DA inks ₱165-million South Korea deal to build real-time agri tracker
(DA photo)
The Department of Agriculture (DA) is strengthening its oversight of the country's food supply and agricultural value chain through a digital platform backed by South Korea's agriculture agency.
The DA launched the Agriculture-based Central Data Ecosystem (AbCDE) platform on Wednesday, July 22, to finally bring together previously fragmented agricultural data into a single platform.
The AbCDE is designed as an integrated system that is expected to improve the government’s planning, policymaking, and implementation of programs in the agriculture sector.
In particular, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel said the platform enables the DA to track agricultural data in real time, giving the agency adequate time to intervene when necessary.
For instance, he said the platform could reveal cases of overproduction of high-value crops at a faster pace, allowing the DA to implement appropriate policies to prevent wastage.
“This is a tool to get more real-time data as fast as possible so that we can manage the food security and prices to control inflation,” he told reporters.
The AbCDE was developed in partnership with South Korea's Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) and the Korea Agency of Education, Promotion, and Information Service in Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (EPIS).
It received funding of $3.5 million, or roughly ₱165 million, from South Korea's official development assistance (ODA) program.
The digital platform can also speed up the delivery of assistance to farmers as it prevents instances of duplicate records, reducing the time needed to roll out support programs by as much as 80 percent.
Tiu Laurel noted that the registration process for the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA), which helps identify beneficiaries of assistance programs, can now be completed in just five minutes with the AbCDE, compared to the usual five days.
“We should be able to register more and the data inaccuracy and duplication will be reduced, and the interventions will be faster,” he said.
The DA has been reinforcing its agricultural data collection efforts to improve the government’s food production planning and strengthen the country's food security.
The agency recently met with officials from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) to foster stronger cooperation in generating reliable and accurate data to support sound policymaking.