Farmers online.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) announced last year that it plans to put up electronic kiosks and establish computer centers for farmers all over the country. This is in line with the Department’s “Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture” and “Mobile Internet Bus” projects which aim to provide farmers with various online services, such as updates on current market trends and recent advancements in agricultural technology and techniques, as well as provide training courses in new farming techniques.

On its face these are very laudable efforts, but the problem is the first thing that came to mind when I read about these projects, aside from “Is this another ZTE-NBN scam?” was “Will the farmers ever know about these projects and will they ever use them?”

Will the DA launch an extensive information campaign in order to inform farmers about these projects which may possibly help them improve their way of life? Will these electronic kiosks ever be used at all by the farmers; will the farmers even be trained to use them?

Using IT to provide certain services for farmers may seem to be a good idea at first, but are these the services that Filipino farmers really and urgently need? What good are electronic kiosks to farmers? Will getting recent market trend information help them till their fields if they don’t have access to farm equipment and materials?

What I’m driving at is this; there are better ways to spend millions of pesos for the benefit of farmers. The DA can provide farming equipments for rent, at a very low cost. And with regard to educating farmers, the DA can disseminate new farming techniques through seminars which its various regional offices can conduct in coordination with local farmers’ cooperatives. It does not need to spend millions of pesos to establish computer centers which, at this stage of development of the Philippine agricultural sector, will just gather dust and eat away at the DA’s budget.

IT has many uses in many different fields, but it should not be blindly adopted by any and all agencies just for the sake of going along with the current trend.