Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III has adopted a marketing project dubbed “land-based digitization” that seeks to upgrade into a more comprehensive farmers’ registry the existing database of the Department of Agrarian Reform, including information about the status of farmlands awarded to farmer-beneficiaries.
The agency is embarking on a special marketing scheme that shall feature online the finest products of various agrarian reform beneficiary organizations and their members, and profile the dominant crops each of them is engaging in and when planting and harvesting season normally takes place.
Estrella tapped Undersecretary for Finance Management and Administration Jeffrey Galan to supervise the project, which would give the public, especially the institutional buyers, an idea about farmers’ crops and when the harvest season is for them to make advanced bulk orders.
“Our main goal here is to spare, as much as possible, our agrarian reform beneficiaries from falling prey to unscrupulous traders and middlemen who are taking advantage of the peak harvest season to buy their harvests practically at a bargain price,” he said.
“Once our database becomes operational, it will be made available through our DAR website where stakeholders can visit, get in touch with concerned ARBOs and place their orders. It’s practically one press of the button away,” he added.
The land-based digitization is part and parcel of another special project—“the value chain boosting,” wherein members of an ARBO are advised to pool their harvests together to meet the demands in volumes of corporate owners of big fast-food chains and supermarkets. Rio N. Araja
Since each of our ARBs is tilling an economic-sized farm, they cannot meet the demands in volumes of the corporate owners individually. But collectively, they can do it with plenty to spare,” Estrella said.
