One of the opportunities to increase the amount of food production for food sufficiency is through aquaculture. Advances in technology and telecommunications support the development of online-based businesses such as e-commerce. By using e-commerce, manufacturers can market various products or services worldwide. Here is a study that describes aquaculture solutions in the e-commerce business in Indonesia.
The food problem is a comprehensive problem that threatens all humanity. After the COVID-19 pandemic came along, 811 million experienced hunger, and it is estimated that by 2030 this number will increase. The increasing growth due to food conditions in Indonesia causes the supply conditions of foodstuffs to be smaller than the demand.
In addition, the community is considered too dependent on agricultural products rather than aquaculture. The pandemic condition in early 2020 caused a prolonged impact on food security. The issue of environmentally friendly and sustainable business is essential in the economy.
As a maritime archipelagic country, Indonesia has a large water area, so the water resources are relatively large. Based on this, several companies have emerged that are engaged and conservancy to become solutions to increase production and food security in the water sector.
One of these companies is eFishery, a social entrepreneur startup that has successfully reduced water pollution’s impact on fish feeding patterns. eFishery helps fish farmers to organize fish feeding schedules and suppress fish deaths due to poisoning.
The company is the first aquatech field in Asia, supported by technological advances in aquaculture to facilitate fish farming, access to capital, and easier sales of harvests.
Indonesia big contributor to the world’s fish farming production
Indonesia is the second contributor to the world’s many fish farming productions. However, this higher contribution level must be balanced with the growth of abilities and knowledge.
Besides the limited growth of fish farmers’ ability and knowledge of technology, the climate is also one of the major influences. Climate change is self-evident in the form of rising water temperatures, changes in rainfall and water availability, and increasing the frequency and intensity of storms.
All of this has an impact on fisheries production and fish biodiversity. Currently, aquaculture development shows that rural areas’ characteristics are filled with cultivators on a small business scale. These cultivators still use conventional technology.
It makes it challenging to increase the productivity of fish farming because their accessibility is still not affordable for capital, technology, information, and markets. Aquaculture itself plays a vital role in fish production in the world, where overall, aquaculture contributed as much as 44.1% of the total fish farming production in the world in 2014.
“This percentage is constantly growing every year. Countries in Asia have contributed 88.91%, and Indonesia ranks second with 5.77% of the world’s many fish farming products.”
However, this higher contribution level must be balanced with the growth of abilities and knowledge. Aquaculture has been the fastest way to obtain the fastest source of animal protein food for more than half a century (an average growth rate of 8.1% per year since 1961), with total world production in 2007 reported as 65.2 million tons worth Rp 94,500,000,000.
More than 91.1% of total global production is produced in Asia, with China alone producing 63.2% of the global total producing aquaculture fisheries.
In 2021 per capita fish consumption of the world’s population will reach 19.6 kg per year. Although marine fish currently supply more fish consumption, in 2018, freshwater fish production has rapidly progressed compared to the production of capture fisheries.
It is because the production of capture fisheries will decrease due to overfishing, making it more difficult for marine fish to be obtained. Even if there is no change in the production model, researchers predict that by 2048 there will be no more marine fish to catch.
“For this reason, it is necessary to increase the production of freshwater fish farming as a substitute for marine fish so that marine life has the opportunity to breed.”
However, aquaculture development is not as rapid as the development of agriculture because the food content in lakes, rivers, and seas is so abundant that it is considered unimportant to learn how to cultivate it.
In addition, several factors can hinder aquaculture development, including the business and administrative environment and structural regulations that create constraints rather than support further aquaculture development.
eFishery provides solutions
One is the existence of a budikdamber system that can overcome the problem of land limitations and decreased quantity and water quality in urban areas. Based on this, eFishery offers automatic fish feed tools that are directly connected to the internet.
So that work is more efficient and effective, production of suitable feed for fish types, providing advice for farmers on how to understand the fish feed that should be given, and how to cultivate fish in cities with less water quality. eFishery has a mission as a company that grows a sustainable aquaculture ecosystem following sustainable development goals.
