Hara helps Indonesian farmers access data with blockchain

• The first blockchain platform for social impact in Indonesia
• Has reached more than 3,000 farmers across 41 villages

HARA is a data exchange platform focused on the agriculture and food sector that aims to provide farmers and all other agricultural players with access to reliable data and transactions.

Having picked Indonesia for its pilot project in 2015, Hara says it’s the first blockchain platform for social impact in Indonesia, providing sustainable solutions for stakeholders in the data exchange market in the most socially sustainable sectors of the world.

“We incorporate players in the agricultural sector, be they from governments, financial institutions, or non-profit organisations (NGOs), into the sustainable Hara ecosystem because basically all stakeholders have data and need data,” says Hara chief technology officer Imron Zuhri.

To date, Hara has reached 3,000 farmers in 41 villages and has helped to connect 200 farmers in Situbondo village to banks and stakeholders. As a return, those farmers will get reward points for data that they provide. These points can be accumulated to provide a discount on agricultural necessities.

Hara currently provides data for the food and agricultural sector including farmers’ data, geo-tagging, agricultural activities in the field, weather data, land, satellite, and market information related to markets and transactions. It also provides valuable near time data to increase productivity, reduce losses, and create market efficiency.

Through a field validation process over the past few years, Hara has found that a combination of four stakeholders is needed to create a sustainable ecosystem on its platform.

The four stakeholders are data providers, who submit their data to Hara; data buyers, who need data for the decision-making process; data qualifiers, who will assess the data; and value-added services that transform data into referral and reporting information.

The site provides an incentive structure for those who participate, where 80% of the results will go to the data provider and data qualifier. It uses tokens in transactions such as incentives to data providers, data buyers, and value-added service providers.

It is also working closely with major players such as PRISMA (part of an Australia-Indonesia partnership for rural economic development), Bank BNI, and BOI Research, an agricultural research company.

At a later stage, Hara will use smart contracts to ensure that all things contained in the approval form of the data’s owner are based on the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) adopted by the European Union.

Hara was initiated by Dattabot, a leading big data company in Indonesia which recently became a member of the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition (BSIC).

Imron says that the company itself has not find out how it will monetise yet, due to only having neutral control on the site and it now only gets paid when it helps to increase farmers’ productivity.

“Since we utilise blockchain technology where we do not have full control over it, we have to make sure that we can add value to the productivity and grow in the local agriculture scene.”

Aiming to reach 75,000 farmers throughout Indonesia, Hara will also expand to several equatorial countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Mexico, and Peru. 

Indonesian blockchain ecosystem

Indonesian Blockchain Association chairman Steven Suhadi says that although the implementation of this technology is still small and has come late in Indonesia, it has the potential for rapid grow in the near future.

“The younger generations who aim to solve unique problems with technology are the main drivers for this.”

He adds that the government needs to establish conducive regulations for blockchain implementation and many sectors have to upscale developers’ understanding in blockchain.

Steven explains that blockchain is suitable for all sorts of business models. But for now, logistics, banking, and app developers are utilising this technology in Indonesia.

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