97,703 Leyte farmers register in the DA National Farmers’ Registry System

farmers on the field

By Philippine Information Agency (PIA 8)
March 19, 2012

TACLOBAN CITY – About 97,703 farmers registered with the National Farmers Registry System which was piloted in the province of Leyte, the Department of Agriculture recently reported as it announced the completion in the implementation of the project.

DA Region 8 Regional Executive Director Antonio Gerundio informed that the number of registered farmers represent 62 percent of the total 157,465 target farmers in Leyte.

RED Gerundio added that of the total number of registered farmers, 58% comprises the male population and 42% for the female.

It was also observed that farmers aged 60 and above cover the most number of registered farmers with 29.6%.

For the type of farm, about 43% own rain-fed upland farms and about 53.64% has an area below 1.0 hectare.

The commonly used farm production machineries are plow, sprayer, rice transplanter, harrow, farm tractor and hand tractor, the latter covers the most number.

For the post production machineries, about 1,383 farmers own a thresher. Meanwhile, the most number of small scale irrigation systems are small farm reservoir and open source pump with 204 and 196, respectively.

Results also showed that the municipality or city with the highest number of registered farmers (5,052) is Baybay City and the best performing municipality based on the validated targets and farmers registered is the Municipality of Tabango (3,646 registered farmers and 3,708 validated).

The proposed National Farmers’ Registry System (NFRS) program is a voluntary registration system developed by the Department of Agriculture, wherein any farmer who actually tills and invests in a farm may enlist by providing relevant information and supporting documents.

The NFRS aims to establish a reliable data of farmers and farmlands so that the delivery of agricultural programs and services by the DA and other government agencies could be accessed by and/or timely delivered to the intended farmer clientele.

In addition, NFRS will be linked to the Unified and Geospatial Information System, a reliable and comprehensive database for agriculture and fisheries, which is intended not only to address existing data gaps, but most importantly, to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of support services to farmers.