agriculture philippines essay

Essay on Agriculture Importance In Philippines

Students are often asked to write an essay on Agriculture Importance In Philippines in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Agriculture Importance In Philippines

The role of agriculture.

Agriculture is a key part of the Philippines’ economy. It provides jobs to many people, especially in rural areas where most of the farming happens. This sector produces food for the nation and also earns money from exporting crops to other countries.

Food Security

Providing jobs.

Agriculture employs a large number of people in the Philippines. Many families earn their living from farming, fishing, and related activities. It helps to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life in rural areas.

Economic Contribution

Agriculture also contributes to the Philippines’ economy. It earns foreign money when the country exports crops like rice, bananas, and pineapples. This money can be used to improve infrastructure, health care, and education.

Preserving Culture

250 words essay on agriculture importance in philippines, agriculture’s role in the philippines.

Agriculture is very important in the Philippines. It is the source of food for the people and provides jobs to many. It is also a big part of the country’s economy.

Food Source

Agriculture is the main source of food in the Philippines. Farmers grow rice, corn, sugarcane, and many other fruits and vegetables. These foods feed the people of the Philippines and also get sold to other countries. Without agriculture, there would be less food for everyone.

Job Provider

Agriculture also provides jobs to a lot of people in the Philippines. Many people work on farms, growing and harvesting crops. Others work in businesses that sell the food, like markets and restaurants. These jobs help people earn money to take care of their families.

Economic Contributor

Agriculture is a big part of the economy in the Philippines. It brings in money from selling crops both inside and outside the country. This money helps the country grow and develop. Without agriculture, the economy would not be as strong.

Environmental Protector

Lastly, agriculture helps protect the environment. Farmers use methods that take care of the soil and water. This helps keep the environment healthy. Without agriculture, the environment might not be as well cared for.

500 Words Essay on Agriculture Importance In Philippines

The role of agriculture in the philippines.

Agriculture plays a vital role in the Philippines. It is the source of food and livelihood for many Filipinos. The country has rich and fertile soil, which makes it ideal for farming. This sector contributes significantly to the nation’s economy and is one of the main sources of employment.

Food Supply

Agriculture is crucial for the country’s food supply. The Philippines is known for its vast rice fields, coconut groves, and fishing waters. These resources provide food for the citizens. Without agriculture, the country would have to rely on imports, which could be expensive and less fresh. Thus, agriculture ensures that the people of the Philippines have access to affordable and nutritious food.

Environmental Benefits

Agriculture also has environmental benefits. Farming practices like crop rotation and terracing help to preserve the soil and prevent erosion. Forests, which are part of the agricultural sector, help to purify the air by absorbing carbon dioxide. They also provide a home for many species of plants and animals, contributing to the country’s biodiversity.

Challenges and Future Prospects

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PHILIPPINES: Vibrant Agriculture is Key to Faster Recovery and Poverty Reduction

MANILA, September 9, 2020 — Transforming Philippine agriculture into a dynamic, high-growth sector is essential for the country to speed up recovery, poverty reduction and inclusive growth, according to the latest report released by the World Bank.

Titled “ Transforming Philippine Agriculture During Covid-19 and Beyond ,” the report says that transforming the country’s farming and food systems is even more important during the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure strong food value chains, affordable and nutritious food, and a vibrant rural economy.

"Modernizing the country’s agricultural sector is a very important agenda for the Philippines,” said Ndiame Diop, World Bank Country Director Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. “With the exception of a few small natural resource-rich countries, no country has successfully transitioned from middle- to high-income status without having achieved an effective transformation of their agri-food systems. Transforming agriculture and food systems is always challenging. But the country’s new vision for agriculture, it’s current thrust for diversification and use of modern technologies, and its effective management of food supply during this pandemic clearly indicate that the country is well-equipped to overcome the challenge.”

“Our vision is a food-secure and resilient Philippines with prosperous farmers and fisherfolk,” Agriculture Secretary William Dar said. “Realizing this vision will require dedicated efforts among major agri-fishery industry stakeholders, led by the Department of Agriculture, to continuously empower farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural entrepreneurs, and the private sector to increase agricultural productivity and profitability, taking into account sustainability and resilience.”

The report, which was prepared as part of World Bank support to the Department of Agriculture’s “new thinking” in agricultural development, suggests shifting away from a heavy focus on specific crops towards improving the overall resilience, competitiveness, and sustainability of the rural sector.

In the past, spending has gone mostly toward price supports for selected crops and goods, as well as subsidies on inputs such as fertilizer, planting materials, and machines. Global experience shows that while ensuring the availability of key inputs remain important, reorienting significant public spending toward investments in public goods—including research and development (R&D), infrastructure, innovation systems, market information systems, and biosecurity systems—results in faster poverty reduction and greater productivity gains through an overall modernization of agriculture.

The report says that small farmers have difficulty accessing inputs and markets for their produce, while buyers such as agribusiness enterprises and wholesalers find it difficult to get the quantity and quality of produce that they need for processing on a timely basis. Government support can help overcome this market failure by bringing together buyers and producer organizations and providing support for the preparation and implementation of profitable business plans that benefit both parties.

In situations where farmers need support to help them access markets and improve their livelihood, or when compensation measures are needed for farmers affected by trade policies such as the rice liberalization in the Philippines, direct cash payments or cash transfers can be a better option, as practiced in many countries like Turkey, European Union, and the US, says the report. These direct payments have many advantages, such as giving farmers more choices and encouraging private sector development in upstream (inputs and agricultural services) and downstream (processing, marketing) markets, thereby helping farmers connect to these markets and opportunities.

The report says that interventions like farm consolidation (including cooperative farming schemes for instance), better extension services, e-commerce, and investments in agribusiness start-ups can further advance modernization of Philippine agriculture.

“These paradigm shifts will be crucial to meet the emerging domestic and global market opportunities, while creating jobs, raising farmer incomes and ensuring the food security needs of the country and meeting the new challenges of climate change,” said Dina Umali-Deininger, World Bank Practice Manager for Agriculture and Food for East Asia and the Pacific.

