A Collaborative Development Communication Model for Sustainable Smart Farming: A Single-Case Study of Millennial Farmer Empowerment for Food Security in Garut Regency, Indonesia

2.1 From Diffusion of Innovations to collaborative governance

Development communication has evolved from linear diffusion toward dialogic, collaborative models. Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory conceptualised communication as linear transmission through sequential stages [26], but was criticised for privileging one-way transfer over dialogue and local knowledge [27]. Freire [28] reconceptualised communication as dialogic, positioning communities as active knowledge-creators, while Servaes [29] emphasised cultural diversity and mutual learning over technology transfer. These developments gave rise to CDC, which treats communication as a process facilitating dialogue, collective learning, trust-building, and shared decision-making [30]. Collaborative governance adds an institutional lens for addressing complex public problems through cross-sector collaboration [31, 32]: communication is the mechanism through which government, academic, private, and community actors exchange knowledge, negotiate objectives, and coordinate resources.

2.2 The Pentahelix model and the conceptual foundation of the Collaborative Development Communication Model

In Indonesia, collaborative development increasingly follows the Pentahelix model, integrating government, academia, business, community, and media [33, 34]: government provides policy direction; universities contribute scientific knowledge; the private sector supplies technology; farmer communities contribute local knowledge; and media strengthens public awareness. These perspectives indicate that sustainable agricultural transformation cannot be explained by technology diffusion alone — participatory communication highlights dialogue and empowerment, collaborative governance emphasises institutional coordination, and the Pentahelix approach explains multi-actor roles — yet they have rarely been integrated to explain communication processes in smart farming.

This study develops an integrated conceptual foundation examining how communication facilitates collaboration among these five actors in empowering millennial farmers, conceptualising communication as dialogue, trust-building, knowledge co-creation, and collective decision-making. It is refined through empirical findings into the CDC Model, and summarised in Figure 2.

2.png

Figure 2. Conceptual framework: A Collaborative Development Communication (CDC) Model for sustainable smart farming, empowering millennial farmers for food security

The findings derive from reflexive thematic analysis of data collected through nine interview sessions, participatory observation, and documentary analysis across smart farming sites in Garut Regency: Desa Karya Mukti (Cibatu), the Cikajang Technology Transfer Station (TTP), a government-assisted semi-smart greenhouse in Banyuresmi, a privately financed smart greenhouse in Wanaraja, and the Garut Regency Agriculture Office. Interview extracts are reported verbatim in translation and identified by informant code.

The analysis generated four interrelated themes explaining how CDC facilitates the empowerment of millennial farmers: (1) Pentahelix collaborative communication as the institutional foundation of smart farming; (2) millennial farmers as bridge actors linking digital technologies with local agricultural knowledge; (3) intergenerational collaborative communication between senior and millennial farmers; and (4) communication outcomes contributing to sustainable food security, agricultural regeneration, and green economy practices. Section 4.5 then presents two contrasting cases in which technology was introduced without a collaborative communication structure; these are treated as negative cases delimiting the scope of the four themes.

As illustrated in Figure 3, axial coding identified communication — specifically dialogue, trust-building, and farmer empowerment — as the mechanism connecting multi-stakeholder collaboration, technology adoption, collective learning, and sustainable agricultural outcomes across participant groups. These interrelationships provided the analytical basis for the proposed CDC Model.

3.png

Figure 3. Axial coding diagram showing relationships among themes and categories underpinning the Collaborative Development Communication (CDC) Model for smart farming and sustainable food security

4.1 Pentahelix collaborative communication as the foundation of smart farming

Thematic analysis identified Pentahelix collaborative communication as the institutional foundation of smart farming implementation. In Desa Karya Mukti, adoption emerged from structured collaboration among village government, universities, private companies, farmer groups, and district agencies. Communication within this framework extends beyond information transfer to institutional trust-building and joint problem-solving, in which each actor performs a complementary role.

According to HD:

HD located the village’s transformation in an explicit collaborative principle rather than in the technology itself:

“We brought in academics, because our principle is Pentahelix: we have to collaborate with academics, entrepreneurs, government, and community leaders. … The knowledge sits with the academics; what we have is application in the field.” (HD)

This principle was institutionalised through a Partnership Agreement (PKS) with a university concluded in 2019 and renewed in 2024, covering technology transfer, mentoring, and capacity-building for IoT-based irrigation. It was complemented by private-sector input support and by policy support and technical supervision from the Garut Regency Agriculture Office. HD framed the rationale in fiscal rather than technological terms: “my principle is that village funds are not simply handed out; they must be sustainable and generate the village’s own revenue” (HD).

