March 29, 2024

Pierreloti Chelsea

Latest technological developments

Strategic approaches pushed to enhance agriculture



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© Furnished by The Manila Instances


In 2020, the Philippine agriculture and fishery sector went by quite a few issues and challenges, remaining one of the sectors most vulnerable to local climate change and severe climate disasters these kinds of as the series of typhoons that hit the state in the final three months of past year.

Toward the end of the 12 months, having said that, the government confirmed resilience in holding foodstuff supplies stable and available for Filipino family members despite the overall health emergencies brought by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).

For 2021, the Office of Agriculture (DA) said it will put into action vital methods to “grow” and gasoline the transformation the country’s farm and fisheries sector into a modernized and industrialized “economic powerhouse.”

“We shall depart from our regular strategy of just targeting specific farms or teams

with no creating considerable outcomes from interventions. We should be reason-driven, ensuring that our courses and assignments are of value, not only to recipients but far more noticeably to the full culture in genuine conditions,” Agriculture Secretary William Dar mentioned in his memorandum to all major DA officers and critical complex workers.

At the main of this tactic is farm clustering and consolidation, dubbed as “Bayanihan Agri Cluster” or BAC that aims to converge and integrate federal government interventions these types of as provision of loans, farm mechanization, no cost seeds and fertilizers, and industry aid.

Dar mentioned farm clustering will “empower farmers to attain much more rewards from the agriculture worth chain and make interventions a lot more productive and efficient.”

He stated the DA will also vigorously put into practice systematic, inclusive approaches at the farm level future 12 months and until the time period of the Duterte administration.

“We have to empower our farmers and fishers as a result of collective motion so they will have the chance to partner with the different actors in the sector. Leaving them on your own will not accelerate the enhancement of the sector,” Dar explained.

The agriculture chief said his department will also implement social defense and security-net actions to profit resource-lousy farmers — as embodied in the department’s flagship Plant Plant Plant system — in the type of hard cash assistance, subsidized credit rating and crop insurance policies.

Additionally, the DA will also accelerate the completion of the countrywide farmers’ and fishers’ registry in buy to increase the delivery of guidance providers and other varieties of interventions to qualified and deserving modest farmers and fishers, according to Dar.

The institution of agri-industrial small business corridors or ABCs will also be actively pursued in 2021. These hubs will serve as processing and advertising and marketing facilities of agriculture and fishery solutions in identified production places. All established to groundbreak is the ABC at New Clark Green Town.

Dar explained the ABCs will house agri-small business and multi-intent facilities that will be crucial to managing and integrating the food stuff supply chain, as very well as introducing progressive agricultural technological know-how to farmers.

One of the first assignments to be proven at the Clark ABC is the Nationwide Seed Engineering Park (NSTP), which aims to establish high-yielding seed types to support farmers make improvements to the stage and quality of their harvests. The NSTP will serve as a one particular-stop hub for the seed benefit chain, which includes investigation and growth amenities, a model seed farm and processing facility, infrastructures for capabilities coaching, experimental and business plots, demonstration plots, and an exhibition and farmers’ convention heart.

Drive for agri-industrialization

The DA will also intensify infrastructure investments in major agri-fishery generation locations, that incorporate development of farm-to-sector roadways, buying and selling posts, fish ports and processing crops.

“Agro-industrialization entails leveraging community investments with area and overseas non-public investors by incentives and polices to produce the sector’s price chain,” Dar said, stressing the value of potent partnership with nearby govt models (LGUs).

To do this, he claimed the DA will actively go after the implementation of the Province-led Agriculture and Fisheries Extension Method (PAFES), which will be guided by the provincial commodity investment system (PCIP), a a few-year rolling prepare formulated by the DA-Philippine Rural Improvement Project (DA-PRDP), that seeks to rationalize govt interventions in the commodity price chains.

Dar stated the DA will also perform on upscaling the implementation of “Agriculture 4.,” or the so-referred to as Fourth Agricultural Revolution, which seeks the use of intelligent farming technologies.

The DA, according to Dar, is functioning on the use of satellite technological innovation to broaden coverage of crop insurance coverage, and estimation of crop damages and losses owing to typhoons and other normal disturbances.

The agency pointed out that one offshoot of the Covid-19 pandemic is the acceleration of the digitalization of the country’s agriculture and fishery sector.

The DA’s digital platform Kadiwa ni Ani at Kita internet marketing plan highlighted the price-lowering energy of digital technological know-how that straight backlinks farmers with buyers, as properly as with small and medium enterprises concerned in food processing.

To more produce this, Dar said the DA will upscale its e-Kadiwa platform, not only by linking farmers to purchasers and buyers, but also by seeking into logistics like leasing Kadiwa trucks and refrigerated vans to transport perishable agricultural products from the farms to urban marketplaces.

In his get, Dar urged all officers and personnel to market and embed these tactics in discipline operations.

“Let us operationalize these main approaches as we put into action our a variety of interventions.

Over and above the productiveness targets, we want to pursue results that will aid organization-up the attainment of our intention of ‘masaganang ani at mataas na kita.’ We have survived and rebooted in 2020, let us now increase in 2021,” the agriculture chief reported.