Last 01 September 2009, the faculty and students of the department headed by their chair, Dr. Ruel M. Mojica witnessed the hearing of the Agricultural and Fisheries Mechanization (AFMech) Law during the second regular session of the Fourteenth Congress of the Republic of the Philippines at the Senate Building, Pasay City. The session was headed by Sen. Loren Legarda as the chairman of the board and the panel was represented by the heads of various institutions both from the private and public sectors such as DA, BFAR, BPRE, BOAE, PhilRice, AMTEC (UPLB) and others. Senator Juan Miguel F. Zubiri, author of the bill, briefly joined the session temporarily and participated in the consultation with different agencies.
AFMech Law is an act promoting and developing the agricultural and fisheries mechanization development in the country. “Unfortunately, the present level of agricultural and fisheries mechanization in the Philippines is quite dismal when benchmarked with its Asian neighbors such as Korea. This country’s low level of mechanization is highly attributed to the various technical and socio-economic constraints such as lack of investment in research and development, inadequate training and extension, poor manufacturing technology and lack of credit and low farming income. Other problems include the inadequacy of after sales service, supply of substandard agricultural and fishery machinery particularly in the government procurement program and the sporadic, fragmented and disorganized implementation of agricultural and fishery mechanization. The Bill seeks to establish a system of accreditation and classification of agricultural and fishery machinery suppliers and manufacturers, state of the art testing and evaluation, enforcement and responsive and adequate support services. This law must be passed to consolidate, integrate and strengthen all existing policies and programs in order to realize the country’s efforts towards agriculture and fisheries mechanization” explained Sen. Juan Miguel F. Zubiri. (GMCastillo)
