www.limakilo.id is providing cooperation of farmers
for the specific product to give a certain amount of
crops for retailers or consumers.
3.2 Electronic Agribusiness in
Indonesia: A Challenge
Electronic Agribusiness (E-Agribusiness) is a part of
Electronic Agriculture (E-Agriculture) which is
defined as “the application of modern information
and communication technology (ICT) to agriculture
and rural development with the goal to improve
human livelihood by reducing poverty and hunger
among the rural communities”. FAO defines E-
Agriculture as “an emerging field in the intersection
of agricultural development and entrepreneurship,
referring to agricultural services, technology
dissemination, and information delivered or enhanced
through the internet and related technologies. More
specifically, it involves the conceptual, design,
development, evaluation and application of new ways
to use existing or emerging ICT” (Maumbe, 2010).
Many agribusiness organisations have capitalised on
many advantages of electronic commerce to improve
the marketing of their products. The technology of
information embodied in E-commerce is a platform to
provide sharing information among farmers
(producers), retailers and consumers. The modern
infrastructure of information technology integrates all
types of information and resources through technical
facilities in advanced networks and communication
tools (Bo, 2010). E-commerce is increasing benefit
for agricultural sectors because of the high reliance on
accurate and punctual information in a considerable
physical distance between farmers and consumers.
Many benefits of E-commerce in agribusiness are: 1)
providing the possibilities of cost reduction and
enhancement along the agriculture or food supply
chain, 2) automation capacity that substantially
reduces transaction and procurement cost, 3)
improving efficiency by reducing inventory levels,
transportation costs, order and delivery time, and 4)
more transparent and competitive than physical
market (Nadarajan & Ismail, 2011).
However, the application of E-Agribusiness in
Indonesia is facing some challenges, for example, 1)
the most of the farmers lack knowledge and necessary
information for the use of electronic commerce and
internet networks due to low education background of
the farmers. 2) The lack of infrastructure on the
internet. 3) The high price of the software in E-
agribusiness. 4) The characteristic of agriculture
product is seasonal with the high volume but the low
value with different standard in each country
(Soekartawi, 2007). In addition to those, E-
agribusiness in Indonesia mostly is using
conventional electronic commerce in which the
application still comprises some problems. The
prominent problem in E-agribusiness is supply chain
management, especially in the logistics and
distribution system. It is an integral part of E-
commerce operation and plays a vital role in E-
commerce of agribusiness. The agricultural supply
chain in agribusiness encompasses the flow of
products, knowledge and information between
agricultural stakeholders and consumers (Braun,
Colangelo, & Steckel, 2018). It is essential that the
whole supply chain process for E-Agribusiness is
smooth and effective.
E-Agribusiness is similar to other E-commerce
for business where the internet is connecting
customers or mobile devices with online and service
providers through E-commerce website or mobile
applications. The retailers or distributors are mostly
acting as intermediaries between producers and
consumers. For example, Tani Hub is only
intermediary application that is connecting farmers or
producers to consumers. However, the retail or
intermediary is seldom joining other things such as
products (in agriculture is the crop or food) that is
purchased by consumers. The online retailer is also
hard to collect information regarding the quality of
the product during transport or whether the product is
satisfied the consumers. Especially for perishable
good like fresh agricultural products, the
conventional E-agribusiness mostly lack real-time
information, disperse of production and the
disequilibrium of market forces (Zhang, 2016). The
lack of real-time information leads to misplace
information among the producers, retailers and
consumers. The absence of real-time information also
creates a long time product circulation and
distribution that hinders to the upstream enterprise to
know the sales and other downstream enterprises to
know the product situation. The disperse situation of
production also becomes a problem in E-
Agribusiness where producers or farmers scattered
around the country as well as consumers who will
find difficulty to grasp specific information on the
market supply and demand (Zhang, 2016). To tackle
the problem of supply chain and distribution in E-
Agribusiness, some scholars suggest applying
Internet of Things (IoT) (Jin, 2012; Liu, 2014; Zhang,
2016; Xu, 2014). The application of IoT to supply
chain management would wipe off the “bullwhip
effect”, and the real-time product information would
help the E-Agribusiness stakeholders to track product
during the supply chain process (Jin, 2012).