Custom service for mechanized farming

Small rice farmers may not need to buy farm machines after all, provided custom service for farm mechanization is available, as shown by the initial experiences in a pilot project of PhilRice (Philippine Rice Research Institute) in the Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija.

Started in June 2005, custom service for farm mechanization is being piloted in Brgy. Maragol to cater to the farmers’ farm mechanization needs — land preparation, irrigation, seeding, transplanting, weeding, spraying, harvesting, threshing, hauling, drying, storing (for emergency situation), and milling (for farmer and local consumption).

Dr. Silvestre Andales, PhilRice consultant who proposed the project, said it was patterned after the custom service provision company (CSPC) concept in Taiwan where "rice farms are as small as, if not smaller than the rice farms in the Philippines." The CSPC, which owns the farm equipment and machinery, provides mechanization of the different farm operations from land preparation to harvesting.

Andales noted that Taiwanese farmers are as rich as their American or European counterparts but they do not worry about acquiring farm machineries because they can avail themselves of efficient and effective services from the CSPC. 

The Taiwanese farmer would simply pick up the phone and call up any of the CSPCs for a specific farm operation like land preparation on a specific date. On the set date, a tractor with an operator comes and does the plowing operation. After the field is plowed, the farmer signs a paper certifying that the plowing operation has been completed and accepted. The farmer does the same procedure with the other operations.

After harvesting, the rice grains (palay) are delivered to the cooperative processing facilities for drying, milling, and storage. At this point, the service company collects the payment for the custom services it rendered to the farmer, and the farmer also collects the net proceeds of his farming operation.

This PhilRice pilot project is linked with UMAYKAMI, a duly registered farmers’ cooperative in the pilot area. The association relays the farmers’ mechanization schedules to PhilRice, as well as facilitates and assists in the collection of fees during or after the harvest. In return, UMAYKAMI gets 10 percent of the total collected fees as incentive. Collection has been 100 percent.

Assistant project leader Manuel Jose Regalado and project manager Evangeline Sibayan said P17 million was taken from the Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (ACEF) of the Department of Agriculture for the purchase of the farm machineries for the project. For its part, PhilRice put up an equity of P13.993 million. 

The project has already paid the first amortization of P900,000 for the machineries.

Between January and July this year alone, the project harvested 90 hectares of rice fields, 20 hectares of which were harvested with a mini-combine harvester. It could have been larger were it not for the early rains last May.

The project also plowed (dry) 237 hectares with four-wheel big tractors and 116.5 hectares were prepared by power tiller for transplanting. Likewise, 32.54 hectares were mechanically transplanted, including seedling care and establishment. More farmers expressed their desire to avail of this service due to the shortage of manpower for manual transplanting and the short planting period.

Also, 611 cavans of palay were hauled from farmers’ fields to their houses or to traders. In addition, the project mechanically dried 1,650 cavans and milled 73 tons of palay at an average milling recovery of 60 percent. 

This system of farm mechanization saves the farmers from problems in maintaining and operating farm machines. – Sosimo Ma. Pablico