The Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture recently signed an agreement with Microsoft to provide smallholder farmers with technology-oriented solutions such as cloud-based technologies, machine learning and advanced analytics.
FarmBeats, a purpose-built, industry-specific cloud platform built on top of Microsoft Azure, will enable actionable insights from data on crop yields, weather, market demand and prices, allowing to formulate better decisions, from establishing fair market prices to identifying bottlenecks and creating accurate crop planting schedules.
To further strengthen the digital agriculture ecosystem in the country, the plan is to assist farmers to transform digitally via collaborative education programs from Microsoft and the Ministry of Agriculture. This includes a skilling portal for farming communities to access the latest knowledge and information throughout the archipelago.
(Source: Microsoft)