90,000 machines readied to modernize farms

SCIENCE CITY OF MUÑOZ—Aiming to reach a “respectable level of agricultural mechanization in the country,” the government will deploy more than 90,000 pieces of farm equipment to beneficiaries until 2016, a top agriculture official said here.

Ricardo Cachuela, executive director of the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization (PhilMech), said hand tractors, transplanters, threshers, reapers, flatbed driers and shallow well tube units would be sold to farmers’ groups at subsidized prices.

PhilMech replaced the defunct Bureau of Postharvest Research and Extension (BPRE).

Cachuela said the government intends to increase the current level of mechanization in the country from 0.5 horsepower per hectare to 1 horsepower.

At the start of a road show here, he said local manufacturers “have partnered with us in mass-producing the machines and distributing them under certain terms and conditions.”

Members of the Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers and Distributors Association Inc. (AMMDA) and at least 900 local government and farmer leaders in Luzon joined the road show.

The mechanization program was launched in June. Cachuela said the machines would be distributed to farmers’ groups that would pass a screening program by regional offices of the Department of Agriculture (DA).

The DA has appropriated P800 million for the program this year, he said. In 2012, it expects a P1.8-billion funding.

“This will help us in attaining rice sufficiency level in the country and in maintaining and improving further that level,” Cachuela said. The use of carabaos is still an item included in the farm mechanization scheme.

PhilMech has made available 34,000 hand tractors, 31,000 shallow well tubes, 9,000 rice transplanters, 9,000 threshers, 3,050 reapers and 3,000 flatbed dryers. Some of the machines have been redesigned to suit local conditions.

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala, in an Aug. 23 dialogue with farmers’ groups here, said the department was reducing to 15 percent the equity that government requires from farmers’ groups that would buy the machines.

At least 85 percent of the machine cost would be shouldered by the government.

The mechanization program, Alcala said, was also meant to increase productivity despite an aging labor force in the agriculture and fishery sectors. Anselmo Roque, Inquirer Central Luzon