Bogor, West Java (ANTARA News) - The seventh international conference of the Asian Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture (AFITA) being held in Bogor, West Java, is expected to give a boost to the agribusiness sector, one of the meeting`s organIzers said.
Prof. Dr. Kudang Boro Seminar, chairman of the conference`s steering committee, said the meeting`s main focus was on acceleration of the use of information technology (IT) in the field of agriculture or agribusiness.
"So far, IT is not being used in the agribusiness sector. If we use IT in agribusiness, it will give added value to farm products," Prof. Kudang said.
He said the use of IT could result in reduced production cost as the budget could be spent more efficiently compared to the manual approach.
"The use of IT in the agricultural sector will speed up the production processes, increase efficiency and effectiveness and thus give added value to the farmers` products," he said.
Speaking at one of the conference`s sessions, he said compared to other sectors, agriculture was lagging behind in the use of IT.
Citing an example, he said the use of IT in the automotive sector had made it dynamic and modern. In the automotive sector the use of IT was contiuously developed and updated from year to year.
The same happened in the transportation sector. "Nothing happens in public transportation without the use of IT. All kinds of transportation use IT," he said.
"All sectors are already using IT except agriculture. If IT was already used in agriculture, it was to very limited extent," he said.
Limited use of IT was actually increasing agriculture`s production cost and causing this sector to be left behind by other sectors, he said.
"The lack of IT in the agricultural sector is one of the main topics of the seventh international conference of AFITA," he said.(*)
Find Article by Date