A similar collaborative communication pattern emerged at the Cikajang Technology Transfer Station (TTP), which functions as an innovation hub integrating government agencies, universities, agritech companies, and farmer organizations [44]. As explained by KP1:

KP1 described the station’s function in explicitly communicative terms, as an intermediary structure created to close a gap between research and practice:

“In the past there were many researchers and many findings, but not one of them reached the farmers, because there was nothing to connect them. Researchers had nowhere to put their results, and farmers had no access to researchers. … So our role is more that of an intermediary.” (KP1)

“We are open to government, universities, students, and also private companies such as agro-input firms. … They supply their products free of charge and we trial them; if the results are positive, we disseminate them to the farmers we mentor.” (KP1)

KP1 also reported annually revised standard operating procedures developed through on-site demonstration plots, and formal cooperation with vocational schools and a local university, indicating that the station’s collaborative function extends beyond equipment to procedural and educational knowledge [44, 45].

Field observations confirmed continuous dialogue, joint experimentation, and collaborative evaluation at the TTP, reinforced by the PERURI IoT-based smart farming programme [37] and comparable regional digital extension initiatives [39] — evidence that the Pentahelix communication framework is transferable and scalable beyond individual villages.

4.2 Millennial farmers as bridge actors linking digital technology and local agricultural knowledge

Thematic analysis identified millennial farmers as strategic communication bridge actors translating digital technologies into locally usable practice. At the Cikajang TTP, senior farmers found the smart greenhouse interface cumbersome while younger farmers adapted readily and became its de facto operators; the station therefore shifted towards enabling access rather than mandating participation, and constituted a separate young farmers’ group of 25–30 members. PM1, introduced to smart farming through a university community-service programme and by the village head, adopted the technology selectively:

“The difference compared with manual work turned out to be enormous — far easier and more efficient. … Weeding and clearing are still done by hand, but for watering we use smart farming. We can multitask: farm and do other things at the same time.” (PM1)

Technology mediation is therefore discretionary and task-specific rather than wholesale [46, 47].

Digital knowledge brokerage was evident in PM1’s use of TikTok and Facebook to circulate short educational content on fertilisation and cultivation technique:

“TikTok and Facebook. The content is educational — about fertilising and how to farm. My followers are still few, but I have posted quite a lot. … The benefits are many: my knowledge has grown, things I did not know I now know, and it is more profitable and efficient. The constraints are that equipment is still lacking, and not all of my friends understand the technology yet.” (PM1)

These accounts suggest that millennial farmers occupy a communication position between formal innovation systems and everyday practice, translating external input into locally adapted routines [48-50].

This bridging role is fragile when infrastructure fails. The sensor and irrigation-control system at the Cikajang TTP was disabled by a lightning strike and remained inoperative for about five months at the follow-up interview, because the supplying institution had not responded and no local technician had the necessary expertise:

“When there is a problem we stop for a month or two, because the technician has to come from Bandung or Jakarta. … It was struck by lightning. We have contacted the party concerned several times and there is still no response, and until there is we cannot repair it. Local technicians do not understand it either, and the device is not even sold online.” (KP1)

“A farmer cannot be an operator and the custodian of the system at the same time — it is not possible. Even with training, it is difficult, because that is specialised knowledge. … If digital technology is to be enjoyed by farmers and to be sustained, whoever installs the technology must supply the specialist alongside it.” (KP1)

Millennial farmers thus function as system operators rather than maintainers, dependent on external specialists [51] — a structural dependency that collaborative communication alone cannot resolve without technical-support infrastructure [52].

Two qualifications delimit this theme. First, only one millennial farmer was interviewed directly. The bridging role is corroborated across four further stakeholder accounts and documentary sources — HD’s allocation of technology and media tasks to young farmers, KP1’s judgement that “none of the successful digitalisation cases involve senior farmers; they are all millennials” (KP1), KT1’s account of receiving digital relays through younger intermediaries, PK1’s report that the control interface at his site is operated by a young administrator, and a regional extension scheme mobilising young farmers to support digital extension service adoption [8, 39, 41]. The claim is therefore presented as a pattern in how stakeholders in this case organise communicative labour, not as a generalisation about Indonesian millennial farmers, for which a substantially larger sample would be required.

Second, the bridging role does not follow automatically from age. At the Wanaraja site the interface is operated by young staff, yet no brokerage to the surrounding community occurs (Section 4.5). Age supplies the aptitude; it is the surrounding communicative structure — mentoring relationships, group meetings, assigned roles, and an audience to translate for — that converts aptitude into a bridging function.

