During their hands-on exercise, one of the participants utilizes the e-Damuhan application to recognize various kinds of weeds.
PATNONGON, Antique – “I am very thankful for what I have learned, especially about different applications that we will use to have good harvests. These apps are Binhing Palay, LCC, SPIDTECH, RCMAS, Accuweather, and Drones that will help us in our farming activities,” expressed Marilou T. Ayco, one of the 15 La Rioja Farmers Association members that shift into digital smart farmers after attending the Training of Digital Farmers Program 101, 102, and 103 for Rice on July 17–19 and 24-26, 2024, at the KAMAPAT Agriculture Cooperative and Learning Site.
Every farmer has a partner youth who serves as their training assistant. The activity consists of two phases: DFP 101 and DFP 102 as prerequisites and DFP 103. Before proceeding with the DFP 103, participants must complete the DFP 101 and 102 training activities.
Following the RP instructions, a participant visits the plant doctor application to access the different online plant disease diagnoses.
Like previous Digital Farmers Program Training, they were introduced to various digital tools and technologies to aid their farming activities, increase their production, and boost their income. Some of the activities they have undergone were accessing numerous agricultural applications, formulating and presenting social media marketing plans and content, and creating social media content via the Canva application.
The participants measure the area through a lightweight GPS navigator.
On the other hand, in the second phase, the participants learned about Smart Agriculture Technologies (SATs) and their benefits, identified the SATs that they could use throughout the rice planting process, practiced the select SATs for Rice, discovered the importance of data in decision-making, made a Smart Agriculture Roadmap, and gained access to potential service providers of SATs in their region. The highlight of this training is the introduction and exposure to the Agricultural Drone Technology. They witnessed the innovation through a field demonstration.
It was a dream come true for our participants to see an agricultural drone for the first time.
On August 2, the said association, through its farmer-participants, will receive the drone technology service that includes free fertilizer application through the Digital Farmers Program (DFP) Farm Connect. This activity aims to deliver the advantages of agriculture drone technology, enumerate its services, observe the operation of agriculture drone technology in providing specific services, and assess the value of using agriculture drones in rice farming.
Digital Farmers Program is a joint project of the Agricultural Training Institute and Smart Communications, Inc.
