Engr. Delfin Cuevas Jr. remembers the hardship of his mother in manually planting rice. As the elementary school song describes the physical work, it was back-breaking as each rice seedling is planted on the paddy one by one under while exposed to the sun for hours.

The memory of his mother laboring in the field became the inspiration of Cuevas in later inventing an innovative farming machine.

Three decades of working overseas as an electrical engineer in Kenya, across East Africa, and later in Canada enabled Cuevas to develop the design of a planter that makes planting rice easy, efficient, and at less cost.

When he returned to his roots in Barangay Ipil, Bongabong, Oriental Mindoro in 2021, he started working on his idea. Drawing from both his technical background and lived experiences in agriculture, he built a lightweight, manually operated precision seeder called the Palatak Palay Seeder.

Adapted from an earlier concept for corn planting, the machine integrates the advantages of direct seeding and manual transplanting into a single, efficient system. It enables precise seed placement at uniform spacing and controlled volume per hill, improving soil aeration, easing weeding, and supporting better crop growth.

With a rust-resistant stainless-steel frame and lightweight 3D-printed Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol components, the seeder is durable yet easy to handle. Its modular design allows for simple maintenance, while features such as a built-in fertilizer applicator, wind deflector, and integrated soil openers and closers ensure accurate seeding even in challenging conditions.

More importantly, the Palatak Palay Seeder addresses one of the most pressing challenges in rice farming: cost. With planting expenses reaching around P10,000 per hectare — about 20 percet of total production cost — the Palatak reduces labor dependence and lowers expenses. It achieves up to 89.09 percent field efficiency, surpassing the 60 benchmark under Philippine Agricultural Engineering Standards, while improving planting speed and reducing seed wastage. Farmers can save up to P9,000 per hectare, an impact that goes beyond efficiency and into livelihood.

The technology is also gender-responsive or GAD-sensitive being lightweight and simply pulled on the paddy, an innovation that is deeply personal.

“I vividly recall the challenges my mother faced during my childhood, as she toiled in the fields, manually planting corn to pave the path for our education,” Cuevas recalled.

The Palatak also supports environment-friendly farming practices since it does not require fuel to operate. Cuevas later christened the machine as “Palatak,” a Filipino term loosely translated as “mouth-clicker,” referring to the distinct clicking sound it produces while rolling to seed the field.

Scaling the technology

When Cuevas entered Palatak into the Grassroots Innovation and Circular Economy Expo in Pasay City in July 2023, the Department of Science and Technology (DoST) noticed and saw its potential. He soon joined the agency’s Innovation for Filipinos Working Distantly from the Philippines Program, which provided him capacity-building and funding assistance to refine both the technology and its long-term viability.

DoST-MIMAROPA played a key role in advancing the Palatak Palay Seeder, facilitating performance testing at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños’ Agricultural Machinery Testing and Evaluation Center, supporting field validation, and enabling on-site demonstrations with local partners.

The demonstrations, conducted from planting to harvest, allowed farmers to see the technology’s value firsthand, bridging the gap between innovation and adoption.

Support also extended to enterprise development and intellectual property protection. Through DoST-MIMAROPA’s assistance, Palatak secured Industrial Design and Utility Model registrations, while its patent registration remains ongoing.

In 2022, Cuevas established Farmwell Agricultural Machinery Manufacturing in Ipil to locally produce the technology. Since its introduction to the market, the Palatak Palay Seeder has steadily expanded its reach, now serving adopters across 72 provinces and around 406 municipalities nationwide as of April 2026. Its users include individual rice farmers, farmers’ associations, cooperatives and local government units.

Farmwell currently produces an average of 50 units monthly to meet growing demand. The company itself has also grown from only two workers during its early operations to 19 regular employees today. Supporting its expansion, Farmwell transitioned to an off-grid 48-kilowatt solar energy system, generating savings of around P50,000 monthly in electricity expenses while contributing to increased operations and an estimated P550,000 increase in average monthly gross sales.

Beyond direct adoption, some Palatak owners also rent out their units within their communities, helping fellow rice farmers reduce planting expenses without immediately purchasing their own equipment.

Grassroots innovation

In 2025, the Palatak was named one of the Presidential Filipinnovator Awardees, affirming its value as a solution to real-world agricultural challenges. This year, it earned top honors at the National Invention Contest and Exhibits under the Outstanding Industrial Design (Banghay) category. It was later presented at Malacañang before Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., recognized for its practicality and relevance as a cost-effective tool for smallholder farmers.

Beyond the country, the innovation was named a finalist at the Festival of Innovation 2026 in Singapore, with its inventor recognized as a finalist for the Innovator of the Year Award.

Today, the Palatak Palay Seeder stands as more than just a machine. It is a testament to what grassroots innovation can achieve. The product reflects how innovation does not always begin in institutions, but in communities, in everyday experiences, and in the determination to solve long-standing challenges in agriculture.

For many farmers, the technology has already become a practical tool that improves both productivity and livelihood. One of its adopters, Mr. Bembeh Calvez Templanza from Barangay Nasucob, Bulalacao, Oriental Mindoro, shared how the Palatak helped make planting faster, easier, and more cost-efficient.

“I was not wrong in patronizing the Palatak Palay Seeder. It was a big help in planting fast and saving on cost. Now, I use two units and I am encouraging other farmers to try it,” Templanza said in Filipino.

As the technology continues to expand across the country, its mission remains grounded on the same goal that inspired it from the beginning: to make farming more efficient, lessen the burden on farmers, and prove that solutions rooted in local experience can create meaningful impact far beyond the communities where they first began.

The Palatak Palay Seeder is one of the many initiatives of the DoST aimed at providing science-based, innovative, and inclusive solutions for human well-being, wealth creation, wealth protection, and sustainability, embodying the agency’s mantra OneDOST4U: Solutions and Opportunities for All.