Yesterday the former president of Indonesia Megawati publicly suggested that farmers in Indonesia should learn to user the Internet to know the market price and marketing their crops.
This obviously doesn't sound right.. Come on.. here in Indonesia? farmers? The Detik Forum made tonnes of critics on this dumb idea.
Imagine the (operational) cost of maintaining computer and Internet connection in Indonesia just to know the price of tomato; or maybe the better question is, "where can I find the market price for tomato in one area?"
I bet those farmers (mostly happen to be less formally-educated) end up in porn sites instead of searching for information. Such info like market price can easily be gathered via phone call (how hard is it to call a dealer in the nearest town and ask him how much a kilo of tomato is worth today?) than dialing to ISP (if there is one around).
Perhaps this idea derived from the success story of India and those are successful farmers that can afford computers. I think what Mega said was ok, but still she needed to explain more things like how those things are going to be done, any plans whatsoever. It just seems that she suddenly popped that idea during lunch hour thinking what to say; without much preparation.
I did some searching and found out that countries have implemented this idea successfully. Indonesia is just moving on. And I think that the Internet can be an excellent source of information on how to do things (like seeding, planting, etc) and also knowing possibly better alternative ways to do those things like plantation solutions and technology.
But for this years, the farmers can still get their critical info (commodity prices) from the radio every morning. Other more important things should be prioritized before like providing seeds, and taking out those middle persons who bullies the farmers.
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