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Areas of
Intervention
Mechanizing rice production remains
to be the priority concern of the government because of the
importance of rice as the major staple food crop. Seventy percent
of the total population is greatly dependent on its production,
processing, distribution, and marketing. About 3 million farmers
distributed along the many islands of the country are actually
involved in rice farming (Bautista, 2003). Selective
Mechanization. Reviews made
by Khan and El-Saghiri (1989), revealed that mechanization
priorities for rice production in developing countries should
focus in highly power-intensive operations such as water pumping,
land preparation, threshing, and milling. Once these have been
prioritized, mechanization of intermediate operations such as
direct-seeding establishment, crop care operations, and harvesting
will follow. The last priority to be mechanized is the highly
control-intensive operations like transplanting.
In
the Philippines, highly power-intensive operations like water
pumping, land preparation, threshing, milling, and transport for
rice production are already mechanized. However, harvesting,
direct-seeding, and crop care operations should be next in line.
Of these operations, harvesting is becoming important because of
its high labor requirement and high field losses incurred when
harvesting wet season rice. Drying paddy also remains a high
priority because of the humid conditions during the wet season
harvesting and importance of maintaining high quality paddy prior
to milling (Bautista, 2003).
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