World Bank's support to the Philippines includes long-running programs aiming to raise agricultural productivity and reduce poverty in rural communities.  A current example of this is the Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) which aims to help increase rural incomes and enhance farm and fishery productivity.

Several projects are in the pipeline to help raise agricultural productivity, resiliency and access to markets of farmers and fisherfolk in selected ancestral domains in Mindanao and improve management of coastal fishery resources in selected coastal communities.

• FULL REPORT: Transforming Philippine Agriculture during COVID-19
• Opening Remarks by Country Director Nidame Diop

A Reflection of a Filipino Farmer

AD Alvarez is  a Filipino farmer who has ambition to give his life towards improving agriculture and restoring the true importance of farming in the Philippine society.  In this opinion essay, he explains the state of agriculture there. With his permission, his blog is shared below.

When I was a child I was so fascinated by the die cast matchbox toy cars I see from other kids.  I wanted to have one for my own but couldn’t since my parents cannot afford them.  What I end up doing is making wood blocks into imaginary cars.  Nowadays, matchboxes are quite affordable and is just a common toy.  But the lesson from these two toys can illustrate something about the state of Philippine agriculture.  While the toys in my childhood can bring the same pleasure into the imagination of child at play, the two toys remain to be different.  The matchbox toy car has almost real appearance of a car.  No matter who holds the matchbox, it will appear the same and effectively represent what it intends to represent.  But for the wooden block, only a child with the desire to imagine it to be a toy car, has the power to make it appear like a toy car.  For others, it is just a wooden block.  One is a real car model, the other is just a wooden block.

The story I shared above is what I can say how the Philippine agriculture is different from agriculture systems in other progressive countries like the US.  We may use the same terms in the two different countries.  We may have similar references.  But the Philippine agriculture is like the wooden block, it is just as real as how one would want to imagine it is, even if it is not.

In my limited observation as a farmer from the Philippines visiting fellow farmers in the US, I got to have an opportunity to glance at the agriculture systems that exist in both countries.  Having interactions with fellow farmers, I have noticed eventually that we may easily assume that we have the same thing: an agriculture wherein the basic idea is to produce food.  But, if you compare the two, agriculture can mean two different things and farming are two different ways.  Not the same. Almost similar purpose but still very different.  One is intentionally designed.  The other one carries an appearance of similarity but if you look closer the structure it easily turns into a “wooden block”.  Not even close to what agriculture is intended to be.  Only an appearance that can make sense to those who are using it.  Like a piece of wood to imagine as a toy car when it is not.  The Philippine agriculture is like an imaginary agriculture when it is not.

In the Philippines we say food is important, yet we do not protect the farmers and producers that are making them.  Our system is not balanced.  The system favors the traders and we leave our farmers to survive on their own.  In the words of one trader, “Let the market sort it out.”.

In the US, I have observed, they create the space for farmers to have a market. They harness the power of the law to give farmers the demand to produce, their financial ecosystem makes the farmers earn so they can plant again.  Simply put, they uphold the importance of farmers by showing it in all of their efforts of governance, banking, their education system, insurance laws, and even in their regard to the farmers as heroes next to soldiers.

In the Philippines, we have policies and laws that contradict the need to be efficient.  Capital access is  elusive because we have very poor agriculture insurance ecosystem.  We have reduced our landholdings that it does not make sense how a farmer can have a decent operation in such a small space.  And YET we still say we care for our farmers.  Too much talk about the poor and poverty from people who have no or too little understanding of what poverty means. 

In the US, they constantly find ways to make farming efficient, profitable and sustainable.  Because food is important.  Schools were established to have better agriculture and not just diploma mills.  Real talk.  Farmers are empowered by enriching their resources and giving them the tools that would make them better farmers.  Giving them the security that no matter what happens, they will be able to keep producing food that will feed their people.

In the Philippines, we have reduced our farmers to a place to harvest votes from instead of empowering them to be prosperous and independent people.  I think it would take time to fix the structural flaws in the Philippine Agriculture.  It has to be fixed.  But I also think, the current solution to keep the food security at an acceptable level lies in the private initiatives.

I can go on and on and write the heart-wrenching comparison why we have a very poor agriculture system in the Philippines.  But that is not me. Instead of avoiding the issue and poverty in agriculture, I have chosen to be a farmer.  A Filipino farmer who has this ambition to give my life towards improving agriculture and restoring the true importance of farming in the Philippine society.  I am tired and broke, but if the Lord would grant me more time in life, I will strive to keep fighting against this tide of apathy, senselessness, and manipulation. I will work to fix what is broken and help whenever I can.  I see a solution.  Many times it feels like I am on my own.  Praying desperately for God’s miracle that I can make a difference as a strive to fix a broken system, one cropping at a time. -AD Alvarez, a farmer in the Philippines and a member of the Global Farmer Network

Adriel Dave 'AD' Alvarez

Leave a reply cancel reply, one thought on “ a reflection of a filipino farmer ”.

Excellent article indeed. Thailand farmers are very much in the same position as Adriel Dave ‘AD’ Alvarez has described here. Since Adriel used America as example. it is only right for me to use American expression here too: Thai farmers always end up getting the shaft from the small but powerful ruling elites.

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Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment in the Humid Tropics (1993)

Chapter: the philippines, the philippines.

Dennis P. Garrity, David M. Kummer, and Ernesto S. Guiang

This profile focuses on the most pressing issues of sustainable natural resource management in the sloping upland areas of the Philippines. It begins with an analysis of the historical and current dimensions of land use in the upland ecosystem, reviews and critiques proposed actions, and recommends solutions within an overarching strategy that builds on the linkages that exist between farming and forestry systems.

