Laser land leveling in the Philippines

Within the last decade, the Philippine Department of Agriculture (DA) and its agencies, the Philippine Rice Research and Institute (PhiRice) and the Bureau of Agricultural and Fisheries Engineering (BAFE) has been collaborating with IRRI in several awareness-raising, capacity-building, and technology adoption initiatives to seamlessly integrate laser land leveling in Philippine fields.

One of the recent major milestones in the partnership between DA and IRRI is a 2019 roundtable discussion on precision technology for land leveling. The discussion convened different stakeholders,  gathered feedback from end-users on the adoption of the technology, and explored next steps for LLL scaling and adoption in the country.

This discussion culminated in a strategy to create opportunities for knowledge and information sharing and further dissemination of the technology through collaborative projects between IRRI and national agencies, such as WateRice and RiceStrawPH. It also began a conversation on taking laser land leveling technology to policymakers, with the hopes of scaling LLL across the country.

Recent outputs produced by DA-BAFE in partnership with IRRI (2021)

• Updated LLL training manual
• Standard/guidelines for the operation and evaluation of LLL equipment and applications (LLL Leveling Advisor, EasyLevel, and EasyFarm)
• Two (2) training workshops for the operation and maintenance of LLL , attended mostly by Agricultural and Biosystems Engineers (ABEs) in DA-RFOs.
• Webinars for the celebration of International Women's Day

• IRRI-DA BAFE successfully cap year-long joint project on Laser Land Leveling (LLL)

• BAFE-IRRI collaboration project on Laser Land Leveling complements DS's farm consolidation thrust

• Philippines launches digital campaign to promote modern rice technologies

• IRRI and DA BAFE’s EasyLevel app helps farmers access leveling machinery, facilities

• DA BAFE, IRRI educate over 1,500 stakeholders on laser land leveling

• Laser-guided land leveling ramps up in Isabela

• A physician-turned-farmer with a mission to modernize rice farming  

• Enhancing Iloilo’s rice productivity through innovations on land leveling and rice straw management

• Philippine Department of Agriculture staff learn about laser leveling technology to improve farm outputs

• WateRice project demonstrated laser guided land leveling technology to Iloilo farmers