After the Covid-19 pandemic came at the beginning of 2020 has drastically changed lifestyles, including business activities in almost all humanity worldwide, unlike in Indonesia. The habit of wearing masks when going outside, diligently washing hands to maintaining physical distancing to avoid transmission of the spread of the Covid-19 virus.
Even before the pandemic came, many small and medium-sized businesses faced the challenges of an increasingly competitive market with increasingly fierce competition because of the industrial revolution 4.0 that was delivered earlier, so the arrival of Covid-19 has caused conditions to get worse in uncertainty.
“However, eFishery can still survive even in such conditions because it uses a digital platform that suits these conditions. Sustainable aquaculture ecosystems have a longer-term concept, namely that there must be equal access and opportunities for future generations.”
The contribution of aquaculture can be helped by advances in the field of technology today. The technology based business sector has the potential to maintain food security by building a systematic value chain. An integrated system can produce a sustainable ecosystem based on technology to strengthen global food security in the future.
Many ideas have emerged in the community as technology in this 4.0 era. Business people are asked to be more creative to survive in various conditions. In addition to the rapid growth of technology, the level of information has also experienced significant growth.
Advance in the field of technology and information support the emergence of the development of online-based businesses such as e-commerce. e-Commerce gives new ideas to the trading system in technological advances.
“This technology makes it easier for users to reach a broader market with a variety of information that is easy to access effectively and efficiently, especially for locations that are difficult to reach through the market to sell aquatic products.”
eFishery, as an aquatech company, can provide this through an application with a method of feeding catfish that is scientifically regulated in time and quantity via smartphones. In research conducted by it was shown that the participation of fish cultivators in groups was at an apparent degree of participation with a high frequency of participation.
The level of cultivator participation is already at the decision making stage and acts together with the type of functional participation. Based on the above, here we present an exploratory study that aims to describe aquaculture solutions in the ecommerce business in Indonesia.
The object of the research is eFishery as the first company in Asia to use the aquatech system to maintain food security in Indonesia in particular and globally in general so that sustainable development goals can be achieved.
Research Methods
The method is a prospective explorative qualitative method, which according to Sugiyono (2019) is often called a “naturalistic research method” because the research is carried out under natural conditions.
The technique used is the collection of secondary data in the form of observations and data from various journals, books, and websites that support this research to provide an overview of the assessment and provide solutions to existing problems based on the results of the evaluation.
According to Miles and Huberman in (Sugiyono, 2019) suggests that activities in qualitative data analysis are carried out interactively and continue continuously until complete, so that the data is saturated. Activities in data analysis are data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions or verifying results.
Results and Discussion
The primary mission of eFishery is to create a socially entrepreneurial and sustainable startup. Environmental and social issues a business affects are not new; experts have discussed this for many years. Global trends improve environmental and social performance (Yudawisastra, 2022).
eFishery develops an aquaculture system with a mission to address the issue of hunger through the fisheries sector. It is not an easy thing for this achievement.
The existing challenges prompted eFishery to create systematic solutions to facilitate every step of the cultivation process. The eFishery products and services now available fully support the fishing business.
“eFishery’s products and services exist to build an ecosystem where fish and shrimp farmers can increase productivity while creating a sustainable environment. eFishery is a company engaged in producing fish feeding equipment automatically employing scheduled feeding with the proper dosage and recording each feeding in real-time.”
This robotic fish feed technology can make it easier for business people in the field of fisheries, both on a home and large scale. So, eFishery provides a desirable and valuable value proposition for its customers.
As the world begins to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, eFishery continues to support farmers and fish farmers. Over the past eight years, from developing feeders to having a headquarters filled with hundreds of talented eFisheria. eFishery has built more than 100 eFishery points in every corner of Indonesia to provide better assistance to fish and shrimp farmers.
The Figure 1, describes the transformation of eFishery to achieve the goal of overcoming food catalysis in order to achieve sustainable development goals.
Digital applications for supporting business
Industrial Revolution 4.0 is one of the implementations of high-tech improvements in the manufacturing sector in the face of competition. The rapid development of technology makes it easier for humans to work and improve production efficiency in various fields such as cultivation, telecommunications, and other industry.