The upland ecosystem must be addressed as a distinct entity. The uplands are rolling to steep areas where both agriculture and forestry are practiced on slopes ranging upward from 18 percent. The sloping uplands occupy about 55 percent of the land surface of the country (Cruz et al., 1986) and have an estimated population of 17.8 million. The upland population is projected to be 24 million to 26 million in the year 2000, with a density of 160 to 175 persons per km 2 . Upland inhabitants are primarily poor farming families with insecure land tenure. Subsistence food production rather than forestry is their over-

Dennis P. Garrity is an agronomist/crop ecologist with the International Rice Research Institute, Los Baños, Philippines; David M. Kummer is a visiting assistant professor with the Graduate School of Geography, and a research associate with the George Perkins Marsh Institute, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts; Ernesto S. Guiang is a community forest management specialist with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Quezon City, Philippines.

riding priority. The paramount objective for public intervention in upland management is that of obtaining the greatest good for the greatest number of people in ways that are consistent with the long-term sustainability of the productive capacity of the ecosystem.

Forest denudation is at an advanced stage in the Philippines. Total forest cover shrank from 10.5 million ha in 1968 to 6.1 million ha in 1991. The remaining old-growth forest covered less than 1 million ha in 1991 and possibly as little as 700,000 ha. At current rates of logging, nearly all vestiges of the country's primary dipterocarp forest biota may be depleted in the next 10 to 15 years. The will of the people and government to effectively address the Philippine deforestation problem is growing, but it is still weak.

There have been several recent reviews concerning natural resource management in the Philippines. These reviews examined government policy, the political climate, and the institutional framework and made numerous specific recommendations for a major reorientation. In addition, the Master Plan for Forestry Development (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990) has recently been issued by the Philippine government. It lays out a framework for forestland management over the next 25 years. It sets a detailed, optimistic agenda that adopts a strategy of reduced public management in favor of increased private management of forest resources through people-oriented forestry.

Although this profile focuses on the dynamics of upland agricultural technology in relation to deforestation, many factors other than agricultural technology have a stronger direct influence on the rate and extent of forest depletion or conversion. These factors include inappropriate forest policy, poor policy implementation, and the insecurity of land tenure among upland farm populations. Commercial logging (legal and illegal) directly caused the majority of old-growth forest depletion during the past half century, and it continues to do so today. The accessibility to remote forestlands brought about by the opening of logging roads stimulated the settlement of small-scale farmers and resulted in the subsequent conversion of depleted forests to farms.

The initial sections of this profile examine the present state of the natural resource base of the uplands and past trends in resource degradation. The profile then reviews the importance of land and forest resources to the political economy of the Philippines and the failure of development in the Philippines in the post-World War II period. This is followed by an analysis of potential solutions to the problems identified. The solutions to the upland resource management and subsistence crises fall into a general strategy with three essential com-

ponents: land tenure, resource management technology, and infrastructure delivery. The final section outlines a proposed action strategy in terms of these three components.

THE STATE OF THE PHILIPPINE UPLAND ECOSYSTEM

This section analyzes the important factors that have determined the development of land use systems in the Philippines uplands. The major forces and constraints that directly affect upland agriculture and forestry are emphasized.

Physical Environment

The Philippines is an archipelago with a total land area of 30 million ha. Although it encompasses more than 7,000 islands, the majority of these are insignificant in terms of size and population. The 15 largest islands make up 94 percent of the total land area. Luzon and Mindanao occupy about 35 and 32 percent of total land area, respectively. The Philippines is a physically fragmented state, and separateness is a major feature of its geography and culture. The island nature of the country gives it a very long coastline relative to its size. No inland area is far from the ocean.

The country has a complex geology and physiography. Although Luzon and Mindanao have major lowland areas, most of the islands have relatively narrow coastal plains. The Philippines as a whole is characterized by high relief. Steep upland areas with greater than 18 percent slope make up about 55 percent of the total area (Cruz et al., 1986). The climate is humid tropical. However, because of the mountainous terrain, the occurrence of typhoons in the northern half of the country, and the effects of two separate monsoon seasons, there is striking micro-and macrovariation in the seasonal distribution and amount of precipitation. Within-season droughts and the limited length of the growing season are common constraints, but the total quantity of precipitation is abundant: 90 percent of the country receives at least 1,780 mm per year (Wernstedt and Spencer, 1967).

The high relief, the relatively high levels of precipitation, and the frequent extreme concentration of rainfall in short periods because of typhoons contribute to serious soil erosion problems. Given the complex geology and geologic history, the soils of the Philippines are varied but are generally not as weathered as most humid tropical soils because of their relatively younger age. The inherent soil properties are limiting in many sloping upland areas (particularly where extensive

erosion and land degradation have occurred), but the Philippines has a comparatively favorable soil base for a country in the humid tropics.

In the Philippines today, about half the land is classified as alienable and disposable. This land may be privately owned. The other half, which mostly has slopes of greater than 18 percent, is classified as public forestland. Only 6 million ha has significant tree cover and less than 1 million ha of old-growth or primary forest remains ( Table 1 ). In comparison, there was 10 million ha of old-growth forest in the 1950s. The extent of this forest conversion has reduced to critically

TABLE 1 Forest Cover in the Philippines as Determined by Various Inventories (in Thousands of Hectares)

TABLE 2 Land Use in the Philippines (in Thousands of Hectares)

low levels the habitat of the many species of flora and fauna endemic to the Philippines.

Recently, the Swedish Space Corporation (1988) completed a study—the first and only one to cover all types of land uses—of the natural vegetation in the Philippines ( Table 2 ). On the basis of that survey, the World Bank (1989a) calculated that cultivated land covers 11.3 million ha, or 38 percent of the total land area. Cultivated area in the uplands is about 3.9 million ha.

The 1980 Census of Agriculture (National Census and Statistics Office, 1985) estimated the area of cultivated land to be 9.7 million ha in 1980. If these data and World Bank estimates are correct, then the

area of cultivated land increased by more than 1.6 million ha between 1980 and 1987, an annual increment of 229,000 ha/year. The average annual rate of deforestation between 1980 and 1987 was 157,000 ha/year. Although direct conversion from forestlands to croplands cannot be inferred, it appears that large areas of grasslands are now being converted to agricultural uses, increasing the pressure on the limited land resources.

