Philippine agriculture, farming to benefit from innovative tech

MANILA, Philippines – There are a lot more opportunities to use technology to improve Philippine agriculture and farming, according to digital enterprise transformation consultant Winston Damarillo.

Damarillo, executive chairman of consulting firm Amihan Global Strategies (AGSX), said there is a lot more energy in the Global Shapers, the young version of the World Economic Forum, where many of the members are farmers.

"It's also the area where we can apply technology," Damarillo, co-chair of OCEAN 16. The Open Collaboration with East Asia New Champions or OCEAN is a biennial gathering in the Philippines that brings together leaders across sectors to connect, discover new ideas, and shape a more creative and innovative future together.

Damarillo said that areas where technology can be applied will bring interest. And interest can bring investors.

Aside from investors, Damarillo also mentioned doing crowdfunding or crowd sourcing – raising money by asking a large number of people for smaller amounts and pooling it together – or going to independent private investors.

"There is a lot of interest and a lot of activities in rural electrification. How do you bring power to rice fields, right? And this is where we have a lot of opportunities because technology is like plasma gasification, solar batteries... These are things that you can bring to the farm," Damarillas said.

"And any energy input to agriculture has a multiplying effect. Hopefully, we'll see more of that," Damarillas added.

OCEAN will be holding a summit to promote the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" also known as "Industry 4.0," meant to give  the Philippines an opportunity not only to keep up with more advanced nations, but also solve urgent problems in the country.

The OCEAN 16 summit will be held in Bohol on November 24 to 26, 2016.

Senator Bam Aquino, a co-chair of OCEAN 16, said that they want to hold the OCEAN summit annually to "bring innovative people together, bring people who care about the country together and to bring people who are pushing the bounderies of what we're doing currently together, and have them talk 'what's next?'"