Inventions dedicated to Filipino farmers and fisherfolk:
SMARTLINK
Smartlink is an agribusiness venture proposed by Smart Agri Innovators from Barangay Halayhayin in Siniloan, Laguna. The proponents are Engr. Junelle V. Adrias, Engr. Kelly Ann A. Palma, Louiegi Anthony E. Gamez, Phoebe Alyssa B. Palacio, and Richmond R. Corda—five college friends who learned programming and designing.
The light bulb moment
The group came up with the idea to create devices when Corda’s mother needed a weighing device for their farm operation but could not afford its expensive price. As five of them are graduates of Agricultural Engineering with a National Certificate (NC) II in Animal Husbandry, they came up with an idea to create a swine live weight estimator. They envisioned to help Corda’s mother and other farmers with their problems and inconveniences in their farm operations.
The swine live weight estimator
The five joined the Young Farmers Challenge Fund (YFCF) Program of the Department of Agriculture (DA) to finance their business proposal. The proponents created a swine live weight estimator to give farmers convenience and to reduce the costs of weighing their swine.
The device is simple to use: the laser pointer should be aimed at the neck and rump of the swine before pressing the trigger button, which will measure the swine’s liveweight and carcass rate. In addition, this will lessen the contact of humans with swine and will even prevent the spread of African Swine Fever which may be carried by other swine that were weighed in the same weighing center.
Adrias, Palma, Gamez, Palacio, and Corda were declared awardees of the Provincial and Regional Level Competitions of the YFCF. They successfully carried the banner of the CALABARZON Region after being conferred a YFCF National Level award.
With the help of the Php 250,000 financial grant that they received from the Program, they managed to purchase the equipment needed to produce the device such as laptops for coding and 3D printer for printing the devices’ parts.
Inventing more products
With the additional financial grant from the Regional Level and National Level Competitions, their future plan is to produce other devices such as the Moisture Content Estimator and pH Meter Monitoring Device, which are also needed by farmers and fisherfolk. ###
