In this Digital Age, why do you call a
one-page printout Rice Crop Manager?
I am reading the 335-word news report of PhilRice’s Anna Marie Bautista, 18 December 2019, “No More Guessing Game With Rice Crop Manager[1].” Is that a fact?
Today, those people in PhilRice don’t only plant rice – they also plant an application, app, in computers, smartphones and tablets. The plant is called the Rice Crop Manager, RCM, which Ms Anna Marie says “provides crop management recommendations to irrigated and rainfed lowland farmers before the planting season.”
Miss Anna Marie presents Ernie Lazarte, 38, a farmer from Leyte who she says “has proven the advantage of farming with RCM app” – who in 2017 dry season harvested 140 cavans/ha, 40% higher than in previous years. Eye-popping difference.
Now, how did the RCM app come up with the recommendation for Mr Lazarte for that 2017 dry season planting? First, he was interviewed by a PhilRice field technician for data such as rice variety planted, sowing date, as well as crop management practices that he followed.
What is important is that after the interview, says Ms Anna Marie, “a one-page, print-out recommendation, mainly on nutrient management, is generated by the app out of the farmer's answers during the interview.”
This happens 2 times a year. Ms Anna Marie says, “Farm advisories released by RCM are renewed every cropping season.” PhilRice’s Wilfredo Collado, RCM National & Technical Coordinator, says such frequency is “to ensure that accurate and recent data are being used in generating the recommendations.”
So, before every planting season, with the RCM app in use, every farmer needs to be interviewed. Now, there are 2.1 million farmers in the Philippines according to the FAO[2], so:
Question: When will PhilRice be able to interview all 2.1 million farmers every planting season?
Answer: Never!
But there is hope – or, which is the same, I have faith in PhilRice. This is the institution that SRO built; from scratch, Santiago Rigonan Obien, SRO, build a world-class rice institute in the Philippines in the physical presence of the International Rice Research Institute, IRRI. But I’m afraid that after SRO’s retirement in 2000, PhilRice stopped learning something new.
New Answer:
Data Mining! (image from iStock[3])
Data Mining! (image from iStock[3])
Data mining is not being talked about in academic circles in the Philippines, none that I know of. It just so happens that I have been editing a proposal for a doctoral thesis on data mining. Did I understand data mining? Do I now! If you are willing to learn, you will.
Data mining is yield prediction based on previous years of data covering what the RCM interview covers, and many others. Say you interview thousands of farmers this year. Your Big Data is crunched by classification software such as Artificial Neural Networks, Decision Trees, and the Naïve Bayes Algorithm – prediction ready.
To crunch the information now, if PhilRice practices data mining, the new RCM does not need to interview 2.1 million farmers every season!
What is Big Data for?!@517
[1] https://www.philrice.gov.ph/no-more-guessing-game-with-rice-crop-manager/
[2] http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/agphome/scpi/Document_pdfs_and_images/Presentation_RRI-Philippines.pdf
[3] https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/data-mining
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