OPA: Oil Palm Farmers Assistant

Palm oil accounts for 36% of global vegetable oil production, with 81% majorly produced by Indonesia and Malaysia (OECD/FAO, 2023). In major producing countries, this industry significantly contributes to local and global economies, poverty reduction, food security, and rural development (Purnomo et al., 2020; Nurfatriani et al., 2022; Chiriacò et al., 2022; Monzon et al., 2023). It is also one of the vital contributors to global carbon storage, which is estimated at 73 Mt C per year for 12 million ha of land (Lamade and Bouillet, 2005). During the past 20 years, crude palm oil (CPO) has increased at the expense of area expansion (+0.5 million ha per year). The future demand is estimated to increase by +33% at 60 MMT CPO by 2035, or even higher, due to Indonesia's national mandates on CPO-based biodiesel as the source of green energy movements. 

Narrowing the yield gap via improved agronomic management, together with a limited expansion that excludes fragile ecosystems, would save 2.6 million hectares of forests and peatlands and avoid 714 Mt CO2eq release to the atmosphere. This finding allows Indonesia to produce 60% more palm oil, which would meet the production target for 2035 (Monzon et al, 2021).  

However, the full potential remains untapped due to stagnant yield increase (OECD/FAO, 2023) and persistent yield gaps in Southeast Asia and Africa (Soliman et al., 2016; Hoffmann et al., 2017; Woittiez et al., 2017; Rhebergen et al., 2020; Monzon et al., 2023). This is often exacerbated by low education levels, financial constraints, and knowledge gaps, which drive improper and imbalanced nutrient management practices, especially among smallholders (Woittiez et al., 2018; Monzon et al., 2023; Lim et al., 2023; Sugianto et al., 2023). 

In our global yield gap studies (Monzon et al., 2023), we found that poor palm nutrition has been identified as a major factor for low productivity in smallholder fields. Unfortunately, farmers' fertilizer use is insufficient and inappropriate for increasing current yields. Without access to accurate and site-specific fertilizer recommendations, smallholders will continue to struggle to increase their productivity and profit. Some may add more fertilizer with improper rates but never reach higher productivity. A study from the University of Cambridge also reported that agricultural fertilizer use contributes 5% to total greenhouse gas emissions. In the long run, this is a driver of climate change. To address this issue, proper fertilizer or nutrient management, scalable technology, and policy can help suppress the emission of fertilizers used worldwide by up to 80% in 2050. 

Alternatives to reduce the carbon footprint in oil palm plantations are needed to minimize the ecologically devastating impact of this industry. OPA targets the problems of Indonesia's farmers, including low productivity, a large yield gap, climate vulnerability, and improper fertilizer management, by helping to intensify the implementation of sustainable practices. Using a one-stop hub application concept, OPA aims to address this global issue that affects a significant portion of the population in developing countries.   

We developed OPA, our user-friendly, site-specific decision-support tools and virtual farm assistant who works as a farmer’s buddy to manage their fields. OPA is accessible via the web and mobile at opa.co.id and was built using crop and nutrient modeling, expert systems, and artificial intelligence.

OPA provides beneficial features for farmers consisting of a farmer's field insight dashboard, yield and nutrients status prediction, profit prediction, fertilizer recommendation, carbon storage and emission prediction, integrated farmer's group, and educational notes for implementing sustainable management practices. 

Picture this: a farmer starts using opa as a diary. With this feature, they record yield, note changes in weather patterns, and monitor crop growth. This information isn't just data—it's knowledge. All the entries were analyzed, and tailored recommendations were made. Farmers can predict their yield with better management scenarios. Not only that, but farmers can also work together in a big group to learn best management practices from the app. Moreover, once the additional features are established, farmers can join carbon credit, have a better understanding of their financial balance, and reduce the financial constrain in managing their field. 

These tools empower farmers with a holistic view, enabling informed decisions to manage their fields sustainably, including choosing low-carbon plantation management and improving the environmental footprint. 

Our solution is designed primarily for smallholder farmers in Indonesia. 

Previous work conducted by our group of researchers from IOPRI and University of Nebraska-Lincoln has shown that average FFB yield in independent smallholder fields is well below the attainable yield with proper agronomic management (Monzon et al., 2023; Sugianto et al., 2023; Lim et al., 2023). While the attainable yield is around 33 t FFB per ha, current yields in independent smallholder fields average 14 t FFB per ha (Monzon et al., 2021, 2023); these results are consistent with other studies (Euler et al., 2016; Hoffmann et al., 2017; Woittiez et al., 2017). Hence, there is a large yield gap between the current yield in smallholder fields versus the yield that is attainable with proper agronomic management. 

