The guessing game for the Filipino farmer will soon be over.
On March 7, President Rody Duterte will launch in Malacañang the National Color-Coded Agriculture Guide Map (NACCAG), an interactive website which will show farmers what crops could be grown in his specific location, down to the barangay level, based on soil type, hazards and risks.
The Color-Coded Agri Guide Map or NACCAG is a commitment made by President Duterte during the campaign noting that many of the country’s farmers do not even know the type of soil they have in their farms and other factors like climatic conditions which would affect their productivity.
Prepared by the Adaptation, Mitigation and Intervention in Agriculture (AMIA) and the Bureau of Soils and Water Management in the face of Climate Change, the interactive website will be officially posted by President Duterte.
The farmersguidemap.gov.ph will provide the farmers access to very important information he needs to know what type of soil he has in his village, the kind of crops suitable to his area and the hazards and risks he must watch out for.
The farmer will also have access to a map showing sources of water and the depth of water level in his area, including weather forecasts through a link which will bring him to the PAGASA website.
By typing his Region, Province, Town and Barangay in designated boxes in the website, the farmer will get the list of crops suitable for his village.
He has the option to determine where in his barangay he could plant a specific crop by clicking any of the listed crop, like Cacao or pineapple.
When he does that, the interactive map will be layered with several colors indicating where the crop could be ideally grown which would be shown by the color Green and where it is not advisable to plant as shown by color Red.
The NACCAG is expected to protect the farmer from the expensive and time consuming experimental planting in his farm where after wasting time and money, he cuts down a crop that does not bear fruit simply because it is not suited in the area.
This program will also help the DAF in programming its interventions in specific areas based on the crops expected to be produced in the locality.
The NACCAG was supposed to be completed in six months and was ready for launching only as a static map as early as December but since I wanted an interactive version of the map, it took computer experts two more months to input almost two million data into the website.
The NACCAG website farmersguidemap.gov.ph is a work in progress and as new data are available, these would be in-putted to update the program.
(Philippine soils map prepared by BSWM while photos of agricultural products downloaded from different websites open in the internet.)
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