Carlos D. Marquez, Jr., Philippines Today via Seameo Searca

Two years from now the Philippine farmers could diagnose crop pests by accessing the Internet, or share news with peers anywhere in the country by electronic mail. 

By then, Internet kiosks, a counterpart of Internet cafés now omnipresent in many urban communities, shall have been put up in selected farming villages where local agricultural information could be beamed upon especially designed websites. 

This is how the proponents of the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture visualize the result of their one-year old effort. 

"We hope to provide farmers with online Web-based services as part of the government bid to modernize the Philippine agriculture," said Open Academy director Roger Barroga of the project's lead agency Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice). 

Besides PhilRice, the other participating agencies in the program that aims to institutionalize agricultural interactive communication technology are: the Bureau of Agricultural Research, Agricultural Training Institute, Department of Science and Technology, Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry, Natural Resources Research and Development (PCCARRD), Bureau of Postharvest Research and Extension, Regional Integrated Agricultural Research Center, Inter- national Crops Research Institute for Semiarid Regions (ICRISAT), International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Advanced Science and Technology Institute, University of the Philippines Open University, Central Luzon State University, Pampanga Agricultural College and University of Southern Mindanao. 

Recently two more government institutions joined the program -- the Isabela State University (ISU) and the Philippine-Sino Center for Agricultural Technology (Philscat). 

ISU will promote the open academy in the Cagayan Valley to localize farm information available for on-line learning, distance education, extension, and advisory service. Isabela province is one of the five pilot sites of the open academy where hybrid rice is widely promoted. 

Philscat, which is engaged in the development and promotion of hybrid rice, on the other hand, will share its technologies, and develop local database and ICT-based services relevant for farmers, extension workers and researchers. 

The agencies are collectively called the Alliance. 

Barroga said they are now trying to integrate the available resources of these agencies while fusing the existing "data backbones of the Philippine Research and Education of Government Information Network, the DA-National Information Network-Very Small Aperture Satellite, and the Agriculture and Fisheries Research and Development Information System. 

"Basically we are putting to maximum use the computers in these offices," said Barroga whose immediate dream is to replicate in the country the Indian open academy experience. 

While the idea of putting up an open academy in the Philippines was first tossed to the Alliance by William Dar, the former Philippines agriculture secretary and now India-based ICRISAT director general, the program drew inspiration from the experience of fisherfolk of Pondicherry in Chennai south of India.Before they were linked to the Net by M.S. Swaminathan, former IRRI director general, Pondicherry fishermen would always complain of low fish catch owing to erratic weather. 

Swaminathan placed computers in the village center, then connected them to the Internet which the regular weather reports of the Indian astronomical office would be accessed. 

"They could now be able to determine low and high tide before sailing off to the sea to fish. The weather report is broadcast by loudspeakers and through VHF [very high frequency] radios," said Barroga. 

From the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, the cellular phone-using Indian farmers could also monitor agricultural products prices by short messaging service (SMS), or texting. Local computer scientists retooled their computers by replacing the keyboard keys with Indian characters for better communication. They also designed iconic websites for nonreading audiences. 

Barroga said the Alliance is now halfway to seeing the Indian model come true in the Philippines after having started the training on interactive communications technology with targeted 17,000 government farm technicians. 

This August the farm technicians who underwent the training will echo their acquired knowledge and skills to the first batch of the targeted one million rice farmers, 50,000 of whom are hybrid rice growers. 

While the long-term focus of the open academy are the majority of the Philippine farmers, the program initially concentrated on hybrid farm areas in five towns in Isabela, 10 in Nueva Ecija, five in Pampanga and six in Davao. 

At full swing, the open academy will contribute to good governance, enhance service delivery, promote social benefits and maximize the use of existing government information infrastructures, the program module said. 

For its part, Dar's ICRISAT had initially developed "a software that will allow government extension workers to modify and localize information published in websites, getting what they need, putting these together, putting in local dialect, adding pictures [and] releasing as shareware." 

Barroga disclosed that they are working on the shared P2.5 million from BAR and P1 million from PhilRice -- a small amount against the enormity of the program. "But we can stretch it even as we do not have budget for infrastructures [computers] for farmers," he emphasized. 

To put up the counterpart of the Internet cafes in urban communities, government computers will be pulled out in some selected farming villages to serve as Internet kiosks and operate like the successful Pondicherry model. 

The network will also feature a mobile Internet van to bring the technology to where there are no installed Internet kiosks. In some cases, exploiting the popularity of cellular phones in the country where even farmers own one, text messaging will be another medium that will largely contribute to the success of the country's first open academy for farmers.