Our group has also investigated the causes of the large yield gap using detailed data collected from 977 independent smallholders’ fields in six provinces in Indonesia over four years (Monzon et al., 2023; Sugianto et al., 2023; Lim et al., 2023). Results show that poor palm nutrition is the main factor explaining the large yield gap in existing plantations. Detailed leaf sampling across the 977 fields revealed that 90% of fields were deficient in potassium (K). At the same time, two-thirds of the fields were also deficient in nitrogen (N) and potassium (K) (Sugianto et al., 2023). In turn, these nutrient deficiencies were related to inappropriate fertilizer use (Lim et al., 2023). Indeed, half of the smallholders did not apply any fertilizer, and the other half of the farmers applied fertilizer rates that were too small and too imbalanced to meet crop nutrient requirements for high yields.

With OPA, the decision support tools that we developed, altogether, farmers can have a better livelihood with an improved knowledge of sustainable agronomic practices, narrow yield gap, and higher productivity and income. Closing the existing yield gap can improve the economies of farmers, local communities, and mills. It can also lead to a positive economy at the country level. For example, closing the yield gap across the entire independent smallholder area in Indonesia (4 million hectares) would lead to an increase of +15 million tons of CPO per year (+30% increase from now). 

Besides oil palm farmers, the extension services and local government can also use this app to accompany farmers to have better education about sustainable practices. 

The OPA team works as the extension of the Oil Palm Research Institute, especially for projects on smallholders. We will also work side by side to deploy the solution with the local farmer's group and local's government for a larger impact and engagement. The Indonesian Oil Palm Fund Agency was  committed $100k to supporting our idea of this platform into a prototype. Our team comprises of 10 interdisciplinary members spanning agronomy, climatology, soil science, IT, and data science backgrounds with years of experiences equipped to support OPA's development.

We have been working over the last two years to develop OPA services and products. The current prototypes that we produced are an insight dashboard, yield and profit prediction tool, leaf nutrients status and greenness level prediction tool, and a fertilizer-decision support tool for oil palm smallholders. The tool was built based on our expert knowledge of working with 977 Indonesian smallholders (Monzon et al., 2023; Sugianto et al., 2023; Lim et al., 2023). The approach to estimate nutrients requirement is based on estimation of nutrient removal with FFB, nutrients immobilized in trunk, and yield goal. The fertilizer recommendation incorporates the ‘4Rs’ principles of nutrient stewardship, which are the right source, right rate, right time, and right place.

Our group conducted a comprehensive survey during 2023 to gauge the level of interest among smallholders in decision support tools. The survey involved 244 farmers across six provinces in Indonesia, which were a subset of the 977 farmers involved in the Monzon et al (2023) study. The survey revealed that demand exists for these tools. Of the total farmers, 82% indicated a strong interest in using tools to improve fertilizer applications. Thus, if such a tool can be developed and made available to smallholders, it has the potential to help farmers close the existing yield gap via better plant nutrition.

As We have been developing this platform for years, we aim to enhance our visibility to a larger audience, connect with a vibrant global research community to gain insights and collaborations, integrate with complementary innovations, seek guidance from research and industry experts, learn from other Solvers' challenges in scaling up their products, finding the right market, how to keep improving and innovating your product and how to overcome it, and secure funding for incorporating digital agriculture tools for farmers in developing countries. In addition, we would like to have support in human capital, monitoring & evaluation, and technology aspects for an early-stage solution to become more well-established and ready to launch in the national and global market. 

OPA is the first one-stop platform that integrates data-driven, expert systems, artificial intelligence, and site-specific information from farmers' fields to help farmers decide on better and more sustainable management for their  oil palm plantations. With a combination of services and products that farmers mainly need, we strive to empower not only farmers individuals but also farmers groups across ages and genders. We are not only promoting higher profit for the grassroots farmers but also concerned about the improvement of local livelihood and environmental carbon footprint to protect our planet. Besides learning from us, the OPA team and our farmer's communities are learning together hand-in-hand with the current challenges with the help of innovative technologies. OPA website is also designed as a central virtual resource center website accessible to community members (farmers or stakeholders) for professional development and education with a user-friendly layout. The bi-weekly newsletter with updated information and news about oil palm plantations will be provided to catalyze a broader impact for the users. 

