Eight types of machines for various crops and two technological systems for soybeans developed over the past four years by the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization (PhilMech) are now ready for commercialization.
PhilMech executive director Rex L. Bingabing says the agency was able to do this through the “agrinnovation” approach, which introduces innovations to existing farm mechanization technologies to adapt them to local conditions.
“Through agrinnovation, PhilMech was able to develop farming technologies that are ready for adoption in 18 months instead of the usual three to six years,” Bingabing says.
He says the eight machines and two sets of technologies have strong potential to stimulate the manufacturing sector, particularly the metal fabrication industry.
But this can happen only if farmers and agribusiness operators provide a viable market by adopting the innovations in large numbers to give manufacturers the incentive to produce them.
“We’ve seen the desire among farmers and entrepreneurs for technologies that would help make their (work) more efficient,” Bingabing says.
“(But) there are segments of this potential market that cling to the old ways of working in farms even if you provide them incentives to try new technologies, simply because they have been using them for so long, ” he adds. “We need the push of cultural change to create a viable market.”
These machines are the cassava digger and cassava belt drier, pectin extraction system for mango peels, village-level coco water pasteurizer, compact corn mill, impeller-type brown rice huller, root crop washer and mechanical onion seeder.
PhilMech developed the cassava digger and the cassava belt drier to allow farmers to dry granulated cassava in only four hours. The traditional sun drying method takes one to two days to dry granulated cassava. The cassava belt drier has a capacity of 1,000 kilograms and has a biomass furnace.
The pectin extraction machine can cut importation of this chemical, which is used used in cosmetics, pharmaceutical and food processing.
PhilMech studies showed that pectin produced with this machine had the same qualities as the imports, mostly made from apple pomace and citrus peels.
The village-level (or small-scale) coco water pasteurizer has a touchscreen programmable logic control system for easy monitoring of pastereurization and chilling temperatures and flow rate. It has an output capacity of 500 liters of coconut water daily.
The system allows coconut farmers to immediately process and package newly collected coconut water, extending the shelf life of the beverage.
The compact corn mill is small enough to be transported by a small utility vehicle to farming areas. It can process 250 kilograms per hour, with a recovery rate of 64 percent and de-germing efficiency of 91 percent. It eliminates aflatoxin from newly harvested corn.
Weighing 98 kilograms, the brown rice huller can process the same weight of brown rice in an hour. The huller addresses the need of rice retailers to mill brown rice only when there are orders to be filled. Brown rice has a limited shelf life of only two months.
The mechanical onion seeder enables a farmer to prepare seed bed and sow the seeds on-pass. It also allows optimum spacing of the onion seeds for higher yield.
The root crop washer, now being used at the Benguet AgriPinoy Trading Center, cleans root crops like carrots faster and uses less water than manual washing.
“The machines for these technologies can all be manufactured locally. That means the metal fabrication industry will benefit once demand increases, ” Bingabing says.
The two sets of technologies were developed for post-harvest drying of soybeans and the processing of soybeans into value-added products like curd, milk and taho.
“These technologies are a big boost to the Philippine soybean sector. Firstly, the drying technology will help reduce post-harvest losses while improving the quality of the produce,” Bingabing says. “Secondly, entrepreneurs will find the Soybean Processing System viable because of its (low cost) and the quality of products.”
Bingabing says PhilMech is continuing field testing of several other technologies that it aims to recommend for mass adoption.
These are the fluidized bed dryer for palay, GPS-guided and self-driving tractor, biocontrol agents for fruits, hand tractor-driven riding-type rice transplanter and mini combine rice harvester, sugarcane harvester and coffee bean color sorter.