scholars argued that dis-adoption is not only the farmers’ failure, but it is a system failure. This study aims to build a social system framework as a decision support tool for the adoption of novel (technological) innovations in dairy farms in Indonesia.

The main research question is: How are systemic issues around technology (dis)adoption in Indonesia, and how do they influence adoption decisions? Based on the model of technology adoption, literature research into the socio-institutional factors in the Indonesian context, and social practice theory, a social system framework will be built. Next, the framework will be used to study technology adoption in dairy farming in West Java, Indonesia, followed by an in-depth study of farmers' social networks and how this affects their adoption behaviour. Finally, the case study will be used to improve the framework, simultaneously facilitating change processes among farmers in adopting technologies

For more information regarding the Smart-In-Ag project and the description of the PhD projects, please visit the Smart-In-Ag website.