> On Wed, 9 Jan 2002 at 20:52:00 +0800, Migs Paraz wrote: > On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 04:37:11AM -0800, cheryle soria wrote: > > I cannot imagine how you would make the moves > > in solving Philippine problems especially in > > agriculture. > > How are you going to consider the funds, the info > > dissemination and other stuffs, sir? > > Political will? > Well it's not my goal to actually do this, it's more of, match the projects > with those who can solve them. Documenting these efforts is the first step.
To back up Migs, yes, there is funding available for IT initiatives in agriculture. Our government isn't 100% incompetent, at least. :) They do have a tendency to throw money at short-term solutions, though... To answer Migs' questions: most problems in Phil. agriculture are logistical - i.e. not enough farm-to-market roads, expensive shipping to Manila, etc. One of the biggest problems we have in UPLB is not actually making advances in agricultural technology - it's getting those advances out in the field, so the farmers can use them. For example, last year there was a big rice bug infestation in Mindanao (around 40% crop losses, if I remember correctly). The National Crop Protection Center here in UPLB developed a fungal strain that preys on these bugs - effective, and easy for a farmer to grow himself. Now all we have to do is get the information on this new pest control method out to the farmers. You can't expect every farmer to buy a computer and surf the Internet for this info, though - so you do the next best thing... you get the remote agricultural stations (either government, NGO, or local university) connected to the Internet, as well as local media (AM radio stations mostly) and send them the info over the net. It works both ways - we, as researchers, also need info on what the farmer needs right now, for example, if there's a mango disease outbreak in Palawan, we need to be informed, so we can get to work on finding ways to stop it. Provincial stations can also send info back to us as well. So most of the work for us computer people is in setting up the systems that make it possible for those who generate information to send their products to those who need that information. Kaya nga Information Technology. :-) - Elfredy Cadapan - Institute of Computer Science, Univ. of the Philippines at Los Banos _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
