Here is our journey, terrafarms team in Pancamandala, Tasikmalaya, West Java
We started our first journey to Papayan on April 28th from Pondok Cabe, South Tangerang, our designated meeting point. People who joined the trip this time were Fardal, Ali, Azzam, Eric, and Mr. Daday.
[Foto foto dirumah mas ali]
We departed at 12 pm from Pondok Cabe and took a rest at a rest area in Bandung at 3 am. We arrived in Tasikmalaya at 7 am. Without further ado, we went to the Papayan town hall to meet the village officials, including the village chief, village secretary, and others. We discussed and requested permission to collaborate between TerraFarms and Papayan. Surprisingly, they warmly welcomed the invitation to collaborate with us in building the TerraFarm application and developing agricultural technology in Papayan.
After that, we went to Agricamp Papayan, a research and agricultural center in the village of Papayan. There, we met Kang Anang, a highly experienced and expert farmer in the field of agriculture. We had the opportunity to interview him, validate our ideas, and directly test our machine learning model with immediate feedback from the domain expert. After that, we had many discussions about the real problems that farmers, particularly in the Papayan village and the West Java region, are facing.
Furthermore, after engaging in extensive discussions with Kang Anang and other farmers, we proceeded to develop our application based on the outcomes of the discussions. This involved designing the UI, enhancing the UX, developing features in the application and backend, as well as designing IoT devices and other related components.
The evening arrived, and we set off to meet a prominent figure in the local community named Kang Irman. He is an expert from the Directorate General of Village Administration at the Ministry of Home Affairs, as well as an expert in two other ministries. We had extensive discussions about the issues faced not only by farmers but also by the entire village, in order to understand how a rural system works and how different components work together. We also received valuable insights and feedback from Kang Irman regarding the application and system we are developing.
On the second and third day, we focused on speaking with farmers and listening to their feedback, suggestions, and various concerns. We continuously engaged in trial and error to test the solutions we had devised, as well as those recommended by the farmers. Eventually, the time came for us to bid farewell to the local community and return to the village hall to plan for the upcoming launch of the application, which is scheduled to take place in one month after the completion of its development.
On our second visit to Papayan from May 31st to June 5th, we had planned to accomplish several things, including the app launch, creating a capstone video, team photoshoot, idea validation, and continuing discussions with the farmers to understand their needs. The team members who went on this trip were Fardal, Ali, Azzam, Eric, Denis, and Abadi from Jakarta, and Akbar from Malang.
However, there were many incidents that occurred during our journey. We got stuck in heavy traffic before reaching Pasar Senen Station, and two members of our team missed the train and had to switch to a bus to reach Tasikmalaya. After arriving, due to unforeseen circumstances, some of us had to stay overnight at a café in Tasikmalaya.
[Foto foto keberangkatan dan malam sebelum ke papayan]
On the day before our application launch event, we received a lot of help from the community and the officials of Papayan village. They assisted us in setting up the tents, sound system, and inviting the invited guests to attend the Terrafarms application launch. We prepared everything to the best of our abilities and practiced to deliver the event as well as possible.
The day of the launch arrived, and we explained about Terrafarms to the community and our invited guests, demonstrating how our IoT system works, how to use our application, and the benefits it can bring to farmers and the community. We are grateful to have received appreciation from the community, farmers, officials, and local community figures. We also received valuable feedback for the future development of Terrafarms. We express our gratitude to Papayan village and the Pancamandala community because without their help, we would not have been able to reach this point.
