Tech

TechFarming R&D

by Miko Jazmine J. Mojica

The Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR), in partnership with the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), has trained a total of 76 project proponents on BAR-funded projects for the preparation of the projects’ financial viabilities. The four-day training course on the profitability of new production and processing technologies were conducted twice last year in November while the third leg was conducted in January this year for the project proponents of BAR-funded projects through the National Technology Commercialization Program (NTCP) initiated by Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap. DA-BAR’s Technology Commercialization Unit (TCU) asked its project proponents to participate in the training in an effort to come up with a uniform and comprehensible format on the reporting of profitability analyses of projects for all its funded-projects. DA-BAR believes two significant outcomes are likely in presenting an accurate estimate of the profitability of projects being supported by the government: scarce resources are spent wisely and projects with the highest benefits and real economic potential are explored and prioritized. After the training, TCU, through the assistance of its technical staff on agribusiness, started to compel its project proponents to submit their respective profitability analyses presenting two sides of analysis: one from the perspective of the proponent who invested in the project, and the second from the perspective of the potential investor who is interested in investing in the business. On related developments, DA-BAR has also formally reiterated to its project proponents in its TechCom Program to tap farmer organizations or cooperatives to ensure that technologies and research results are properly disseminated to the right communities and thus create a significant impact on farm productivity and profitability. DA-BAR’s TCU always looks for this component whenever it conducts monitoring and evaluation the projects’ progress. Furthermore, in line with DA-BAR’s partnership with some local government units (LGUs) in the development of agriculture and fisheries enterprises have started to bear fruit as two BAR-funded projects through NTCP with counterpart fund from LGU was completed by its LGU proponents in Ormoc and Biliran provinces. The two LGUs likewise tapped farmer-beneficiaries to establish technology demonstrations on the production and commercialization of high-value vegetable crops in their respective provinces. Out of the counterpart funding, the Ormoc Federation of Vegetable Producers was able to establish a “bagsakan”/trading center for their vegetable produce. On the other hand, the Biliran LGU used the fund from DA-BAR to establish a provincial scion grove and nursery for the production of quality planting materials. end
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Farming I.T.A new stage of inter-connectivity is enabling farmers linked with the Community Participatory Action Research (CPAR) to make wiser decisions in farming from information processed by a locally-developed software.
Higher yield in rice and corn and greater productivity from other crops, livestock, and fisheries are being experienced by farmers under the CPAR program of the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR) as they are now guided by a system for data interpretation.
The system called ePinoy Farm Resource Management System (EFRMS), a platform for farm management developed by Filipino firm Optiserve Technologies Inc. (OTI), not only records yields of farmers in rice, for instance.
It also helps farmers interpret data and obtain a more accurate idea why he or other farmers are getting a higher yield based on abidance with step-by-step “milestones” or prescribed technology process given by DA’s technology experts.
Cheryl Marie Natividad, OTI president, said the EFRMS is a technology in agriculture that has become a breakthrough in helping farmers better manage their farms. Farmers are now advancing into processing or business integration, not merely engaged in raw food production, through this information help.
“DA found out that there should be a concept of graduating a farmer from one stage to another so that at the end of the day, farmers become more productive. You teach them the value of managing for efficiency. You provide them information at every stage of the process if you want them to move into agribusiness,” said Natividad.
The EFRMS involves DA’s provision for farmers’ use of computers located at BAR’s 16 regional centers for research and development (R&D) called Integrated Agricultural Research Centers (IARCS) found all over the country.
Farmers have to be part of an organized group to be able to join the program. Once they are part of an organized group, they can receive an access card, similar to an internet dial-up card, from the government through which they can access DA’s data base that are available too through the internet.
“We only give access cards to organized group of farmers because we have observed that programs become sustainable when it involves an organized group,” said BAR Director Nicomedes P. Eleazar.
Natividad said OTI has first designed EFRMS for the Coconut Industry Investment Fund Oil Milling Group (CIIF-OMG) for coconut farmers’ direct copra marketing program.
The objective of the program was to monitor coconut oil prices traded at the Chicago Board of Trade at Rotterdam trading center in Netherlands and convert this traded price into the local copra price and currency. This way, farmers have an up-to-date reference on how much coconut oil importers are buying their goods.
“This eliminates traders (middlemen) who can manipulate prices if farmers don’t have access to price in the international market. It strengthens the capability of organized groups at grassroots level,” said Natividad.
In rice, the EFRMS enables farmers to evaluate the importance of certain factors like soil analysis, soil condition, irrigation, and weather pattern in order to raise their yield.
“You have to correlate data. You’re putting a system relevant to them as you’re helping them improve their way of doing things in the past,” she said.
Eventually, the aim of EFRMS is also to encourage farmers to engage in an integrated farming system where they will not only have rice or only corn in their farm. But they should also engage in livestock or fisheries in order to have many income streams. They can intercrop coconut with other plants like corn or cocoa.
“We want them to engage in diversified farming because the reason why farmers are poor is because they only grow a single crop. Farmers should not be dependent only on a single crop,” said Eleazar
Farmers also migrate to becoming processors of raw agricultural products or providers of post harvest facilities like dryers and storage areas.
BAR is only spending around P4 million for this nationwide technology distribution system. But it is making substantial returns as evidenced by feedback from Region 1 farmers where the project has been piloted. The program’s promotion of diversified farming—the integration in rice farms of livestock or aquaculture farming or interplanting of coconut with other crops—has generated added value to poor farmers’ income. end-----------------