by Dr. Emil Javier
June 27, 2015

In previous columns I wrote at length why the rice we import from Thailand and Vietnam are cheaper than our domestic rice. It is not so much due to yield because the yields of relatively well-managed irrigated rice in all three countries converge around six tons per hectare. The major explanation is the cost of farm labor. We use 69 man-days to grow a hectare of rice compared with only 23 and 10 man-days, for Thailand and Vietnam, respectively.

Therefore in order to compete we need to use more machines in farming rice. This strategic direction ought to apply on upland/dryland crops as well.

However, most of our rice farmers do not have money to acquire machines. Besides it does not make sense for them to buy equipment which they will use for at most 10–15 days for the whole year because their farms are too small.

In farming the rule of thumb is one hectare of farm land for every tractor horsepower to make economic use of the machine. Thus, for a 6-horse power 2-wheel hand tractor, the farmer must have six hectares. And for the more efficient 4-wheel tractors, the smallest of which has about 30 horsepower engines, the farmer needs 30 hectares.

Since the average farm size is less than two hectares, individual farmer ownership of machines is not a realistic goal for most of our farmers. The solution is farm equipment pools owned and operated by cooperatives, irrigators associations (IAs) and agrarian reform communities (ARCs).

Alternatively, enterprising individuals can acquire the machines, rent them out and provide custom farm services to farmers in the barangay.

Both approaches are going on in the countryside but still at a very modest extent. The Department of Agriculture (DA) program for mechanization ought to be directed to providing incentives and conditions for more farmers groups as well as enterprising individuals to engage in custom service providing as a business (without giving away machines for free).

The DA strategy of giving away machines is not sustainable, prone to corruption and has not really worked in the past. Actually the machines can pay for themselves provided they are properly managed and maintained. The farmer coops and/or enterprising individuals should take out bank loans to acquire the machines and not rely on government. That’s the surest way to guarantee they will operate and maintain the equipment properly.

With the machines themselves as chattel mortgage, equipment insurance under the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation (PCIC), plus coverage under the Agricultural Guarantee Loan Fund (AGLF) ( up to 85% of machine value), these ought to be sufficient protection to the lending banks, the equipment distributors and ultimately the coops and individuals themselves who will function as custom service providers.

Land Consolidation and Land Development

The social and economic reality of tiny, fragmented land holdings is something we have to live with. This will tend to get worse as farms are subdivided among heirs every generation. Until such time as industry, tourism and other services generate sufficient employment to absorb excess farm labor, we just have to take every measure to make our farms and our farm labor more efficient and productive.

In order to make our farms more productive, we need to provide more irrigation and drainage, more all-weather access roads to bring produce to the market. We need to consolidate farms into larger management units to facilitate mechanization and other farm operations, and to better align/synchronize farm production with the demands of the market.

To begin with, the many fences which mark the boundaries of the farms reduce the effective arable areas. They also hamper the movement of farm machines and prevent the layout of drainage, irrigation and road systems which inevitably must cross individual farm boundaries.

If neighboring farmers with an aggregate farm land of say 20 hectares can be persuaded to jointly consolidate and shape/contour their land, heavy equipment can be brought in to remove the fences, push big rocks to the sides, level the depressions and dig ditches/canals which will be used both for irrigation and drainage.

After deducting the communal areas devoted to the roads and irrigation/drainage canals, each of the farmers will be assigned a farm lot proportional to his original contribution. However, instead of irregularly shaped, fragmented lots the boundaries will be reconfigured and new titles issued so that the lots will be regularly shaped following the contour.

The key land development operation is levelling and contouring. Contouring is important to minimize soil erosion and facilitate irrigation and drainage. There is now a new technology called laser levelling which removes the guesswork and visual estimation by the heavy equipment operator.

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos applies laser levelling for all of its operations and is promoting the technology all over the region. The technique is simple to apply and can be readily learned by experienced tractor operators.

The consolidation and land forming of small, fragmented farms into larger management units more amenable to mechanization need not be a pipe dream. This is what the banana, pineapple and sugar plantations in Mindanao had been practicing all these years with the farms they lease. After the expiration of the leases, the few individual farmer-owners who decide to farm themselves get back their farm lots which by now have been cleared of fences and big rocks, neatly developed and contoured.

The land development cost is about P20,000–P30,000 per hectare. Amortized for 20 harvests over a ten-year period, the additional land preparation cost is P1,000–1,500 per hectare per crop which is economic and affordable.

The banana, pineapple and sugarcane plantations in Mindanao deploy corporate-owned heavy equipment (bulldozers, graders, backhoes) but increasingly they are outsourcing land development to big time custom service providers. The big time custom service providers use the land development contracts with the plantations as additional guarantee in obtaining equipment loans from commercial banks.

The DA, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the local government units should start piloting this land development model to demonstrate the economic, technical and social feasibility of this approach to increasing land values. The agrarian reform lands which have yet to be subdivided and titled to the individual beneficiaries are good candidates for this new approach.

Many of the LGUs and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) engineering districts have heavy equipment which can be used for this purpose. Should the DA initially provide for land consolidation and land development in the national farm mechanization program to pump-prime the strategy, there will be investors who will come forward as large-scale custom service providers.

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Dr. Emil Q. Javier is a Member of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and also Chair of the Coalition for Agriculture Modernization in the Philippines (CAMP). For any feedback , email eqjavier@yahoo.com.

Read more at http://www.mb.com.ph/mechanization-of-rice-farming-part-4/