Skip to main content

Searca & PH DA For Cultivating “Transfarmers” 2021

In the above image I copied from the Facebook sharing of Searca Director Glenn B Gregorio, he is inspiring any and all of us: “Let’s get smarter; let’s go digital agriculture!” The lower image is titled by its source “Digital Agriculture” – is it?

(lower image[1] from Wallpaper Access)

Mr Gregorio was the keynote speaker in the virtual launching of AgriEX, its common project with APPGeese, a start-up company based in Pasig, Philippines, to design a first-ever digital platform in the provinces of Laguna and Quezon (“Searca, APPGeese, Inc. ink MoA To Develop A Pilot Digital Agriculture Platform In The Philippines,” Nathan P Felix, 08 October 2020, Searca.org). The AgriEX Virtual Launch, with the theme “Magtanim Ay ‘Di Biro” (Planting Is Not Fun) was held on 19 February 2021 via Zoom and Facebook Live.

AgriEX is a farmgate-to-fork digital project, meaning it will help Laguna and Quezon farmers sell their produce using the Internet. I love it that Mr Gregorio refers to the target farmer with a new name – transfarmer – emphasizing the deliberate choice of becoming a different kind of farmer.

In the case of the PH Department of Agriculture (DA), the necessary assistance to farmers is much, much more. The DA news release of 05 September 2020, “DA To Strengthen Family Farms, Promote Digital Agriculture[2],” says Secretary of Agriculture William Dar said during the first-ever virtual meeting of the 35th FAO Asia Pacific Regional Conference held 1-4 September 2020:

It is important that we continuously empower vulnerable groups — smallholder farmers, fisherfolk, rural women, the youth, indigenous communities, and farm families, in general – by providing them the needed technical, marketing and financial (supports), amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Let us particularly note the 3 types of assistances Mr Dar enumerates that are needed by farms: 
(1) technical, (2) marketing and (3) financial supports.

AgriEX is solely marketing, and that’s quite alright – marketing assistance is necessary especially now that government controls movements of people and produce.

As an alumnus of UP Los Baños, I’m more interested in the technical support that digital agriculture can provide farmers and fishers. The thing is that whether we advise farmers digitally or not, we tell them exactly what to do. We really treat farmers as robots.

If you look at the lower image above again, it shows many fields planted to many different kinds of crops. We do not teach farmers anything like that. Multiple cropping should also be packaged as among the contents of digital agriculture.

In summary, this is what I think the Knowledge Bank of Digital Agriculture should contain:

Opportunities, Options, & Obstacles in Agriculture.

Here’s talking mostly of the technical part of the knowledge bank of digital agriculture:

What are the Opportunities – including markets?
What Options does the farmer have with, for instance, rice? What else can he do?
What are the Obstacles to his crop and/or livestock labors?

We must make more knowledge available digitally if we want Philippine agriculture to be the best tomorrow via the transfarmers of today.@517


[1]https://wallpaperaccess.com/digital-agriculture

[2]https://www.da.gov.ph/da-to-strengthen-family-farms-promote-digital-agri/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Historical PH 1st Holy Mass: Mazaua Or Limasawa? Fr Amalla Vs Maria Serena Diokno Vs Ambeth Ocampo – And The Priest Is Right!

We Filipinos celebrate 500 years of Christianity today Wednesday, 31 March 2021, Christianity brought to pagans by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailing the seas for Spain. The historical question is: Where was the first Holy Mass celebrated: “Limasawa” (in Leyte) or “Mazaua” (in Butuan)? Catholic priest Fr Joesilo C Amalla has just published the book (above), An Island They Called Mazaua, that argues the island of “Mazaua” in Butuan is the “true site of first Holy Mass in the Philippines [1] ”  and not “Limasawa” in Leyte (ANN, 07 January 2021, Manila Times ). The declaration and discussion are made by Butuan-based Fr Amalla in his 644-page book. Among other things, he writes: The truth is that the prevailing state- and church-affirmation and multiple reaffirmations of the island of Limasawa as the site of that first Holy Mass have no factual, historical and geographic (bases) whatsoever nor any shred of evidentiary support from cartographic studies, navigational info...
Post a Comment
Read more

The PhilRice Drum Seeder Looked Good In April 2018 – Where Is It Now?

Above, top image, the Antique ricefield looks very promising in yield. Here is the story as shared on Facebook by PhilRice (my translation in English): TINGNAN! Unang palayan sa Sta. Ana, Tibiao, Antique na natamnan ng 60kg binhi kada ektarya sa pamamagitan ng sabog-tanim. Look! First ricefield in Santa Ana, Tibiao, Antique that was planted with 60 kg seeds per hectare by way of broadcasting. Sa kauna-unahang pagkakataon, natunghayan ng mga magsasaka sa nasabing lugar na kayang-kaya ang 60kg kada ektarya gamit ang seed spreader machine (granular applicator) at certified seeds mula sa RCEF. For the first time ever, farmers in that area witnessed that 60 kg/ha is quite enough using a seed spreader machine (granular applicator) and certified seeds from RCEF. Makikita sa larawan na magaganda ang naging tubo at mabubulas ang mga itinanim na palay. What can be seen in the picture is beautiful growth of and robust rice plants. Ayon sa ulat, namangha ang mga magsasaka rito na kay...
Post a Comment
Read more

Davao De Oro Rubber Has Elasticity And Should Be Able To Bounce Back!

  The caption above says, “DA-PRDP turned over the Village Level Rubber Processing and Marketing Enterprise to SARPHIL CARP Beneficiaries Multipurpose Cooperative (SACARBECOM) in Monkayo, Davao De Oro last 11 March 2021.” Rubber being produced in the Philippines, a non-traditional commercial product. We are competing with Indonesia and Malaysia? From the story by Joy M Montecalvo , the caption needs explanation. Not the enterprise itself, the Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) of the Department of Agriculture (DA) turned over a village-type rubber sheet facility that can process 192,000 liters of latex yearly. Miss Joy says, “The 124 members of SACARBEMCO will now be able to produce 55 to 60 MT of rubber sheet per annum and increase their income to at least 5 percent per year or a total of 30 percent in six years.” Hopefully, I say. (The SACARBEMCO is the SARPHIL CARP Beneficiaries Multi-purpose Cooperative based in Monkayo, Davao De Oro.) Miss Joy says in the headlin...
Post a Comment
Read more