AgResults Recognizes Indonesia Aquaculture Competitor Achievements during Year 3 Award Ceremony

To commemorate the end of a successful Year 3 and to kickoff Year 4, the AgResults Indonesia Aquaculture Challenge Project held an award ceremony, learning event, and competitor induction from June 4-6 in Depok, West Java. The Pay-for-Results prize competition, which began in 2021, incentivizes businesses across Indonesia to deliver aerator and auto-feeder technologies to smallholder farmers. In Year 3, the competition added a technical assistance prize.  In Year 3, 12 competitors participated and eight of those qualified for prizes. The winning competitors, who sold 1,949 technology units, rented 624 technology units, and provided 263 TA packages, received a total of $310,312 in prizes.

“These prizes illustrate how competitors have created and strengthened relationships with smallholder aquaculture farmers across the country over three years,” said Gabriella Mpagi of the AgResults Secretariat. “At this year’s award ceremony, we also recognize how businesses provided farmers with technical assistance to increase their understanding and improve productivity.”

The competition aims to overcome multiple challenges in the country’s aquaculture sector related to feed cost, water quality, and quality of fish —all of which have historically limited smallholder aquaculture practices’ efficiency, particularly via traditional ponds. This inefficiency not only limits productivity but also has an adverse impact on the environment and sustainability of fish farming. By increasing adoption of on-farm technologies such as feeders and aerators as well as encouraging the delivery of crucial technical assistance, the prize competition aims to strengthen value chain links and boost smallholder farmer income. In Year 3, technology competitors served a total of 469 smallholder farmers.

“We are very grateful for this program because it has greatly contributed to the distribution of our technology across the country,” said Hanif Amrullah of CV Republik Vannamei, which was the top winner of the Year 3 technology prize competition. “Hopefully, our technology will be well-received and will increase smallholder farmers’ productivity in Indonesia.”

This year, the project also added a technical assistance prize to teach farmers aquaculture best practices, including how to perform water quality monitoring and test for disease. Competitors that participated in the TA competition served a total of 241 smallholder farmers.

“This was the first year that Aceh Aquaculture Cooperative participated in the technical assistance competition,” said Ardian on behalf of the company that was the top winner of the Year 3 TA prize competition. “Providing mentoring to smallholder farmers is indeed a challenge. We need guidance, and with this AgResults program, we can find the solution.”

The award ceremony was followed by a seminar titled “The Role of Technology in Increasing Fish Production.” The seminar featured three speakers: Dr. Joni Haryadi, M.Sc., Head of the Ornamental Fish Aquaculture Research Center in Depok; Mulud Mulia, S.Pi., M.Si., Head of the Fish Feed Facilities Team at the Directorate General of Fish Feed and Medicine (POI) DJPB KKP; and Zulkifli, a tilapia and carp farmer from Sukabumi.

During the competition’s three years, participating businesses have started to change not only their approach to marketing but also their overall operational model: Competitors are proactively engaging farmers with both in-person and social media outreach, and they are starting to bundle inputs and TA subscriptions to drive customer growth and retention.

As the project looks to its final year, there are promising signs that companies and distributors will continue to strengthen their operational tactics and their engagement of smallholder farmers to further boost the use of innovative technologies and TA across the country’s aquaculture sector.

“We are looking forward to working with more technology and TA competitors in Year 4,” said Nur Ahyani, Project Manager Lead. “WWF-Indonesia will assist competitors, especially newcomers, to conduct outreach to smallholder farmers and will lead entrepreneurship and financial literacy trainings for women. We also plan to connect this project with other initiatives to leverage AgResults’ work to more beneficiaries. Through these efforts, we hope that smallholder farmers across the country will continue to adopt more technologies and TA packages to strengthen Indonesia’s aquaculture sector.”

The Indonesia Aquaculture Challenge Project is part of AgResults, a $152 million collaborative initiative between the governments of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Bank Group that uses prize competitions to incentivize the private sector to overcome market barriers and create lasting change. Under AgResults’ Pay-for-Results model, these competitions encourage actors to achieve predetermined results thresholds and quality for monetary prizes.