Farming Forward
Ready to break new ground? This is Farming Forward! Your go-to source for everything shaping the world of agriculture. Every episode, we're plowing through the latest in agricultural innovation, the best technology for farming, powerful mechanization breakthroughs, essential farming tips, and all the vital topics that drive our industry forward. If you're passionate about making agriculture more productive and sustainable, you've found your community!
This is Farming Forward, brought to you by First Farm Asia. Let's learn and grow.
Episodes
24 episodes
Closing the gender gap in Asian agriculture
Closing the gender gap in agriculture could add up to one trillion dollars to global GDP, and help forty five million people escape food insecurity. The United Nations has designated 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer to confront t...
Precision Farming for Small Farms: What Actually Works
Say precision farming to most smallholders, and the image that comes to mind is usually a giant, autonomous tractor with a screen full of satellite data, something built for a thousand hectare operation, not a one or two hectare plot. That imag...
why farms still work by hand
Right now, across low and middle income countries, roughly half of all farm work still gets done by human or animal power, not machines. Not in the past, right now, in 2026. This episode looks at the real reasons so many farms across Asia still...
Skip the Plow: The Case for Strip-Till in Asia's Rice-Wheat Fields
Across South Asia's Indo-Gangetic Plains, over a billion people depend on a single rotation, rice followed by wheat, grown on more than thirteen million hectares. How that soil gets prepared between the two crops turns out to matter enormously,...
How to Keep Earworms From Eating Your Corn
You wait all season for it — you peel back the husk on a perfect-looking ear of corn, and there it is. A worm, already chewing through the tip. Corn earworm is one of the most destructive corn pests around, and once it's inside the husk, there'...
How to Maintain a Tractor for Maximum Lifespan
A tractor is one of the biggest investments most farms will ever make, and yet it is often maintained on guesswork rather than a real routine. This episode walks through ten specific, practical maintenance habits that genuinely extend a tractor...
Why Farmers Abandon Their Sensors?
A farmer invests in a soil sensor, excited about the data it promises. A year later, it is sitting in a shed, unused, batteries long dead. This is not a rare story, it is a pattern researchers have actually studied. This episode looks at why se...
Is Regenerative Farming Scalable? Corporate Pledges vs. On the Ground Reality in 2026
Sixty four percent of the world's biggest food and agriculture companies now reference regenerative agriculture in their sustainability plans. But the share of those same companies with actual quantified targets recently fell, not rose. This ep...
Is Vertical Farming a Good Business to Do in the Philippines in 2026?
Growing lettuce vertically in the Philippines can cost roughly forty seven times more per unit than growing it the traditional way. That is not a typo. This episode asks the honest question, is vertical farming actually a good business to start...
Why Vertical Farming Is a Flawed Global Concept
The world's largest vertical farm raised over a billion dollars from investors. It shut down anyway. So did several of its biggest competitors. Vertical farming has been sold for over a decade as the future of food. This episode makes the case ...
How Machines Make Farming Easier
A task that once took a full team of workers an entire day can now be done by one person and one machine in a fraction of the time. This episode breaks down exactly how farm machinery makes that possible, task by task, and why the shift matters...
What Is the Difference Between a Grain, Cereal, Legume, Pulse, Lentil, and Millet?
Rice is a grain. So is a lentil. So is a peanut. But rice, lentils, and peanuts aren't really the same kind of thing at all. This episode sorts out one of the most commonly confused sets of terms in food and agriculture.We break down the...
The Essential Guide to Crop Protection
Globally, pests and diseases alone are responsible for around 30 percent of average yearly crop yield loss. That's nearly a third of the world's harvest lost before it ever reaches anyone's plate. This episode breaks down what actually threaten...
How Mechanization Is Changing Asia's Small Farms
Here's the description with the dash removed:Episode: How Mechanization Is Changing Asia's Small FarmsA farmer in the mid-hills of Nepal swaps a hand hoe for a small mechanical tiller, and her rice yield jumps by over a tho...
The Critical Need for Better Agricultural Equipment Hire Services in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia's smallholder farmers feed millions, but most can't afford the equipment that would make their work faster, safer, and more profitable. This episode looks at why equipment rental, not ownership, is becoming the real path to moder...
The Common Farming Myths
Brown eggs are healthier than white eggs. Organic food never uses pesticides. Big farms don't care about their animals. You've probably heard at least one of these — maybe you've even repeated one yourself. This episode sets the record straight...
The Trillion-Dollar Rot: Why the World Can't Afford to Waste Food
Nearly a billion people face hunger today. At the same time, the world throws away roughly one-third of all food produced for human consumption — about 1.3 billion tonnes every year. This episode breaks down exactly how big that failure really ...
Why Half Your Mango Harvest Never Makes It to Market
Here's a number that should stop every mango farmer in their tracks: post-harvest damage and rejection rates in the Philippine mango industry can climb as high as 50 percent. That means nearly half of what's grown never makes it to a buyer in s...
How to Start a Mango Farm in the Philippines: A Step-by-Step Guide
Dive into the sun-drenched orchards of the Philippines to unlock the secrets behind the Carabao mango, often hailed as the world's finest mango. In this comprehensive guide, host Maya takes you on a strategic journey from site sel...
Why Farmers Skip New Tractors
Across farming communities, a strange trend is picking up speed: farmers are skipping brand-new, tech-loaded tractors in favor of machines built decades ago. And it's not nostalgia — it's strategy.In this episode, we dig into why farmers...
Precision Farming 101: Introduction, Benefits & Implementation
What if you could water your crops down to the last liter, or catch a nutrient deficiency before it ever shows up on a leaf? That's the promise of precision farming — and it's not just for massive industrial operations anymore.In this ep...
The Basic of Crop Protection for Better Yields
This episode of Farming Forward dives into the crucial topic of crop protection. We talk about the three main strategies farmers use – cultural practices, biological control, and chemical control – breaking down the pros and cons ...
