The government should follow up on its bilateral agreement signed last year with India where the Philippines can find insights on dryland farming or satellite farm monitoring as it pursues farm modernization.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) signed a six-point farm cooperation agreement with India in August last year but should follow on these potentially free-of-charge technical assistance or grants on agriculture.

"The government should follow this up because India has expertise on dairy, dryland agriculture or research on drought, biotechnology, dairy, and biofuel (sweet sorghum)," said India-based International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) Director General William D. Dar in an interview.

Aiming to be a technology superpower as it has already sent late last year its first mission to the moon with its spaceship Chandrayaan-1, India can help the Philippines in areas in agriculture where it is more advanced even if India itself is also in the process of modernizing its agriculture.

"This will really depend on the relations between the two countries. It has already been signed. And if we’re able to demonstrate progress, you can go to an identification of second areas of collaborative projects," he said.

Among the technologies the Philippines can adopt from India is its expertise in drought that’s enabling it to export some commodities like rice, wheat, and pepper.

Another cooperation may be on sweet sorghum biofuel where ICRISAT and Indian private firm Rusni Distillery are already extending technical assistance to African agencies which are putting up sweet sorghum biofuel plants with a daily capacity of one million liters.

Former Indian President Abdul Kalam has started launching a farm satellite system during his administration from 2002 to 2007. IN a related technology, ICRISAT will be extending a technical assistance to DA on data management as part of a more accurate farm monitoring system, Dar said.

"We need a business-based production system. We need data on market, production. We need remote sensing so we can plan out our cropping. Over the last five years, India has been enhancing this technology. They just started, but because they have a satellite system, they don’t have much problems on its application in agriculture," he said.

The Philippines does have Mabuhay Satellite, a company owned by the PHilippine Long Distance Telephone Co., which has been in operation since 1994 when it established an international satellite facility. But subscription to its services for satellite use for monitoring agricultural production systems of course involves cost.

Dar said the Philippine Rice Research Institute has reportedly invested P6 million in a remote sensing capability to monitor agricultural production in Nueva Ecija. To apply this in all 80 Philippine provinces, there must be a budget of around P480 million.

"You need to put up good data information system so planning will be nearer the target.

ACEF (Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund) has lots of money, why not spend half a billion for this (remote sensing facility)?" he said.