The Epitome of Youth Engagement in ICT
The rapid population growth requires the agrifood sector to increase production, putting the agrifood sector into a much more important role to feed the planet. However, the agrifood sector is facing numerous challenges, including the aging population of people working in the agrifood and limited access to knowledge. As it was really interesting to deep dive on this matter, from 2017 to 2018, I worked on my master’s thesis at Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands.
To formulate the research framework, I had numerous discussions with YPARD team and academic staffs of Business, Management, and Organization chair group at Wageningen University. Finally, a title has been decided, “Engaging youth in ICT for enhanced agricultural knowledge” which was proposed by YPARD team. Although the thesis took a lot of discussions with YPARD team, I ran the thesis independently to have the most objective result as an external observer.
A cross-sectional study of members of Young Professionals in Agricultural Development (YPARD) in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines was conducted to explore the involvement of young professionals and utilization of ICT in the agrifood supply chain. Findings suggest that young people have the capability and potential to incorporate ICT in the supply chain, as demonstrated by the high awareness of ICT benefits. Furthermore, the studied young professionals were found to be highly skilled in using different ICT devices (mobile phone, computer, internet, and advanced ICT devices). However, several constraints were identified in relation to cost, skill, and support from the government. More importantly, the presence of digital divide between younger and older professionals or between supply chain partner was found to be challenging in fully incorporating ICT in the agrifood supply chain.
Nevertheless, applications of ICT can provide wider opportunities if the goals are specific and well-defined, meaning that the development of ICT devices should meet the requirement of current and future professionals. Further research could be undertaken to identify the interaction of individual motivation to share knowledge and support from organization to foster the ICT adoption in the agrifood supply chain from the standpoint of young professionals.
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