Population Growth

Rapid population growth in the past half century is widely acknowledged as a major force in the accelerated deterioration in the country 's natural resources (Porter and Ganapin, 1988). The 1990 population of the Philippines was estimated to be 66.1 million and was increasing at an annual rate of 2.6 percent (Population Reference Bureau, 1990).

Table 3 presents Philippine population data since 1948. Although the rate of growth of the Philippine population declined slowly from the 1948 –1960 period to the 1975–1980 period, the population growth rate remains the highest of any country in Southeast Asia. The current population density is second only to that of Singapore (Population Reference Bureau, 1990). The rural population, as a percentage of the total population, has been declining, but at a slow rate (from 73 percent in 1948 to 63 percent in 1980). Urban growth is predominantly in the city of Manila (Pernia, 1988).

The Philippines has a serious population growth problem, but acceptance of this fact has been fairly recent. As late as 1969, Duckham

TABLE 3 Philippines Population Data, 1948–1980

and Masefield stated that the Philippines had a low population density and “no real pressure of population on resources” (p. 417). This assessment seems almost naive today, suggesting how fast the settlement frontier closed in recent years and the inertia in public recognition of the current situation.

The availability of areas with low population densities and available agricultural lands has induced interregional migration in the Philippines since World War II (Abad, 1981; Abejo, 1985; Concepcion, 1983; Institute of Population Studies, 1981; Zosa-Feranil, 1987). Since 1948 the major migration patterns have been toward the frontier, primarily to Mindanao, and toward urban areas, particularly the metropolitan Manila area. Although migration to urban areas has been particularly pronounced since 1960, movement to frontier or upland areas continues (Cruz et al., 1986). Between 1975 and 1980, the destination of almost one-fourth of all interregional migrants was the uplands (Cruz and Zosa-Feranil, 1988). The major out-migration areas have been the Visayas and the Bicol and Ilocos regions of Luzon. Although substantial differences persist among some areas, the population has become more evenly distributed since 1948 (Herrin, 1985).

The upland population was estimated by Cruz and Zosa-Feranil (1988) to have reached about 17.8 million by 1988. This included an estimated population of 8.50 million people who reside on public forestlands. This population includes 5.95 million members of indigenous cultural communities and 2.55 million migrants from lowland groups (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). One-third of the upland forest inhabitants are displaced lowland farmers who do not have long-standing land use traditions such as those commonly observed among indigenous communities, which have a better grasp of the fragile nature of the ecology of their lands (Sajise, 1979). The displaced population is also growing faster. The University of the Philippines Population Institute projects that the upland population will grow at a rate of 2.72 to 2.92 percent during the next 25 years, increasing by the year 2015 to a density of 371 persons per km 2 , which is a high population for sloping marginal lands.

Current and projected trends in the economy, social attitudes, and government commitment to effective delivery of family planning services may succeed in reducing national population growth rates. Even so, there is little likelihood that the upland population will participate significantly in this transition. The upland rural population has the least access to family planning programs and is least likely to accept the notion that limiting family size is in its best interest. Wherever open access to public lands prevails, children are viewed as additional labor to clear and cultivate more land.

Agriculture and the Uplands

Agriculture continues to play a major role in the Philippine economy. The Agricultural Policy and Strategy Team (1986) states:

[N]o significant structural transformation has taken place over the past 25 years. Despite the strong industrial orientation of past economic policies, agriculture, fisheries, and forestry continue to employ half of the labor force, contribute about a quarter of the gross domestic production, and earn two-fifths of export revenues. Over 60 percent of our population lives in the rural areas. Our country remains today as it has been in the past, a predominately rural society composed of small farmers, agricultural laborers, fishermen, pedicab drivers, and others.

Agriculture's share of the total economy declined slowly in the postwar period, from 36 percent of net value added in 1955 to 29 percent in 1980 (David, 1983). Agriculture's share of the Philippine gross domestic product in 1987 (28.5 percent) was almost the same as it was in 1970 (World Bank, 1989b).

Between 1972 and 1980, the ratio between the price of rice and the non-food price index declined from 1.0 to 0.59 (Hill and Jayasuriya, 1984). The growth that did occur in the agricultural sector came not as the result of but despite government policies (David, 1982; Rocamora, 1979).

Landlessness and near landlessness in rural areas has been reported to be more than 75 percent (Rosenberg and Rosenberg, 1980), and landlessness among the agricultural farm population is almost 50 percent (Agricultural Policy and Strategy Team, 1986; Porter and Ganapin, 1988). Land reform has largely been ineffective in transfer-ring land to the tenant cultivators because of bureaucratic delays and widespread erosion of the spirit of the agrarian reform laws (Carroll, 1983; International Labour Office, 1974; Kerkvliet, 1974; Tiongzon et al., 1986; Wurfel, 1983).

Has the limited effectiveness of land reform resulted in further concentration of control over agricultural lands? In Mindanao, commercial agricultural plantations are expanding. This expansion forces poorer farmers onto marginal lands, particularly in association with the banana and pineapple industries (Agricultural Policy and Strategy Team, 1986; Costello, 1984; Tiongzon et al., 1986; van Oosterhout, 1983). Krinks (1974) showed that there was an increasing concentration of poor farmers in a frontier region in southern Mindanao. Commercial use of agricultural land and the increased concentration of poor farmers on agricultural lands in lowland areas in Leyte has decreased the amount of land available for poor farmers, forcing poor

farmers to initiate farming in upland areas (Belsky and Siebert, 1985). The expansion of land for raising sugarcane in the western Visayas from 1960 to 1975 was also primarily at the expense of small-scale upland rice and maize production (Luning, 1981). As effective control of agricultural land becomes more concentrated in the hands of wealthier farmers and corporations, small farms are becoming smaller (Luning, 1981), a process that has been accelerated by the subdivision of property through inheritance. The end result has been increasing landlessness for the rural poor (Cruz and Zosa-Feranil, 1988).

