BORONGAN CITY, Eastern Samar - As the global population continues to rise, food insecurity for almost 10 billion people will be one of the greatest challenges of our time. Improving the productivity of staple foods, such as rice, will be critical to feed the world’s most vulnerable populations. Digital agriculture platforms and digitally-enabled services can help increase farmers’ yields and incomes through agro-advisory services, providing improved information about crop management practices.
One platform is the Rice Crop Manager Advisory Services (RCMAS), a blended digital agriculture platform that is grounded in scientific research to generate the most appropriate nutrient and crop management recommendation specific to an individual farmer’s field. To date, approximately 1.4 million farmers in the Philippines have been reached and over 2 million recommendations have been distributed. Results of various studies indicate that RCM has increased yields by an average of 392 kg/ha/cropping season and provided an average additional net income of US$122/ha/cropping season (IRRI, DA, PhilRice, 2021).
There is a need to promote this digital tool to provide awareness to rice farmers about its benefits. One way to do this is through the RCMAS where farmers have the opportunity to receive personalized information for their specific farming situation.
More than 50 farmers received RCM advisories and 89 RCM recommendations were generated during the Rice Crop Manager Advisory Services (RCMAS) Briefing and Deployment on July 19, 2024, in Borongan, Eastern Samar.(With reports from BB Lagaday)
