Balinese Farmers Use IT: Bali

High in the small mountain village of Pancasari some 50 kilometers north of Denpasar the stocky fingers of a young Balinese farmer are dancing on a computer keyboard typing the contents of a website according to an interesting article in the JP.

I Wayan Kanten, 29, once saw computers as strange and daunting. He never thought of using one to help his farm business. But he has lost his fear of technology. Now the head of the Young Independent Farmers Group (Kelompok Tani Muda Mandiri) knows how to build a web site to promote the 12 member group's organic capsicum pepper business.

In the heart of the information era when lots of young people see farming as traditional and old-fashioned, Kanten and his friends use the latest technology to learn about organic farming and to find contacts through the Internet to distribute their products.

Kanten's first encounter with computers was when the software company Microsoft, working with the Mitra Mandiri Foundation, set up a Community Training and Learning Center last June in Pancasari. The facility is equipped with a half dozen computers, a printer and an Internet connection.

Microsoft flew Kanten to Jakarta for computer training along with young community leaders from Gianyar, Bali, East Java and North Sumatra. It was part of the company's Unlimited Potential program which aims to introduce computer technology to people in rural areas worldwide to help communities improve their quality of life.

Since 2003 the company has been working with institutions including the Asia Foundation of the United States and the Indonesian Coalition for Women to set up community training centres. So far Microsoft has opened 33 centres across Indonesia and trained more than 4,000 people.

Now in Pancasari, the knowledge has spread to 286 young farmers.

Kanten and his friends tend to their peppers in greenhouses during the day and teach village youngsters how to use the computer at night. "We also train youngsters here to love farming" Kanten said. The villagers participating in the training are charged Rp 50,000 for 15 classes.

"Part of the aim of the program is to curb urbanization and provide ways for people to improve their quality of life through technology" Microsoft Indonesia spokesperson Cynthia Iskandar said.

Kanten said since the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005 hurt the tourism business people have been coming back to their villages. Now, Ketut and Kanten have forgotten about the lure of the city and are staying in Pancasari supplying almost their entire crop of 300 kilograms of organic capsicum per week to PT DIF Nusantara a supplier of fresh vegetables to hotels and supermarkets in Bali, Lombok and Java.

The two-year-old farmers' group borrowed Rp 150 million in capital from the Bali Organic Farmers Foundation which Kanten also contacted by email to establish six greenhouses. The group has been growing capsicum in greenhouses for seven months. They have harvested 11.5 tons of capsicum. The distributor wants them to supply 1.5 tons per week but the group's production capacity has yet to reach that amount.

The head of the Bali Organic Farmers Foundation, Joko Trisayoga, said the farmers' group in Pancasari had wider knowledge and was more innovative than other groups under his guidance. The foundation serves 26 farmers' groups. Indeed the digital divide between urban and rural areas in Indonesia as well as between the haves and the have-nots, is wide. Only 2 percent of the population of 215 million have personal computers. Only 16 million people, mostly in big cities, have access to the Internet.

The success story goes beyond Pancasari with a peanut farmer in Bojonegoro and a small and medium enterprise group in Surabaya also using the internet connections at area CTLCs to market their products.

It's always heart-warming to read about success stories and especially in places that are suffering. It would be great to see this idea spread all over Bali.

Source : http://www.baliblog.com