AFTER two years of development, piloting and deployment in the regions, the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) under Department of Agriculture (DA) finally commenced operating e-PinoyFARMS®, a software designed to systematize the process documentation of BAR’s banner program, the Community-based Participatory Action Research (CPAR).
The software was developed by the Optiserve Technologies Inc. headed by its chief executive officer Cheryl Marie U. Natividad.
She handed over the CPAR e-PinoyFARMS® M&E system to BAR director Nicomedes P. Eleazar during the culminating workshop on Operationalization of e-Pinoy FARM S® as M&E System of CPAR held on June 1 and 2 this year at Pranjetto Hills, Sampaloc in Tanay, Rizal.
The e-PinoyFARMS® is a custom-built farm management system which allows CPAR stakeholders to capture baseline data, farm operations and economic transactions that support decision-making process for effective management of resources for sustainability.
This system also aims to achieve goals of agribusiness development.
In his message, Eleazar stressed the e-PinoyFARMS® system is very important not only for BAR’s monitoring and evaluation of CPAR projects but also for the agency’s regional partners in managing their farms and agriculture stakeholders who are interested in venturing into agribusiness development.
He pointed out the need to promote the e-PinoyFARMS® among DA’s regional management and stakeholders for more interactive sharing and smoother transfer of relevant information.
E-PinoyFARMS® could complement other databases of DA units, he continued, noting an exploratory study is being conducted to consolidate data from these databases and agri-business kiosks specifically for coconut farmers.
The workshop was attended by CPAR e-Pinoy regional teams, BAR technical adviser Dr. Manuel Bonifacio, BAR regional coordinators and technical staff from program development division, planning unit, finance, applied communication division and information management unit and optiserve.
The activity aimed to further address issues and concerns on operationalizing CPAR e-PinoyFARMS® system as well as on technical and financial issues that regions encountered in populating the database and in uploading information to BAR’s central server.
An audio-visual presentation of CPAR success stories featured in NBN’s “Mag-Agri Tayo” was also documented in the e-PinoyFARMS® as presented by assistant head Julia Lapitan.
This is to inspire the CPAR regional team to complete documentation of their CPAR projects through using the system and for their projects to be included in the roster of success stories documented so far and shown on national television.
To date, 96 percent of the total new CPAR projects funded, 26 percent of total CPAR sites as well as 51 percent of total farmers’ profiles nationwide were already uploaded in the system.
The e-PinoyFARMS® is under the project ‘Establishment of the e-PinoyFARMS® for a Sustainable and Profitable Agriculture and Fisheries Community-based Initiatives in all Regions’ which is being funded and supported by BAR. [PNA]
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