Arable land that can be sustainably farmed on an annual basis with minimal investment in land conservation covers 8.4 million ha, or 28 percent of the country (Bureau of Soils, 1977). Most of the increase in farm area since 1960 has been on nonarable land, as defined by the Bureau of Soils (1977).

Kikuchi and Hayami (1978) argued that the Philippines shifted from extensive to intensive cultivation between 1950 and 1969. As the land/labor ratio declined, the rate of increase in the amount of cultivated land slowed and the Philippine government was forced to invest in irrigation. Hooley and Ruttan (1969) proclaimed the closing of the land frontier in the 1960s.

There was widespread agreement that by the late 1960s or early 1970s, the Philippines had reached the limits of its land frontier and that future growth of agricultural output would have to come from increases in productivity rather than from increases in the area of production. Agricultural output and productivity did increase, but the area under cultivation also increased considerably. From 1970 to 1980, the number of farms increased by 1.06 million (45.3 percent) and farm area ( Table 4 ) increased by 1.23 million ha (14.5 percent). As a result, the average farm size decreased 21 percent, from 3.61 to 2.84 ha. The continued decrease in forest area in the 1980s also implies that the area of farmland continues to increase. Thus, the notion of a land frontier based on arable, safely cultivated land is not appropriate for conditions in the Philippines (Cruz and Zosa-Feranil, 1988; Gwyer, 1977; National Economic Development Authority, 1981). In 1982, 2.5 million ha of cropland was on upland areas (Agricultural Policy and Strategy Team, 1986).

Upland Migration

Cruz et al. (1986) estimated that 14.4 million people lived in the uplands in 1980, and 77 percent of those people lived on lands officially classified as public forestlands. From 1948 to 1980, the upland population grew at a rate of 2.5 to 2.8 percent per year. This is less

TABLE 4 Deforestation and Its Relationship to Increases in Population and Farmland in the Philippines, 1948–1980

than the national rate because of the higher mortality and the lower birth rates in the upland areas than in the lowland areas (M. C. Cruz, College of Development Economics and Management, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, personal communication, 1990).

Migration accounted for the bulk of the population growth in the upland areas (Cruz et al., 1986). Of the 18.6 million people who lived in the uplands in 1988, 6 million had lived there before 1945, 2 million had migrated there between 1945 and 1948, and 10 million had migrated there since 1948 (Lynch and Talbott, 1988). In addition, high rates of migration to the uplands continued in the 1980s (World Bank, 1989a). The highest rates of population growth in the uplands were in municipalities with logging concessions (Cruz and Zosa-Feranil, 1988).

Most observers agree that migration occurs because of the lack of opportunities in the lowlands. Poor people are forced to the uplands because they have no other suitable choices. Cruz and Zosa-Feranil (1988) estimated that 70 percent of all upland migrants were landless lowlanders. These poor farmers may be referred to as shifting or slash-and-burn cultivators (Westoby, 1981).

Intensification of Rice Production in the Lowlands

Lowland rice fields in the Philippines are about half irrigated and half rainfed. Initially, the green revolution (the breakthroughs in rice varietal technology in the late 1960s) increased labor use intensity in rice production (Otsuka et al., 1990). More rice crops were produced each year (two instead of one), and more intensive management was applied. But rainfed rice farming did not experience the extent of technical change that occurred in irrigated rice farming or the same gain in productivity. Therefore, the economic disparity between the irrigated and rainfed rice fields increased (Otsuka et al., 1990).

The increased labor demand for irrigated rice accelerated the migration of labor from rainfed to irrigated areas. The intensity of labor use in irrigated rice production plateaued, however, and in many areas it declined as labor-displacing technologies gained widespread use. The technologies included broadcast seeding rather than transplanting of seedlings and herbicide application rather than weeding by hand. This reduced the labor absorption potential and the returns to labor, particularly landless labor. The income-earning prospects of the landless labor pool has declined, as exemplified by the evolution of labor arrangements that are progressively less favorable.

There is some potential for further intensification of rice cropping in irrigated areas and diversification to alternative higher income crops, including grain legumes, and tree crops. It is unlikely, however, that these changes will proceed fast or far enough to substantially increase the amount of labor that can be absorbed in lowland rice farming activities in the future, suggesting a continued rapid increase in the number of underemployed or unemployed families in lowland rural areas.

Upland Farming Systems

One of the most serious gaps in understanding land use in the uplands, particularly agriculture-forest interactions, relates to shifting (slash-and-burn) cultivation. Agriculture in the uplands consists of traditional shifting cultivation (long fallow periods), nontraditional or migrant shifting cultivation (short fallow periods), permanent or intensive agriculture, backyard gardens, pastoral systems, or any combination of these. There is no reliable information on the extent of these forms of agriculture or the proportion of shifting cultivation in grasslands or secondary or primary forests. There are also no data at the national or provincial level on how often farmers shift their plots, although case studies do exist (Barker, 1984; Conklin, 1957). Vandermeer

(1963) in a study of Cebu province, which is now entirely deforested, points out that what had originally been a shifting system of maize cultivation has now been transformed into permanent, sedentary farming. The main impetus for the change was increasing population density. Table 4 notes the relationships among deforestation, increases in population, and increases in the amount of farmland.

Analysis of an upland area in Mindanao from 1949 to 1988 revealed a dynamic land use transition from fallow rotation to permanent open-field and perennial crop systems (Garrity and Agustin, In press). The evolution of permanent, mixed agricultural systems in a pioneer community in the mountains of Laguna province dominated by shifting cultivation was documented by Fujisaka (1986) and Fujisaka and Wollenburg (1991). The planting of trees and perennial crops was observed by Cornista et al. (1986) as a typical stage in the evolution toward more permanent cultivation in communities throughout the Philippines.

