Boosting the Rice Productivity Through R&D
The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) works in sync with the UN Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty and hunger. It promotes new rice technologies that boost farmers’ rice yields, reduce production costs, and lessen household expenses on food.
Not that PhilRice doesn’t recognize the need for bigger investments in agriculture, but rice production remains the fundamental instrument for food sustainability and the center of the government’s development agenda.
Increased rice production, therefore, blazes the pathway out of poverty and hunger through R&D, a dynamic and aggressive extension system of connecting with farmers, and location-specific technologies that will help farmers and other stakeholders out of their economic “prison cell”. In the long run, such move would even bring about gainful livelihoods in the countryside.
Hybrid rice is high yield rice
PhilRice is taking on these challenges using new technologies tested and proven successful by farmer-cooperators in the countryside. On top of these are the new high-yielding hybrid and inbred rice varieties such as Rc 136H (Mestizo 7) and Rc 154 (Tubigan 11), which are harvested in 107-110 days. The Los Banos-based International Rice Research Institute IRRI) bred Mestizo 7. These two varieties .an each yield 8 tons per hectare. Hybrid rice is our best option to increase productivity while reducing cost. Results of a four-season survey (2002-2004) done by Gonzales et al. (2005) show that the average yield advantage of hybrid rice over inbred ranges from 8% to 15%, while income advantage is 10% to 32%.
Balancing rice key technologies with PalayCheck
The PalayCheck System, which integrates and balances key technologies and farm management recommendations among farmer groups from seed quality to postharvest operations to improve their productivity, profitability, and even environmental safety is being pursued nationwide by PhilRice.
Studies show that farmers who achieved all of the eight key checks (criteria) under the Palaycheck system during the 2006 dry season yielded almost 6 t/ha, worth P38,000 gross margin. Those who achieved two key checks had an average yield of only 3.2 t/ha and P18,000 gross margin.
Making farmers R-I-C-H with Palayamanan
Rapidly supplanting the farmers’ monoculture (rice-rice) system is Palayamanan, a higher level integration, where applicable, of rice production with other high-value crops, livestock, and fish. This diversified farming system helps farmers get RICH: R-educe production risks; I-ncrease cropping intensity, productivity, profitability, and economic stability; C-ontinuous food supply or household food security; and H-igher income This paradigm not only maximizes labor opportunities and reduces production risks, but also enhances diversity and ecological balance. Palayamanan, as some farmers would have it, means “putting their eggs in many baskets.”
Konek na sa OPAPA
PhilRice established 12 cyber communities through the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture (OPAPA) program to enable agriculture extension workers and farmers to access the latest agricultural information, from advisories, online training, distance learning, e-modules, to knowledge databases in agriculture. These are all accessible at www.openacademy.ph.
The Pinoy Farmers’ Text Center (+63920-911-1389), a short messaging system, a Mobile Internet Bus, and the VOIP Telepono sa Barangay help facilitate farmers’ communication exchange with the extension workers and researchers. This is now being piloted in 12 rural communities linked to the internet.
Ensuring impact through clustering
The clustering approach which is now one key strategy of the Department of Agriculture toward increasing productivity has also been “borrowed” by PhilRice in its technology promotion activities. Clustering focuses interventions such as seeds, inputs, technical know-how, irrigation, mechanization, postproduction, and market assistance on a group of farmers living within a 100-hectareradius community.
Convergence helps do the job
PhilRice especially recognizes the importance of developing partnerships and collaborations with international research institutions and consortia. After all, the World Development Report 2008 describes the character of the rural world as heterogeneous, laden with persistent poverty, and requiring critical public spending on agriculture. PhilRice is the national partner of IRRI. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) continues to provide technical assistance through the, ongoing Technical Cooperation Projects, while the Institute is an active member of the Rainfed Lowland and Upland Rice Consortium, the Irrigated Rice Research Consortium, the ProVitMin Rice Consortium, and the K-AgriNet (Knowledge Networking Towards Enterprising Agricultural Communities), an e-government-funded program, among many others.
These multi-institutional and interdisciplinary research partnerships help PhilRice to pursue its mandate in contributing its share in solving the nation’s critical rice productivity and sustainability problems.
With all of these, PhilRice continuously stresses that, “…food security and poverty alleviation are not hostages of high quality scientific research, but are fully embedded in and shaped by the way R&D, national policies and strategies, and the combined strengths of partnerships are put into full activation to combat poverty and hunger, protect natural resources, and increase wealth creation to achieve development”.
Philippine rice varieties are made out of enduring and fruitful partnerships including that of JICA, IRRI and PhilRice.
