How does your garden grow? Very well thanks to mobile

Feeding the future

Indonesia has a population of over 268 million, but this figure will increase to 340 million by 2030. Unless there is a 70% rise in national food production, there will not be enough to feed everyone. This goal, however, is not achievable with traditional farming techniques, which are restricted by a variety of issues. The high cost of fertiliser, crop failure and yield productivity are among the most common problems faced by farmers.

Farming by phone

Innovative startup Habibi Garden may have the answer. By combining a precision farming device with the IoT technology of mobile operator Telkomsel, Habibi Garden allows farmers to remotely monitor plant conditions day and night to increase productivity, reduce costs and minimise the possibility of crop failure.

Crop watch

The system is very simple. The waterproof Habibi Garden sensor collects real time data on temperature, light intensity, humidity, soil moisture, plant nutrients and fertiliser absorption. This information is then processed and used to provide farmers with up to the minute smartphone notifications about the conditions of their plants while the Habibi dose pump automatically distributes fertiliser and water to the soil in the exact quantities required.

Reaping the harvest

Via a network of approximately 600 sensors Habibi Garden has been used by more than 1300 farmers across the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra, increasing the overall harvest to a total of 8 billion rupees (over $116 million USD) in less than 10 months.

“I was having terrible problems with Blossom-end rot where the tomato turns brown and rotten because the soil is either too wet or too dry…before it could be difficult to know what was going on in the ground but now with Habibi Garden everything is taken care of and I can check up on my crops’ progress through the dashboard. I haven’t seen a rotten tomato in months!”

Bulan Sukarno, Tomato Farmer, Java