According to a 2020 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, the Philippines had the greatest number of food-insecure people in Southeast Asia from 2017 to 2019.
The repeated lockdowns during the pandemic only spotlighted the lack of farm-to-market roads, transportation facilities, and support for small-scale producers that worsened Filipinos’ access to food supply, especially in rural areas.
Through the Hack4Food virtual hackathon that opened its applications on Tuesday, Jan. 25, ordinary Filipinos can become part of the country’s food sustainability solution.
Organized by the Rotary Club of Makati (RCM), in collaboration with the Rotary Club of Bay, Rotaract Club of Makati, and the Analytics Association of the Philippines (AAP), the online, week-long hackathon aims to address the problems facing the Philippines agriculture industry and food systems to help ensure a sustainable food supply for the country.
The varied challenges being posed to participants are designed to encompass the complexity of the country’s food sustainability issue while simultaneously motivating participants to come up with solutions.
“The challenges that we’re trying to solve here is to help improve the lives of farmers and fisher folks, to enhance the economies of scale like reducing production costs, increasing yields, decreasing cost per unit of output, and we also want to help empower farmers through collective action and aggregate outputs into viable clusters that improve operations and profits,” said cybersecurity stalwart Drexx Laggui from the Rotary Club of Makati during the hackathon’s media launch.
“And the best [challenge] which excites me the most is to help implement digital technologies and data analytics which we can [use to] to enhance overall farm productivity and efficiency.”
Laggui shared: “We also aim to help create object-detection technologies that can aid in production or distribution decisions, and of course, with that help in designing value chains that take into account climate change and other sources of risk. ”
Innovative ideas of all kinds are anticipated from the competition. These products and services could be technology apps, digital farming apps, data science-based farming tools, or even innovative farming methodology.
Additionally, Laggui emphasized that participants should utilize technology in their solutions that is easily accessible to the farmers they aim to support. The technologies they suggested include the USB-chargeable Arduino computer or the more powerful Raspberry Pi.
While hardware for their solutions will not be supplied to the hackathon’s participants, consultation and mentoring for them will be provided by the organizers.
To join, participants can form groups of up to five members or can compete as individuals. It is open to all Filipino citizens within the Philippines and there is no age limit.
The Rotary Club of Makati and the event’s other organizers particularly encourage the youth to participate. Rotary Club of Makati treasurer Jose Ramon “Bom” Villatuya stated: “In its core essence, the vision for hack4food is to create windows of opportunity to inspire the Filipino youth in putting their vibrant creativity in solving challenges in one of the oldest industries: agriculture.”
The top three solutions will also win cash prizes. P50,000, P30,000 and P20,000 will go to first place, second place, and third placers, respectively.
Register and learn more about the event mechanics by going to hack4food.co. Deadline for registration is on Saturday, Feb. 26, at 11:59 PM. Deadline for the final submissions of projects and proposals is on Saturday, March 5.
