Design and Implementation of Plantation Commodities Price Information Broadcaster via Autoreply Short Message Service on Smartphone

Abstract

Indonesia’s plantation sector contributes significantly to gross domestic product (GDP). Not only local, plantation products such as oil palm, cocoa, rubber, coffee and pepper have become international trade commodities, and place Indonesia as one of the main countries in the trading of these commodities. Ironically, farmers as the initial source of the trade chain often do not get maximum benefits, due to price fluctuations as a result of the instability of the rupiah exchange rate. This instability is an opportunity for fraudulent traders to play prices at the farmer level. The government as a price regulator and guarantor of economic justice, is responsible for socializing prices as a form of prolonged protection for farmers. The problem is that the plantation area and the farmer’s dwellings are scattered to remote areas, making it difficult for the government to socialize prices at any time. Therefore, the presence of an information system on the spread of agricultural commodity prices based on SMS auto-reply, can be an information sharing solution. The application and testing of the message delivery system was 100% successful, without failure to send messages at each level. The test is carried out with 3 system condition scenarios, first: the server condition is dead, second: the smartphone is dead and third: the cellular phone is out of network coverage. Each scenario uses 3 smartphones for 3 groups of SMS senders, with each of 10 different cell phones. The test results show this system can be an alternative distribution of commodity price information with the support of cellular communication infrastructure that functions well into remote areas.