A marriage between agriculture and technology can result in successful agripreneurship that can help grow the Philippine farm sector.
This was what Jairus Ferrer, founder and president of iFarms Inc., and Cherrie Atilano, United Nations Ambassador for Nutrition and president and founding farmer of Agrea, said during their presentations at The Manila Times online forum titled “Food Security through Agribusiness and Digitalization” last August 27.
Jairus Ferrer, founder and president of iFarms Inc.
In his presentation, Ferrer noted the benefits of incorporating age-old farming practices and new ways of doing things in Philippine agriculture. “[W]e need to gain the wisdom of the old and get the innovativeness of the young. Integrating things [will] make things a little bit more effective.”
The use of advanced technologies in agriculture, integrated into one system, can enable farmers and industry stakeholders within the agriculture value chain to improve food production. Such farming technologies can provide the agriculture sector with tools and information to make more informed decisions and improve productivity.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations also noted that the spread of mobile technologies, remote-sensing services and distributed computing have helped improve agricultural smallholders’ access to information, inputs and markets, increasing production and productivity, streamlining supply chains, and reducing operational costs.
With precise data, Ferrer said Umá, a digital local food supply chain that sells Filipino produce even before harvest, has delivered agricultural goods from Mindanao to markets in Manila even during the initial lockdowns due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. “The goods arrive in good condition, thus increasing the profitability,” he said.
Ferrer explained that data-driven systems helped their company solve problems on mismatch of production and market, high produce wasted, and manual purchase practice, among others. “The heart of the platform is actually sell before harvest,” Ferrer said, which allows Umá to deliver high quality products to consumers.
Farmers and their dignity
For her part, Atilano, highlighted that agripreneurs should strive on how to make agribusiness “sustainable.” One way to go is embracing “precision agriculture,” she said. “Precision agriculture [is necessary], which is part of digitalization so as not to waste soil and water, among others,” said Atilano.
The photo on the left shows Cherrie Atilano, United Nations Ambassador for Nutrition and president and founding farmer of Agrea, and photo on the upper photo shows Jairus Ferrer, founder and president of iFarms Inc. Atilano and Ferrer were part of the panel of experts who participated in the The Manila Times online forum titled “Food Security through Agribusiness and Digitalization” on August 27, 2020. PHOTO BY ENRIQUE ACGAOILI
She also said that the government and those who are venturing into agribusiness should exert effort on how to “put dignity to Filipino farmers,” who have been among the poorest of the poor for decades. “For the longest years, Filipino farmers are poor, aging, with very low educational attainment. Capacitating farmers to dream for nation-building is necessary. Farmers in other countries are proud that they are farmers. In the Philippines, our farmers are embarrassed that they are farmers,” Atilano pointed out.
To solve the decades-long problem, she said that farmers should be paid for what is due and right for them, adding that there is a necessity to “put farmers into the center and core of our business.” To further develop from this, Atilano noted the huge potential of the youth in helping boost the country’s agriculture sector. Citing FAO, Atilano said digital innovations are bringing the youth back to agriculture, who can help transform food systems as the Philippine economy still grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic.
“[There is a need] to transform food systems because 2020 will be a year of reckoning [calling for] more resilient food supply chains, healthy diets, regenerative farming, conservation and innovation. Food systems are at the crossroads of human, animal, economic and environmental health,” she said.
Furthermore, Ferrer stressed that big corporations and institutions should “look into how to empower local communities, villages, condominiums, even the rural areas, barangays, municipalities.”
“I really believe it’s really time to decongest the cities. It’s really time to develop the rural areas for economic development, [which] doesn’t necessarily mean the hightechness of things — it’s really a healthy exchange of supply and demand locally,” he said.
“[I]t’s time that people look at this from a fresh perspective that agriculture should actually be a prosperous industry. It’s time to adapt new ways of thinking, new ways of adapting approaches, and even the way we do business,” Ferrer added.