4.3 Intergenerational collaborative communication between senior and millennial farmers

A recurring pattern was the deliberate pairing of millennial and senior farmers as a communication strategy: HD allocated technology and media tasks to millennial farmers while entrusting senior farmers with agronomic technique, framing this division as a precondition for smart farming rather than a by-product [53]:

“The farmer group members are elderly, so there have to be millennial farmers who are not technologically illiterate. Otherwise, with a mobile phone, all they can do is make a call. The farmer group brings experience — the seniors know the ground. So the young hold the technology and the media, and the seniors hold the technique and the farming experience.” (HD)

This is exemplified by KT1, a senior farmer-group leader responsible for roughly 400 members across two neighbourhood units, who has farmed since the age of twelve and does not operate a smartphone independently:

“I have farmed since I was twelve; I am going on sixty-six now. … Honestly I cannot read WhatsApp myself, so I ask my child to read it out to me. And I never take a phone into the fields — five of them have already gone into the irrigation canal.” (KT1)

The collaborative structure accommodates this constraint rather than treating it as a deficit: coordination combines twice-monthly group meetings with farmer-group WhatsApp updates relayed through family intermediaries, so participation does not depend on individual device literacy [53].

Knowledge exchange is bidirectional. KT1 adopted a non-chemical pest-control formulation suggested by a younger relative, tested it, and incorporated it into his own mentoring:

“For chilli we tried a non-chemical approach — garlic, turmeric, and a fermented milk drink, blended ourselves, to deal with anthracnose. It worked. I learned it from my younger sibling, who said to try the fermented drink; I tried it straight away, and it was effective.” (KT1)

KT1 described his mentoring as deliberately informal — “relaxed, joking, not too serious” (KT1) — and framed smart farming as an extension of senior farmers’ standing rather than a threat:

“It has had a real impact. What the community was waiting for is exactly this: you have land but you do not need much labour if you use the technology. Young people are starting to look at farming in a new way. And seniors like me are pleased too — our farming knowledge is not lost; it is combined with the young people’s technology.” (KT1)

These findings indicate that co-learning operates through a durable division of communicative labour — millennial farmers anchor the technological interface while senior farmers retain agronomic authority — so that adoption reconfigured rather than displaced senior farmers’ roles [53, 54].

4.4 Collaborative communication outcomes for sustainable food security, agricultural regeneration, and green economy practices

At the household level, the Harum Madu programme constituted an early, low-technology form of communication-based empowerment preceding IoT adoption [55]:

“It began with Harum Madu — an acronym for productive and integrated home yards. We were still entirely manual then. We ran the nursery in a greenhouse and distributed the seedlings to the community: chilli, shallots, tomato, water spinach, pak choi — at least five varieties per household. Nearly 10,000 polybags, with a village fund allocation of around 70 million rupiah, including technical guidance. A control team went round collecting the harvest, selling it and buying seedlings again, so that the programme would keep going.” (HD)

At the production level, smart farming has been sequenced around locally viable commodities: a grape pilot, planned melon expansion, and a coffee sector (over 200 tonnes per harvest) and elephant ginger (up to 500 tonnes) still sold unprocessed — “unfortunately the farmers still sell it as raw cherry; there is no roasting yet” (HD) — an explicit opportunity for downstream value addition.

At the institutional level, the Koperasi Desa Karya Mukti (KDMP) Cooperative (established May 2025, approximately 500 members) trades in staples while pursuing financing to become a coffee processing and marketing hub supplying the national Free Nutritious Meal programme, translating raw output into stabilised income [56-59]:

“The plan is for the cooperative to become the business hub: take in the farmers’ coffee, roast it, package it, and sell it to cafés and supermarkets. We have already partnered with the MBG programme for food supply.” (HD)

At the regional level, these outcomes sit within a Garut Regency context of approximately 307,710 hectares in which, according to DP1, central government irrigation investment raised production by around 12%. District officials identified downstream digitalisation and the participatory stage of programme communication as persistent weaknesses:

“One of our weak points is digitalisation — digitalisation of products, and downstream processing. We do already have some digitalisation for marketing, but in practice it is difficult. That is precisely our weak point.” (DP1)

“Of the 42 sub-districts, only 14 have drones so far, so it is certainly not yet optimal. … Internally within the office, the socialisation stage is done. But the stage that involves the other parties, including farmers and farmer groups — not yet.” (DP1)

This is analytically significant: the regency’s digitalisation agenda has advanced technically while the participatory communication stage has not begun, positioning the village-level model as a response to a gap that district actors themselves acknowledge [40, 60].

4.5 Contrasting cases: Technology transfer without collaborative communication

Two sites in the sample did not follow the pattern described above and are reported here as negative cases, because they specify the conditions under which collaborative communication is present or absent.

