THE Department of Agriculture in Northern Mindanao is set to digitize within the next three months, DA-10 Regional Director Apollo Pacamalan announced Tuesday. The initiative, revealed during a Kapihan hosted by the Philippine Information Agency-10, aims to modernize farming through cellphones and the internet.
Farmers will log into dashboards or websites, guided by the Municipal Agriculture’s Office, to track their crops and receive assistance and market opportunities.
“We encourage farmers to register digitally so we can monitor crops in real-time and provide timely support,” Pacamalan said. The department is training municipal agriculturists on simple digital reporting to ensure farmers can adapt easily.
Despite challenges for farmers unfamiliar with tech, Pacamalan urged them to seek help from their children.
They are already capacitating all the municipal agriculturists in Northern Mindanao on how digital reporting would be done. A very simple reporting system. In this way, the farmers could easily adapt to such a trend.
The challenge with this project according to Pacamalan is those farmers who are not into the use of cellphones and the internet but he said that this will be the time to ask for assistance from their children.
“Magpatabang sila sa ilang mga anak,” he said.
Local farmer leader Elias Achas, 56, supports the move, believing it’s time for farmers to embrace technology for better farming practices.
“Maayo, uyon ko ani kung kini makatabang sa among panginabuhi. Panahon na sad siguro nga mo involve kita sa bag-ong teknolohiya para usab makakat-on kita ug mga bag-ong pagtulun-an ug pamaagi sa atong pagtanom,” said Achas.
