First of three parts
THIS 70-ish grandmother and retired school teacher attests that farmers, like his late father, could tell the weather by observing nature.
The lack of stars, a moon enveloped by a cloud in the night sky, the blooming of the fire tree—any one of these could mean rain or drought, or a perfect planting day. Until the earth’s climate changed.
“Now, it’s difficult to correctly discern when it is time to plant,” Felicidad Antes said.
Antes, who resides in Sorsogon province in the Bicol region, said the signs can mislead one these days. Before, when it rained heavily after a long, hot summer, you can take it to mean that summer is over, and that it was time to prepare the land for planting.
“Now, it’s not always the case. And a mistake can cost you P3,000, the amount one pays rural workers for tilling a 1-hectare farm lot in our place,” Antes said.
Precision agriculture
Dr. Vicky Espaldon, from the School of Environmental Science and Management, University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), said the use of “precision” agriculture can address the farmers’ problems resulting from climate change.
“Precision agriculture is a state-of-the-art agriculture. It uses computational, crop modeling, remote sensing and GIS sensors—put together to provide farmers and agriculturists exact information regarding requirements for the cultivation of crops,” she said.
Espaldon is the program leader of Project Sarai, or Smarter Approaches to Reinvigorate Agriculture as an Industry in the Philippines.
Sarai is a research program of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). “It is an attempt to really make science and technology work for agriculture,” Espaldon said.
Now on its third year, Sarai started in October 2013 under the DOST, with monitoring of all Sarai projects conducted by the Philippine Council for Agriculture, and Aquatic and Natural Resources Research
and Development.
Sarai’s main implementor is the UPLB—College of Agriculture, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering and Agricultural Technology, and the School of Environmental Science and Management.
It was the UPLB that presented the Sarai project to the DOST, which agreed to fund it for P150 million for a period of three years.
Espaldon said Sarai uses crop- modeling and remote-sensing techniques to help farmers in determining planting dates, given projected climate forecasts.
“We, in Sarai, want to use remote-sensing images to monitor crop health, or if there are typhoons or drought, we can use smart technology to quickly assess the damage.
This is important, because early damage assessment will let us determine faster how much, in terms of pesos, is the damage worth. It will determine faster the resources needed to rehabilitate the damaged areas,” she said.
Espaldon further explained: “For example, if the entire province is declared a calamity area because of flood, hindi naman buong probinsiya talaga ay sinira ng baha [it is not accurate to say that the entire province was damaged by flooding]. So, if you use remote sensing as monitoring system, you will be able to better allocate the limited resources of the province or region, and for that matter, the entire Department of Agriculture.”
Not only is Sarai able to help predict weather conditions for the farmer, it also has many projects in the pipeline. These are projects on the lookout for investors that can mass produce their unique products.
Pest selfie
According to Espaldon, Sarai has developed a “smarter pest identification” technique.
This is a software, a mobile app that uses a smartphone. A farmer can take a picture of the pest he discovered in his farm, and the application will identify the pest and the potential control and management strategies, depending on the level of infestation.
The more that farmers use it, the more the app will become intelligent. For example, a farmer takes a picture of an insect or a worm and Sarai scientists discover it is not on their database. “We have a technical panel that is spread all over the country, where one of them may be able to identify and give the mode for controlling it,” Espaldon said.
Now, if it happens that it’s the first time this pest has been discovered, then Sarai scientists will move toward the site and examine the newly discovered pest.
Still, Espaldon added, the key for this technology to work is farmers’ participation. It is the farmer who is on the ground, and is in the best position to provide firsthand data.
“What the farmer must do is alert the municipal agriculture officer [MAO] in his area, kung kaya niya kumuha ng picture [if the farmer can take the picture himself], he can upload it in his smartphone or mobile app. But if he has no smartphone, he can go to the MAO,” Espaldon said.
Sarai training program to date is directed toward MAOs, who will be the receiver of farmers’ inquiries for Sarai all over the country.
“The current practice is such that, the farmer goes to the MAO. But before the MAO can visit the pest-infested farm lot of the farmer, he has to request for a travel order, purchase order and other documents. He’d be lucky if he has sufficient gasoline. So, it’s normal practice that the MAO cannot visit the farmer at once. Eh kung peste nga [If what the farmer fears is a pest turns out to be a real pest], naubos na ’yung pananim, wala [the crops would have been destroyed] before the MAO could gather information about the pest,” Espaldon said.
She added that the usual practice of farmers is to just go directly to a store and ask for pest poison. So, the pest is never detected accurately. It even has the possibility of spreading further before it can be addressed.
Nowadays, our Computer Science people have the capacity to create a variety of apps that are useful for farmers in the field, Espaldon said, adding that Sarai also has a range of entomologists who will be able to transmit their wealth of knowledge into something that the farmers will find very useful.
To be continued