Are you looking for a one-stop shop for rice-related data in the Philippines? PalayStat will surely be useful for you!
PalayStat, an interactive web-based system that aims to provide easy access, was launched in 2014. It contains farm-level data of selected rice provinces acquired from the Rice-based Farm Households Survey (RBFHS), a survey being conducted by the Socioeconomics Division of Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) every five years. With this platform, policy-makers, researchers, and the public can conveniently access RBFHS data with complete ease.
The PalayStat data
PalayStat was formerly called Rice-based Socioeconomic Information System. PhilRice’s Socioeconomics Division attempted to develop it in 1998 through the Oracle System but failed due to the slow computing technology at the time.
Aside from RBFHS data such as farm inputs, costs and returns, and yield, all rice-related statistics in collaboration with Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) can also be found in PalayStat. Moreover, digital communication materials such as books, infographics, manuals, maps, monographs, policy briefers, posters, presentations, and proceedings produced by the Socioeconomics Division are available here.
PalayStat is one of the key sources of data of Ricelytics, which is a complementary platform created under the Information Systems Division of PhilRice.
How to use it?
When you visit the website (https://palaystat.philrice.gov.ph/), a big search bar will welcome you. Type in the topic or information you’re looking for, click the Search button or press enter, and an array of results appears on screen. Just click one of them and answer the required information. Some data can be immediately read or download.
For better navigation, hyperlinks to important categories such as provincial overview, survey results, rice statistics, and resources are suggested. Listed here as well are popular topics such as production, use estimates, special rice prices, farmer profile, physical area, and cost and returns.
User-friendly platform
Researchers benefit from PalayStat. Researcher Rochelle Caliwagan said that she uses the platform in consolidating data for provinces that her team covered and when she wrote an article on technology consumption.
“For me, the interface of PalayStat is user-friendly,” said Rochelle.
Meanwhile, researcher Ralph Ante said, “I appreciate it because it is very useful to us. It has also tremendously improved from its previous version.”
Since its revival in 2016, PalayStat has gained following. From its 1,442 total unique pageviews in 2016, it now has 74,786 as of August this year.
If you’re ever in need of rice data here in the Philippines, you know where to go!
