HELPING FARMERS THROUGH A PORTABLE GRAINS DRYER
HELPING FARMERS THROUGH A PORTABLE GRAINS DRYER
When I read about the invention of Anihon — a compact, portable grain dryer developed by young Filipino inventor John Dence Flores — I felt a surge of optimism. Maybe this is the kind of innovation our farmers have been waiting for: practical, climate-smart, home-grown. According to his research, roughly 408,764 metric tons of palay—about 4.5 per cent of the country’s harvest—are lost annually because traditional drying fails during rainy spells or power outages.
Let’s unpack why this matters, what the invention offers, and how the government (and we the public) could toy with turning this into scale.
Why this matters
In many rural areas, rice farmers face a cruel post-harvest challenge: they harvest; then come the rains or clouds; then they lay out on roads or highways to dry. That practice, as Flores points out, is fraught with hazards—wind blowing the grains away, theft, vehicles crushing them, and more.
Add to that: climate change means more unpredictable weather; outages and storms affect drying; weather fluctuations reduce safe sun-drying days. If a significant chunk of harvest is lost before it even reaches the market, farmers lose income and productivity suffers.
So a device that helps small farms or cooperatives dry palay reliably, rain or shine, is a practical solution. Flores says Anihon is designed for “small farms and cooperatives that cannot afford industrial-scale dryers.”
What the dryer offers
Here are the features that make Anihon stand out:
Hybrid power: It runs on electricity and waste (used) cooking oil. That means during blackouts or unreliable power, the used oil mode can keep things going.
Compact and modular: It has four drying trays and an eight-hour drying cycle in its prototype version. Built with industrial design sensibilities (thanks to his mentor engineers at De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde).
Circular economy angle: Using waste cooking oil gives it an environmental plus. In my opinion, that means a dual benefit—reducing waste and helping farmers.
Field-tested component: A unit donated to farmers in Aklan for pilot trials. Good proof of concept.
My comments and suggestions
This invention is promising, but as always the journey from prototype to mass-deployment is the tougher part. Here are some thoughts:
Scale it through cooperatives: The government or its agricultural agencies could include this dryer in the donation program of simple agricultural machines. Instead of giving one to one farmer, give to a coop, harvest group or barangay cluster, so more farmers share the benefit and cost.
Ensure cost-effectiveness: Whatever the cost of Anihon, I’d argue the investment will pay for itself through reduced losses. But the price must be affordable. Data on exactly how much is saved per unit/year would help build the business case.
Match it to infrastructure: Power reliability, used cooking oil supply (for the hybrid mode), availability of spare parts-distribution networks—these all matter. If the machine sits idle because there’s no oil fuel or spare part, the promise vanishes.
Go for renewables next: Flores has hinted at expanding to solar and wind. If that happens, then you elevate the solution even further—less dependence on grid power or cooking-oil fuel.
Monitoring & impact measurement: We should track how much reduction in post-harvest loss is achieved when these units are deployed, and what that means for farmer incomes, food security and national rice supply.
Mind the logistics: Farmers in far-flung barangays may need training, servicing, spare parts. The simplest machine often falters not in design but in use, maintenance and local adaptation.
Questions for policy-makers
Why is this not yet rolling out widely? What barriers exist (funding? manufacturing? awareness?).
Can the Department of Agriculture or Department of Science and Technology integrate this into its machine-donation or technology adoption programs?
Could funding be structured so farmer co-ops co-finance and share the unit, maybe pay back some of the savings over time?
What partnerships (private-public) can we forge to manufacture these locally, keep cost low, create jobs?
How many millions of pesos is lost nationally each year in post-harvest losses (not just palay drying failures)? If the figure is large, that justifies urgent action.
I believe inventions like Anihon exemplify what we call “appropriate technology”—technology that fits the socio-economic context, responds to real need, and uses available resources. This one doesn’t need ultra-large infrastructure; it’s lightweight, tailored to small farmers. That’s powerful. And the fact it uses used cooking oil speaks to context-awareness.
If we fail to deploy this thinking at scale, we risk letting bright ideas stay in labs, prototypes once-celebrated, but not reaching the fields where farmers plant, sweat and harvest.
We must ask ourselves: if this unit could prevent even 1 per cent of post-harvest losses nationwide, what does that translate into tonnes of rice, pesos of income and food-security? And if that’s so, why not make it a national programme?
To the young inventor John Dence Flores: I say well done. To the government: there is a golden opportunity here to translate design into deployment, into real farmer benefit. To the farmer: you should be the end-beneficiary of tech like this, not just the test-site.
Let’s not allow this dryer to be a nice story in a newspaper and then disappear. Instead, let’s turn it into a national wave—one where the harvest is secured, losses drop, incomes rise, and items once laid out on highways in the rain become relics of the past. In a country where rice is life, every grain counts. And with innovations like Anihon, maybe we can protect more of them.
Ramon Ike V. Seneres, www.facebook.com/ike.seneres
iseneres@yahoo.com, senseneres.blogspot.com 03-29-2026
Comments
Post a Comment