Delivering Best Practices of ICT for Youth in Agricultural Development

By 2020 there will be approximately 40 million young people in Indonesia. Indonesia is fourth largest mobile user in the world after China, India and USA. In addition, approximately, 61.9 percent of the internet users use their cell phone to access the internet. Youth by their nature of being less experienced are often ‘new entrants’ in farming and some are only potential new entrants. This presents a huge opportunity for the modernisation of agriculture through ICTs and ensuring that youth have a key role to play. Young people are expected to be the drivers of change in agricultural technology. As the generation who is the most comfortable with rapid technological change, and those who see the greatest potential in ICT tools, we need to target youth specifically. In this research, we observed the needs of youth, what drives them and how they engage with ICTs requires a specific analytic lens, which may be different from other stakeholder groups. There is the potential that well-tailored ICTs could be the tool that entices youth into the agricultural sector, which is an exciting prospect for job creation and innovation in agriculture.

Additionally, youth can be a bridge between cultures and modernity and can contribute to local development and prosperity. There is a role that youth can play in the trainings and exchange of information with older farmers to promote intergenerational exchanges of ideas and perspectives among generations. Keyword: agricultural technology, ICT, innovation, youth