Agricultural expansion has resulted in a net reduction in the country 's grassland area. Data from an historical study of land use changes for an upland community in Mindanao from the immediate postwar period to the present illustrates this trend (Garrity and Agustin, In press). The area of cultivated land increased at a much faster rate than the loss of forest cover from 1949 to 1987. The steady decline in the grassland area provided the major source for the expansion of the area devoted to crops ( Figure 1 ).

DEFORESTATION IN POSTWAR PHILIPPINES

There are few reliable historical data on forest cover in the Philippines. Many of the records that did exist have been lost. The Spanish forest records were consumed in a Manila fire in 1897 (Tamesis, 1948), the records of the Bureau of Forestry in Manila and the College of Forestry in Los Baños were destroyed during fighting in 1945 (Sulit, 1947), and the comprehensive Mindanao forest survey of 1954–1961 (Agaloos, 1976; Serevo et al., 1962) has disappeared. The authoritative source of current forest cover data is the Philippine–German Forest Resources Inventory Project (Forest Management Bureau, 1988).

Forest Types

Philippine forests are usually divided into six types: dipterocarp, molave, beach, pine, mangrove, and mossy. Dipterocarps account for more than 90 percent of all commercial forest products in terms of economic value (Agaloos, 1984). Some 89 percent of the total log

FIGURE 1 Comparative changes in major land use areas between 1949 and 1987. Claveria, Misamis Oriental Province (Mindanao), Philippines. Source: Garrity, D. P., and P. Agustin. In press. Historical Land Use Evolution in a Tropical Acid Upland Agroecosystem. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ.

production in the Philippines comes from the species Shorea almon (almon), Dipterocarpus grandiflorus (apitong), Parashorea plicata (tikan), S. plicata (mayapis), S. negrosensis (red lauan), S. polysperma (tanguile), and Pentacme contorta (white lauan). The largest timber volume comes from red lauan.

The molave forest, a dry, monsoon forest found only in the western Philippines, makes up only 3 percent of the total forest area of the Philippines (Agaloos, 1984) and is usually included in the dipterocarp category (Umali, 1981). Beach forests formerly grew in coastal areas as a transition between mangrove and other inland forests, but they have been virtually eradicated in the Philippines (Agaloos, 1984) and Southeast Asia (Whitmore, 1984). Two types of pine are native to the Philippines—Benguet pine ( Pinus kesiya ), found in northern Luzon, and Mindoro pine ( P . merkusii ), found in parts of Mindoro and the Zambales Mountains in western Luzon. Pine forests occupy less than 1 percent of the total land area (Forest Management Bureau, 1988).

Mangrove forests are restricted to coastal fringes and tidal flats and occupy about 139,000 ha (Forest Management Bureau, 1988), less than 0.5 percent of the total land area. They have been subjected to intense logging pressure because woods that grow in mangrove for-

ests are valuable for fuel (charcoal) and thatch. As a result many mangrove forests have been converted to fish ponds (Gillis, 1988; Johnson and Alcorn, 1989).

Mossy forests are stunted forests with no commercial value (Agaloos, 1984; Weidelt and Banaag, 1982). They are referred to in the literature as mountain or cloud forests and as unproductive forest by the Forest Management Bureau. They are found at higher elevations (usually above 1,800 m) throughout the Philippines and cover about 4 percent (1.14 million ha) of the total land area (Forest Management Bureau, 1988).

Some 92 percent of the decrease of forest types since 1969 has been accounted for by the loss of old-growth dipterocarp forests (Forest Management Bureau, 1988). Destruction of mangroves has been rapid and dramatic as well, but the area involved is insignificant compared with the area of dipterocarps lost. The major cause of the decline of primary forests has been logging (World Bank, 1989a).

Forest Cover Before 1950

Deforestation in the Philippines has not occurred only in the twentieth century. Wernstedt and Spencer (1967) reported that forest cover declined from about 90 percent of the total land area at the time of the first contact with the Spanish in 1521 to about 70 percent by 1900. The major causes were likely to have been the steady increase in population and the spread of commercial crops (primarily abaca [a fiber from the leafstalk of banana— Musa textilis —native to the Philippines], tobacco, and sugarcane) as the Philippines slowly became integrated into the world economic system (Lopez-Gonzaga, 1987; Roth, 1983; Westoby, 1989).

Reliable statistics on forest cover before 1950 do not exist; thus, a discussion of forest cover and its decline must be based on estimates made by contemporary observers. Comparisons between the various estimates are problematic. Therefore, the estimates presented in Table 5 are meant to be broadly indicative. The area of the Philippines covered by forests declined from 70 percent in 1900 to just below 60 percent in 1939. Logging increased rapidly after 1945 and was back to pre-World War II production levels by 1949 (Poblacion, 1959; Tamesis, 1948). In addition, farming in the forests increased after the war because of continuing food shortages (Sulit, 1963; Tamesis, 1948). The overall extent of deforestation was estimated by Myers (1984) to be 55 percent in 1950. A figure closer to 50 percent for 1950 is probably more appropriate based on subsequent estimates.

TABLE 5 Estimates of Forest Cover in the Philippines, 1876–1950

Forest Cover Changes, 1950–1987

Since 1950 there has been a continuous decline in forest cover in the Philippines. In absolute terms, deforestation in the 1950–1969 and 1969–1987 periods were about the same ( Table 6 ). On a percent basis, deforestation was more rapid from 1969 to 1987 than it was from 1950 to 1969, with the highest rates occurring from 1976 to 1980 ( Table 7 ). The very high rates of deforestation observed for the 1976-1980 period were associated with the peak period of martial law, when large-scale corruption in timber extraction was prevalent (Alano, 1984; Aquino, 1987).

Although data are not strongly reliable, the rate of deforestation apparently slowed in the 1980s because the remaining forests became much less accessible. If the rate of deforestation estimated to have occurred from 1980 to 1987 continued to 1991, the Philippines had

about 6.03 million ha of forest cover in 1991, about 20 percent of the country's total land area.