The first is a smart greenhouse in Wanaraja, operational for about seven years and producing melons for export through a national distributor. It is privately owned and financed, and its communication structure is vertical and enclosed: a single manager trains six to eight local staff recruited through the village youth organisation. According to PK1 there is no extension officer, no farmer group, and no operational relationship with the district agriculture office. Technically the installation succeeds; communicatively it does not diffuse:

“With the smart greenhouse there has been no transfer of knowledge, because it is not yet understood. … Only the people who work inside are involved. … There is no farmer group here. … The millennial farmer programme itself never actually ran.” (PK1)

The comparison within this single site is instructive. The high-technology system remained enclosed, while a low-technology practice learned at the same site did diffuse, because it travelled through existing social relationships: PK1 recorded the organic fertiliser technique, tested it on an adjacent rice plot, and passed it to the village youth organisation and a farmer group, using five kilograms of urea where local practice would have used roughly 73, at a comparable yield. Transferability tracked the availability of a communication pathway rather than the sophistication of the technology.

The second case is a government-assisted semi-smart greenhouse in Banyuresmi. Sprinkler equipment supplied through a company trial was abandoned after uneven water distribution caused nursery losses, and the group reverted to manual irrigation. KT2 attributed this to the absence of sustained accompaniment:

“The sprinkler is not used — it was not effective, because the watering was not even. Some places were wet, others were not, and there were many losses in the nursery, so we went back to manual and it has been safe. … If we only get extension and a launch, and then we are not accompanied, it is useless. It will fail anyway.” (KT2)

KT2 further explained why capital-intensive protected cultivation is rarely adopted independently: “rather than build a greenhouse for 100 or 200 million rupiah, farmers would rather add more land — that adds to their assets” (KT2). Neither private capital nor public subsidy is sufficient alone. Where technology arrives without an accompanying communication structure — mentoring relationships, a receiving collective, and a maintenance pathway — adoption either remains enclaved within a firm or is reversed at the first operational failure. The CDC Model therefore describes the conditions under which smart farming becomes collectively beneficial, not an outcome of technology deployment as such.

Table 3 summarises the evidence base for the four themes.

Table 3. Thematic analysis: Representative evidence, stakeholders, and contributions to sustainable food security, including the contrasting cases

Building on the relationships identified through coding and thematic synthesis, the CDC Model (Figure 4) positions communication as the connective infrastructure linking Pentahelix collaboration, millennial bridging, intergenerational co-learning, and food security outcomes.

4.png

Figure 4. Integrated Collaborative Development Communication (CDC) Model illustrating the relationships among communication processes, stakeholder collaboration, smart farming adoption, millennial farmer empowerment, and sustainable food security

This study provides case-based evidence that CDC constituted the institutional foundation of smart farming and food security outcomes in the sites examined. The following conclusions apply to this case and are offered as analytically generalisable propositions.

First, smart farming is fundamentally enabled by a Pentahelix collaborative communication architecture integrating government, academia, private sector, farmer communities, and media, generating the trust and collaborative capacity necessary for sustainable innovation.

Second, millennial farmers functioned as communication bridge actors, mediating between digital technologies and established agricultural knowledge while serving as peer educators and digital content creators. Because this was corroborated across stakeholder accounts but observed directly with one millennial practitioner, and because young operators at a contrasting site performed no comparable brokerage, the bridging role is contingent on an enabling communicative structure rather than an attribute of generation.

Third, intergenerational collaborative communication integrating senior farmers' experiential knowledge with millennial farmers' digital competencies generates innovations neither generation could produce independently, representing an effective strategy for agricultural regeneration.

Fourth, this study proposes the CDC Model, integrating participatory communication, collaborative governance, and the Pentahelix approach into a comprehensive framework for sustainable agricultural transformation.

The study contributes to development communication scholarship by introducing the CDC Model, by showing that communication can function as institutional infrastructure for agricultural innovation, and by identifying millennial farmers as communication agents whose role is structurally rather than generationally produced.

The study is limited to a single case, a small interview base including one millennial farmer, and documentary rather than interview-based access to the media and academic dimensions (Section 5.5). The CDC Model therefore provides a transferable framework to be tested rather than a validated one. Three priorities follow: comparative multi-site studies; direct engagement with media and university actors; and a larger sample of millennial farmers, combined with sub-district indicators, to test whether communication quality accounts for part of the variation in technology use observed in census data.

From a policy perspective, agricultural transformation investments should extend beyond digital technologies to strengthen communication ecosystems through extension reform, digital literacy enhancement, and formal Pentahelix coordination mechanisms essential for resilient agricultural systems and food security.