KAMMMPI, a confederation of Philippine farmers working with the Department of Agriculture (DA) for the consolidation of individual farmers and cooperatives, has secured a partnership with international mobile technology and financial services firm Tiaxa for the use of the latter’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform WeSqore.
A statement showed that KAMMMPI will use WeSqore – which provides a real-time business intelligence platform that could improve the delivery of quality agri-services and extension systems – as its main platform for 15 million farmers participating in the DA’s farm consolidation program.
“KAMMMPI will use WeSqore to assist the DA in selecting and validating the farmers enrolment in DA’s Farm Consolidation programs and services and implement the GETSMARTFARMS methodology to help the farmers become millionaires,” said KAMMMPI’s National Chairman Sonny Domingo.
Right now, the Philippine smallholder farmers face difficulties accessing DA services, which include financing from financial institutions, due to a lack of meaningful data requested during their application process.
WeSqore will help improve farmers’ access and increase potential use cases by helping the DA harmonize its Registry Service of Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA).
It will also serve as the mediation platform, featuring credit scoring, business profiling, and decision-making tools.
Using the WeSqore data farmers will also have better access to the allocation of government budgets for crop assistance.
“With the WeSqore platform, the optimum volume of fertilizer for each crop or soil type per project site will be established to save on cost. It will then be used as a tool for irrigation management and pest control that can predict the yields with the projected climate condition during the cropping season to enable the Farmer Corporations under GETSMARTFARMS to participate in Commodity Futures for rice, corn and bean products,” Domingo said.
As part of the service commitment, Tiaxa will help in producing periodic reports based on data collected and analyzed, while KAMMMPI will create news articles on the status of Philippine agriculture for public use.
Through WeSqore platform, the DA will ensure that the farmers have received, and used, the services and support inputs the agency will provide. This will enable more efficient planning and decision-making for DA officials.
As part of its thrust to modernize the country’s agri-fishery sector, the DA is currently laying the groundwork to digitize its operations.
“We need to have good data management and a very robust M&E system to attain reliable and credible agri-fishery information down to the ground level. We will also have a data analytics group as we invest in data science and go digital in the agriculture sector,” said Agriculture Secretary William Dar.