Regional Director Arnel de Mesa presented the status of Department of Agriculture (DA) CALABARZON’s 12 installed Automated Weather Stations (AWSs) with the aim of incorporating the region’s local weather information to SARI technology for more accurate data collection and faster data generation, happened during DA Management Committee Meeting on June 8, 2020, through video conferencing.
SARI is defined as a “cohesive technology that captures farm-to-market supply of agricultural produce; a system that analyzes farmers’ ability to produce and enables traders’ access to seamless information. It provides an integrated dispatch system and intelligence to navigate the location data of the nearest trucks for goods movement.”
According to Director de Mesa, the AWS system may provide near real-time information on temperature, relative humidity, rainfall on an hourly basis, soil moisture content, atmospheric pressure, and other agro-meteorological parameters.
“It will be very helpful to us in the region especially if there are upcoming weather disturbances such as El Niño and La Niña, which shall help us implement immediate and appropriate interventions to mitigate agricultural damages and losses. Then, we can easily generate and collate this information for us to have very good data analytics down to the city and municipal level,” he said.
CALABARZON will be the pilot region for SARI which is, according to Director de Mesa, a great opportunity for the region to share the system with others. ● (ARC, DA-RAFIS)
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