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BY JULIO P. YAP JR.
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Friday, February 10, 2017
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IN THE province of Zambales, particularly in the upland areas of the municipality of Masinloc, a farm is measured by a balitang – a box of rice paddy with a size of more or less 6,000 square meters.
Mario Ermita, one of the farmers in Masinloc, owns at least five balitang on his farm and spends around P15,000 on labor for transplanting.
But Ermita was able to cut down his expenses when he was introduced to a technology for transplanting through the project titled “Accelerating the development and dissemination of associated rice production technologies.”
According to Ermita, from the usual P3,500 per balitang he spends for transplanting, he now spends only P300 through the use of a drumseeder.
He said that this amount covers a day’s wage for the operator of the farm equipment.
On the other hand, a water management expert at the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) said the project’s aim is to increase production and reduce inputs through development, dissemination, and adoption of appropriate crop management technologies in both irrigated and rainfed ecosystems.
“The other technologies we offered to the farmers include the alternate wetting and drying (AWD) water saving technology, minus-one element technique (MOET), rice crop manager (RCM), and the use of new varieties,” PhilRice Engineer Evangeline Sibayan said.
With more than 400 on-site briefings, 135 field days, and 1,812 techno-demo farms established nationwide by the implementers, Ermita is just one among the thousands of beneficiaries of the project.
“Each techno-demo farm has at least 20 to 25 farmers. Most of them are members of an irrigators association (IA) or farmers’ organization (FO),” Sibayan says.
In a related adoption of technology in Region-5, a 63 percent decrease in seeding rate was recorded when the farmers adopted the use of plastic drumseeders.
According to Sibayan, the ratio decreased from 100 to 150 kilograms per hectare (kg/ha) to 37-60 kg/ha.
The technologies, MOET and RCM, also helped some farmers in the province of Ilocos Norte to achieve higher yields from 5.3 tons per hectare (t/ha) to 6.5 t/ha.
The mean yield of 10 techno-demo farms in the provinces of Zamboanga del Norte and Zamboanga del Sur also increased by 5.8 percent.
On the other hand, farmers in Mallig, Isabela were able to reduce their fuel consumption from 2.5 drums to 1.5 drums per cropping season, through their adoption of the AWD.
In 2015, the irrigators association in San Rafael, Bulacan reported a 3.8 percent reduction in power cost, from 118,178 kWh to 113,680 kWh.
Sibayan attributes this to the adoption of AWD by the farmer members of Kapatiran Irrigators Association.
Sibayan said the technologies they promoted have proven to be resource-use efficient.
“As we improve the awareness of these technologies, we have geared not only towards the increase of our country’s national production, but also on the reduction of farm inputs both in irrigated and rainfed areas,” he said.
PhilRice has been recognized for its role in scientific work, and was seen as a viable partner in agricultural science./PN
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