The Master Plan for Forestry Development (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990) estimated total forest cover to be 6.69 million ha. The area of old-growth dipterocarp forests was projected to be only 949,000 ha. However, if the old-growth dipterocarp forest has continued to decline at the 1969-1987 rate of deforestation, then only 409,600 ha of this forest type would have remained in 1991. If this rate of decline continues, old-growth dipterocarp forests will disappear entirely by 1995—long before effective management systems to preserve them can be put into place. Thus, one of the major issues confronting Philippine forestry is how to manage secondary dipterocarp forests on a sustainable basis, for which there is little proven experience.

The calculated rates of annual deforestation differ widely, depending on the data sets chosen for analysis ( Table 8 ). The 1980 forest data are from the Forest Development Center (1985) and the Philippine-German Forest Resources Inventory Project (Forest Management Bureau, 1988), which were projected back from deforestation data for 1987. The 1987 data are from the Swedish Space Corporation and the Philippine–German Forest Resources Inventory Project. There are large discrepancies in deforestation rates among the four possible combinations of the two surveys each for 1980 and 1987. Between the smallest and largest rates of deforestation, the difference is more than 200 percent. A reasonable estimate is that deforestation

TABLE 6 Forest Cover in the Philippines, 1950–1987

TABLE 7 Deforestation Rates in the Philippines, 1950–1987

in the 1980s was about 155,000 ha/year. The World Resources Institute (1990) estimated that deforestation is about 143,000 ha/year. This issue is discussed more thoroughly in the section on future scenarios.

The Deforestation Process in the Philippines

Figure 2 is a simplified model of the major forces that have led to deforestation in the Philippines. Although some deforestation has been caused by other factors, for example, the use of trees to make charcoal and the conversion of mangrove forests to fish ponds, the two most important activities leading to deforestation were logging (legal and illegal) and the expansion of agriculture. Both of these factors must be considered together, along with rural poverty and the open-access nature of forests (Gillis, 1988). The deforestation process in the Philippines since World War II can be characterized by two major activities: the conversion of primary to secondary forests by logging activities and the removal of secondary forest cover by the expansion of agriculture. In most cases, roads provide access to the forest for both types of activities.

Logging does not necessarily result in deforestation; rather, selective logging, properly practiced, converts a primary forest into a de-

graded secondary forest ( Figure 2 ). Clear-cutting is known to have been practiced in certain areas, but this has been relatively rare in Southeast Asia (Gillis, 1988), and data on the relative extent of clear-cutting versus selective logging in the Philippines do not exist. Selective logging results in some deforestation, given the extensive road networks and collection and loading areas needed for capital-intensive logging and the extensive damage to forests reported to occur as a result of some logging operations (Blanche, 1975; Burgess, 1971, 1973; Egerton, 1953; Gillis, 1988; Philippine Council for Agriculture and Resources Research and Development, 1982; World Bank, 1989a).

The relationship between logging and the conditions of primary and secondary forests is a dynamic one. As logging converts primary forests to secondary forests, loggers move on to new primary forests. Implicit in this scheme is the notion that secondary forests do not return to a state suitable for a second harvest, although several concessionaires in the Philippines are known to have returned for a second cut. Concessionaires have not, in general, engaged in protection of secondary forests, enrichment planting, or reforestation (Food and Agriculture Organization and United Nations Environment Program, 1982). Overall, it appears that there has been minimal protection of forests in the Philippines.

Expansion of agriculture takes place primarily in secondary forests. Logged forests are more likely than primary forests to be penetrated by roads, and roads greatly facilitated the expansion of agriculture (Asian Development Bank, 1976; Edgerton, 1983; Food and

TABLE 8 Annual Rates of Deforestation in the Philippines Between 1980 and 1987 Based on Different Forest Inventories

FIGURE 2 Model of deforestation in the Philippines. Source: Kummer, D. 1992. Deforestation in the Postwar Philippines. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.

Agriculture Organization and United Nations Environment Program, 1981: Hackenberg and Hackenberg, 1971; Segura-de los Angeles, 1985; Vandermeer and Agaloos, 1962; van Oosterhaut, 1983). Also, it is much easier for poor farmers to clear secondary forests than it is for them to clear primary forests (Byron and Waugh, 1988). In an economic sense, logging lowers the costs of clearing the land by settlers (Southgate and Pearce, 1988). The majority of logged-over forestlands have been converted to grasslands or are used for agriculture (Hicks and McNicoll, 1971).

Natural forest regeneration is prevented by a range of prevailing factors: fire in uncultivated logged-over areas and ranch areas, grass succession and loss of tree seed in shifting cultivated areas, and permanent conversion to agricultural fields in intensively farmed areas. The relationships among the expansion of agriculture, the creation of secondary forests, and deforestation are also dynamic. Preceding logging and the expansion of agriculture is the construction of roads (Hackenberg and Hackenberg, 1971). These roads are primarily the result of development considerations by provincial or national government or are built by loggers who have concessions. The roads

vary from little more than dirt tracks to paved highways. They facilitate the spread of agriculture by opening up new areas; this occurred in parts of Mindanao in the 1950s and early 1960s (Vandermeer and Agaloos, 1962; Wernstedt and Simkins, 1965). In addition, logging provides jobs and, thus, directly leads to population increases. The relationship between new roads and deforestation has been clearly made by Thung (1972) for Thailand and by Fearnside (1986) for Brazil.

The expansion of agricultural activities onto forested lands is driven by two forces: increases in population and widespread poverty. In addition, the expansion of agriculture in some areas is promoted by wealthier people who open up forestlands for perennial crop production or cattle grazing or simply to establish a land claim. This is often accomplished through support for poor farmers who are subsidized to clear the land. The overriding goal of the low-income households in upland regions is to produce or earn enough to eat. Food income provides basic security (U.S. Agency for International Development, 1980). Poor people are forced to engage in subsistence agriculture because it is often the only option available (Gwyer, 1978). Segura-de los Angeles (1985), in a case study of an upland agroforestry project in Luzon, noted that 88 percent of all those surveyed consumed all of the rice they produced and did not have a marketable surplus. Although upland farmers in Davao grew some commercial crops, their primary crops were rice and maize (Hackenberg and Hackenberg, 1971).