Reflecting on the survey we did to our prospective farmers in 5 major producing oil palm in Indonesia, we are eager to introduce our solution to the high demand of local farmers. In addition to that, our recent research on the global yield gap atlas of oil palm (Monzon et al., 2021, 2023; Lim et al, 2023; Sugianto et al, 2023) discovers the over-arching issues such as knowledge gap, and financial constraint that can ultimately address with OPA. 

In the short term, we seek to increase farmers' knowledge of better and more sustainable management practices for their fields. We try to make them familiarized with the use of technology that can make their life easier. From not accounting for their production and profit, to well-documenting field activity, to planning for the next fertilizer application, and even saving profit for replanting. We also encourage them to better understand the importance of carbon footprints and how they can benefit their lives. 

In the long term, when farmers get used to OPA, they will become dependable and have the proper, well-trained mindset and improved knowledge to manage their fields. With a more sustainable plantation, they can apply for global sustainable certification like RSPO in a village or farmer's group scale to gain better pricing for their CPO. OPA will act as a knowledge-sharing platform, not only for individual farmers or farmer's groups but also for larger national communities, with more and more users using these tools. Moreover, we will encourage farmers to join the global carbon market to increase their income by trading their carbon storage by implementing low-carbon emission management for a long period of time. 

We measure our outputs through the number of users and users' locations to know the market and range of our application, the results of periodic user-usability tests, hours of use, and data added to our system. We also had a section where users could add their progress and implementation of our recommendation. Every six months, we plan to visit our major users' plantations and conduct a survey to understand the pain points of our platforms ' needs and fix the bugs based on farmers. It is mainly because our goal is to receive and give back from farmers to farmers. When we find that the awareness, skill, or knowledge level of our users is changing due to our services and products, that is the criterion that our solution performs significant progress. Overall, OPA offers solutions to promote responsible consumption (in terms of fertilizer), which helps the implementation of the low-carbon plantation, protecting life on land, contributing to minimizing climate change impact, and improving economic growth for our local farmers. 

OPA processes the collected data with expert systems, crop and nutrient modeling, and robust analysis to predict yield. We use an artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the farmer's yield, image analysis to count fruits and flowers of oil palm and partial QUEFTS analysis of a balanced approach for fertilizer recommendation. The input data comes from farmers' fields and also integrates local climate stations and NASA Power to generate rainfall and climate data. To increase the precision of the farmer's location, we use the geotagging feature with the help of Google Maps. 

Currently, we employ 6 full-time staff (including one advisor), 1 part-time staff member, 2 contractors, and a business transformation team. 

We have been working on our solution for almost three years. The idea was initiated in late 2020 and still continues to improve some features.

Our team embodies diversity, equity, and inclusion across all dimensions. We prioritize creating an environment where all genders, ages, and interdisciplinary backgrounds thrive. Diversity in our leadership team ensures varied perspectives and inclusive decision-making. We actively work towards minimizing barriers to opportunities for our staff by providing equal access to resources and mentorship. Our goals include fostering an inclusive culture, promoting diverse representation, and addressing systemic barriers. Through targeted recruitment, training, and policies, we strive to create a welcoming and supportive environment for every team member.

Our previous funding has been through Indonesian Oil Palm Fund Agency grants and our institution's research budget. We have applied for another small business grant but are still in the process of further steps. In the future, we would like to receive funding from investors (government or public) and also subscriptions from our users. Since funding sources and financial planning are crucial and prone to face challenges, this became our biggest motivation to join the MIT Solve and make connections and open collaboration for prospective partners and mentoring to overcome this obstacle. 

1. Improve scalability of OPA platform by expand access to investors coming from government and public plantations, stakeholders, as donor base scheme as part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative. This could be the source of increasing revenue from yearly contract. 

2. Apply for research grants nationally and globally with collaborations with university, or research institution worldwide to earn funding that enabled research and development team to produce robust models from scientific research. 

3. Build OPA subscription package with premium features to generate revenue from users. 

4. Provide in-house resource training, monitoring and evaluation team for donors and users. 

5. Develop pipeline for research-based funding using our big data collection, without exposing the original data of users. 

6. Raise at least 30-40% of yearly revenue from contract-based work with national and international organizations that also provide mentoring to scale up our services and products, such as FAO, WFP, UNDP, UNEP, World Bank, and International Fertilizer Association (IFA). 

7. Raise avenue by introducing the well-established features later to the global market. More specifically with farmers and local government in other major producing oil palm countries like in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, and Latin America.