The income of the local farmers suffers despite providing high-quality and fresh farm products in the market because of their restricted access to consumers. With this, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) established and offered several technology-based platforms where social marketing and data analysis might expand livelihood options and boost earnings for regional smallholder farmers and micro, small, and medium companies (MSMEs).
Agriculture, which is regarded as the foundation of the Philippine economy, is vital to boosting the national economy, but it faces numerous obstacles that have an impact on farmers’ income, including a lack of fully automated equipment, high input costs, and devasting natural disasters.
As a result, Farm Konek was created. It is a farm management tool for inventory and management that focuses on community impact. Through data-driven clustered and climate-proofed production among smallholder farmers living below the poverty line, it seeks to produce a sustainable clustered production of high-value and lowland vegetables.
The government offers numerous marketing opportunities through a powerful marketing network that purchases products directly from smallholder farmers. The sustainability of the production is one of the main worries, though.
Since many smallholder farmers are still unfamiliar with climate change protocols and new production techniques, Farm Konek’s primary initiatives include capacity building, inventory management, and reporting systems.
OneStore.ph, an e-commerce platform that assists MSMEs in marketing their products online, is another technological platform that DOST has launched. By establishing a borderless market, the platform enables MSMEs to reach a larger audience with their products, so indirectly increasing employment creation and addressing the issue of food insecurity in the nation.
Unexpectedly, OneSTore.ph’s operations were stepped up because of the epidemic, which hampered people’s freedom of travel. OneSTore walk-in transactions were reduced because of the shutdown, but on the plus side, more people were using the e-commerce platform, which led to an increase in sales.
In response to this encouraging trend, DOST introduced OneSTore City, an android delivery software that was created and designed to give customers a better and easier shopping experience. The effort can increase local farmers’ sales as the software was established as a same-day delivery app for fresh and important agricultural items.
Meanwhile, one of the industries in the nation that is plagued by several problems is agriculture. This includes the dearth of equipment suitable for the agricultural conditions in the region. The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) created a four-in-one rice combine harvester to address these urgent issues, which might reduce the post-harvest losses of Filipino farmers from 4.5% to 2.2%.
The funding was supplied by the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development under the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PCAARRD). This locally made Combine Harvester makes the best use of hand tractors, which are a popular piece of farming equipment among rice farmers in the Philippines. It is simple to mount and demount from the hand tractor unit.
This rice combine harvester could support the nation’s effort to achieve food security by addressing the shortage of agricultural manpower, providing our farmers with higher incomes, increasing productivity, and more.
The reaping, cleaning, threshing, and bagging processes are already combined by this locally made and built rice harvester. It might offer ideal answers to the issues hampering the nation’s rice production, namely the dearth of tools and equipment suitable for the regional agricultural environment.