e-Pinoy FARMS® Scoping Sessions conclude in the Visayas

17 July 2008
Marlowe U. Aquino, PhD

After a long process of consultation-briefings, field validations, systemizations, and customizations of the Community-based Participatory Action Research (CPAR) monitoring and evaluation system through the e-Pinoy FARMS®, the scoping sessions finally concluded with the distribution of e-Pinoy FARMS® server and hands-on-training of focal CPAR research staff of the DA-regional field units particularly the Western Visayas, Central Visayas and Eastern Visayas Integrated Agricultural Research Centers. The activity was held simultaneously during the Visayas Zonal Agriculture and Fisheries Research and Development Quarterly Meeting on 17-18 July 2008 at Mambukaw Resort, Murcia, Negros Occidental and jointly facilitated by BAR and Optiserve, Technologies, Inc.

The Luzon and Minadanao scoping sessions were also held simultaneously with the Zonal Agriculture and Fisheries Research and Development Cluster quarterly meetings for Luzon on 11 June 2008 at the BAR, Diliman Quezon City, and Mindanao on 17-18 June 2008 at Paras Beach Resort, Camiguin Island, respectively.

The e-Pinoy FARMS® is a proprietary integrated farm resource management system, designed and developed by Optiserve Technologies, Inc. for agribusiness, and customized to fit the requirements of the Community-based Participatory Action Research (CPAR) through a project funded by DA-Bureau of Agricultural Research in October 2006.

An inter-active software-based system, it helps farmers and their organizations effectively organize, allocate and manage vital resources for sustainability, increase profitability, and achieve agribusiness development. Furthermore, customized to automate information management and feedback mechanism between BAR and RIARC, the e-Pinoy FARMS® platform it helps planners and decision makers compile useful information from raw data, documents, personal knowledge, and/or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions. Included are computer-generated reports for CPAR monitoring and evaluation (M/E).

As a decision support system (DSS), the e-Pinoy FARMS® provides stakeholders with the following: 1) access to information assets, 2) comparative costs and return records, 3) assumptions and projected production figures based on historical data; and 4) choices/consequences of different decision alternatives, given past experience in a context that is described.

In view of the inherent value of information in the overall decision-making process, the CPAR M/E system is installed to provide stakeholders with relevant information - ranging from includes Social, Technical, Economic, Environment and Political (STEEP) concerns to guide them in making informed decisions, and to shorten CPAR's trajectory or timeline from a simple village-level production to a more systematic enterprise development, and on towards profitable agribusiness venture.

In addition, central to e-Pinoy FARMS® CPAR M&E is the ability of stakeholders to translate information to action and effectively link this to current body of knowledge-based resources. It highlights the value of community participation and strategic management of resources as it encourages proactive and multi-stakeholder participation in research, development and extension.

BAR's response in translating the vision of DA "to make agriculture business" meant to come-up with a unified information system that is more than the sum of its (STEEP) parts. By providing access to the right information at the right time through BAR's CPAR program, the much needed information for local business and institutional development including strategic human resource management.

With the operationalization and institutionalization of e-Pinoy FARMS®, it will scale up the systems-driven, resource-based implementation of CPAR leading to the inevitable formation of efficient clusters of enterprises that are strongly capable of 1.) Establishing strong partnerships and linkages with institutional markets; 2.) Accessing steady flow of growth capital; and 3.) Provide customized services to farmer-members for sustainability and growth.