The Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Agricultural and Fisheries Engineering (DA-BAFE) has teamed up with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to increase machine use in the country in order to beef up rice and corn production.
Kelvin Michael Crystal, FAO’s project coordinator, said the project aimed at increasing the level of mechanization, or the use of productivity-enhancing machines or equipment on a farm, by 10 percent from the baseline in two years’ time or in 2025.
The farm mechanization level of rice farms nationwide was relatively unchanged at 2.679 horsepower per hectare (hp/ha) in 2022 from 2.31 hp/ha pegged in 2013, according to the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization.
The partnership, which will end in December next year, also seeks to rationalize the distribution of farm machines among various DA agencies and harmonize existing protocols of the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization, the University of the Philippines Los Baños and the Philippine Rice Research Institute.
An accurate inventory and distribution map of farm equipment would be used to create a unified mechanization level index, another gauge to assess productivity in farms.
Information system
“Once FAO has developed a protocol, it will integrate into the existing management information system,” the BAFE said.
All government units are also required to craft their respective local agriculture and fisheries mechanization plans for rice and corn.
Cristy Cecilia Polido, chief of BAFE’s Programs and Projects Management Division, said it was important to come up with a precise measure of mechanization since the Philippines always trailed behind other Asian countries.
FAO country representative Lionel Henri Valentin Dabbadie said there was a potential for sustainable agricultural mechanization in the Philippines to streamline postharvest processing and marketing activities that would ultimately benefit consumers.
Palay output inched up by 0.21 percent to 3.79 million metric tons in the third quarter of 2023, based on data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The DA is still targeting to reach another all-time high palay production of 20 million MT this year after output reached a record 19.96 million MT in 2019. INQ