Community empowerment is required to implement an eFishery digitization system due to the Industrial Revolution 4.0. The advantage of eFishery is that it can feed fish automatically according to the chosen dosage and time, and farmers can monitor pond water quality through the eFishery website (Figure 2).
Since its establishment in 2013, there has never been an assessment of the usability or usefulness of the eFishery website. It is not known whether the extent to which this website is following what the community needs. As a startup company with a sustainable concept, eFishery is very good at managing websites so people can easily access them.
On the homepage, everybody can see the vision and mission of the company, its products, and the ease of joining as part of the sustainability program. The public has unlimited access to location, direct messages, and social media. The products offered by this company are soutions for cultivators and consumers.
One of the sustainable goals of eFishery is to financially support farmers through financing programs, create technologies to improve feed efficiency, accompany a variety of services to boost productivity, and channel crops for sustainable cultivation.
Solutions for fish farmers
The app allows automatic fish feed givers that can be controlled through a smartphone. With Fish eFishery Feeder, users can easily set a feeding schedule with a feed dose that suits the user needs. Every feed issued by eFishery Feeder is recorded automatically so that fish farmers can continue to monitor feed expenditure every day without having to record it manually.
eFishery offers the convenience of providing fish feed anytime and anywhere accurately and recorded. Regular and maximally absorbed eFishery feeding will prevent the pond from the danger of overfeeding. Applications for fish breeders consist of eFisheryKu, eFisheryFeeder Fish, Kabayan, eFisheyeed, and Lapak Ikan.
Solution for shrimp farmers
This application is used to increase productivity, maintain pond water quality, prevent outbreaks, and recommend a data-based pond management system, to support the ponds of shrimp farmers.
Solution for Buyers and Consumers
This application ensures buyers can access the best quality fish and shrimp products that can be enjoyed throughout the country with farmers’ crops living, fresh, and frozen form.
Solution for Sustainable
eFishery is committed to sustainability. The application was created specifically to access to capital support services for Indonesian Fish Farmers, providing aquaculture needs with a due payment.
Discussion
eFishery products and services exist to build an ecosystem where fish and shrimp farmers can increase productivity while creating a sustainable environment. eFishery is a company engaged in the production of automatic fish feed equipment using a feeding schedule with the right dosage and real-time recording of each feeding.
So, eFishery provides a desirable and valuable value proposition for its customers. As the world begins to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, eFishery continues to support fish farmers and cultivators.
Over the last eight years, from developing feeders to having a head office filled with hundreds of talented eFisheries Community empowerment is needed to implement an eFishery digitalization system due to the Industrial Revolution 4.0.
The advantage of eFishery is that it can feed fish automatically according to the dose and time chosen, and farmers can monitor pond water quality through the eFishery website. This application is used to increase productivity, maintain pond water quality, prevent outbreaks, and recommend a data-based pond management system to support pond farmers.
So it can be said that eFishery can find sustainable solutions and survive in the ecommerce business. Digitalization changes everything about fish, shrimp farming with its uses, automatic fish feed, pond water quality monitoring, and the way consumers get accurate information about the company’s market products.
Conclusion
Based on the description and discussion above, it can be concluded that eFishery can find sustainable solutions and stay in the e-commerce business. Digitalization changes everything about fish, shrimp farming with its uses, automatic fish feed, monitoring pond water quality, and consumers getting accurate information about the company’s market products.
This digital-based sales system is expected to make it easier for employees to check product availability so that the sales process runs without a hitch. Buyers will benefit because there is no indent or pre-order process.
The application provided by eFishery makes it easier for farmers and customers because it can be accessed from anywhere without being constrained by space or time.
This is a summarized version developed by the editorial team of Aquaculture Magazine based on the review article titled “SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE ECOSYSTEM SOLUTIONS IN E-COMMERCE BUSINESS” developed by: AMNILA HANISAH RIFAINY, JOVITO BENHART, RAMADHAN MOSTAR and RIZKIAN MAULANA – Muhammadiyah University.
The original article was published, including tables and figures, on JANUARY 2023, through Jurnal ILMIAH AKUNTANSI DAN KEUANGAN.
The full version can be accessed online through this link:
https://journal.ikopin.ac.id/index.php/fairvalue.