Timber Concessions

The granting of timber concessions occurred for two reasons: the legitimate desire of the Philippine government to foster development and the granting of political favors to either Philippine elites or multinational corporations (primarily U.S. corporations in the 1950s and 1960s). Postwar Philippine governments do not appear to have been concerned with development in the forest sector; rather, it appears that forests are viewed as an asset whose benefits should flow mainly to politicians and well-connected individuals (Ofreno, 1980; Palmier, 1989). As Hackenberg and Hackenberg (1971) pointed out in their study of Davao City, Mindanao, “The basis of wealth is lumber, and the profits are instantaneous for those with political connections to secure a concession” (p. 8). In fact, it is difficult to distinguish between politicians and loggers, since loggers contribute heavily to political campaigns and many politicians control logging concessions (The Economist, 1989). It is now generally accepted that commercial forest resources were vastly underpriced throughout the postwar pe-

riod and that the high rents flowed to a small group of people (Boado, 1988; Cruz and Segura-de los Angeles, 1984; Power and Tumaneng, 1983; Repetto, 1988).

Factors Associated with Deforestation

Deforestation in 67 provinces was analyzed statistically from 1970 to 1980 (Kummer, 1990). The study used data on the annual allowable cut, which was greater than legally reported logging and may more accurately reflect the actual volume of timber harvested, considering the additional timber that is extracted illegally. Deforestation from 1970 to 1980 was positively related to the annual allowable cut in 1970 and to the absolute change in the area devoted to agricultural activities (Kummer, 1990). The distance from Manila was not significantly related to the deforestation rate, but in those areas of the Philippines where logging was banned during the reign of Ferdinand E. Marcos (1965–1986), the logged area determined from the rates of deforestation were actually higher than the rates where logging was allowed (Schade, 1988).

Postwar discussions of deforestation in the Philippines have tended to blame either loggers or migrant farmers in frontier areas engaged in nontraditional shifting cultivation for the decline in forest cover. These two agents cannot be considered separately; rather, they are linked. The Philippines has recently completed the Master Plan for Forestry Development (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). The plan articulates a people-oriented forestry program that is sensitive to the current understanding of the complex underlying determinants of deforestation. The policy prescriptions and implementation devices presented in the plan are analyzed later in this chapter.

APPROACHES TO LAND USE SUSTAINABILITY IN THE UPLANDS

This section evaluates current and potential directions for formulating concrete solutions to deforestation and sustainable land use. It examines the determinants of sustainable agricultural systems and forest systems within each of the three major land use subecosystems in Philippine uplands. The approach emphasizes the interrelatedness of social and technical issues and the importance of an integrated social-technical approach to forest and agricultural development.

A large and rapidly expanding portion of the upland landscape is being converted to areas that are permanently farmed. These farms

are found in the more relatively accessible sloping areas that are closest to the lowlands and nearest to roads. They are predominantly cultivated with subsistence food crops, particularly maize and upland rice, but they are partly used for perennial crop plantations, especially coconut plantations. At increasing elevations and more remote locations that are difficult to access, the land predominantly contains grasslands and brushlands. The remaining forested areas are generally the secondary forest remnants of previous logging activities or localized unlogged areas, which are found at the highest elevations and on the steepest slopes.

These three broad land use types (permanently farmed sloping lands, grasslands, and forested lands) tend to form distinct entities that flow into each other. The permanently cultivated lands expand into the grasslands as shifting cultivation on the grassland margins intensifies, and the grasslands advance at the expense of the forested lands as settlement and the relentless use of fire open and transform the forests. The human and natural ecology of each of these three entities is distinct, and technology and policy instruments must be adapted to the realities of each one.

Permanently Farmed Sloping Lands

The major issue in permanently farmed sloping lands is how to sustain and increase farm productivity to improve the welfare of the farm population and thereby reduce the rate of migration into the remaining forested lands. Increase in and sustainability of farm productivity may be achievable through policy reform and technological changes in agricultural activities, but the development of more successful farming systems in sloping settled lands will not eliminate the migratory pressure on forested lands. Technical change could make forested lands more valuable for agriculture, thus encouraging further migration. It is also evident, however, that if the current upland populations cannot become more successful in sustaining their incomes and increasing their employment opportunities, more farmers and their families will be forced to migrate from unproductive farms that can no longer support them, resulting in more rapid and destructive misuse of forestlands.

This suggests that sustainable upland agricultural production systems are necessary to alleviate many problems of human welfare in the uplands and lowlands and ensure more effective forest conservation, but such changes are not sufficient to solve the problem of the conversion of forests to agricultural uses. The essential elements of a strategy for upland development are the same as those that would

apply in lowland areas. They include the need for a positive incentive framework and the availability of appropriate technical solutions. Agricultural technology can provide a crucial, supporting role in solving the forest conversion problem. Progressive policies in forestry, agriculture, land tenure, and general economic development will impinge greatly on the effectiveness and appropriateness of potential technologies.

There are many factors that limit the stability, productivity, and sustainability of upland farms, including climatic variations, biologic stresses, and social and economic uncertainties. A fundamental factor is the nature and rapidity of soil degradation.

The sloping upland soils in the Philippines fall into three contrasting types: acidic, infertile soils; young, relatively fertile volcanic soils; and calcareous soils. The strongly acidic, infertile soils, which are low in available phosphorus, are predominant. The young, more fertile volcanic soils cover large areas in the southern Tagalog and Bicol regions, on Negros Island, and in some areas of Mindanao. These have been the most successfully developed upland agricultural areas. Calcareous upland soils are found on the central Visayan islands of Cebu and Bohol. Restrictions on the available phosphorus also tend to be pronounced in calcareous soils.

In addition to the three basic classes of soils, the immense and localized variations in rainfall patterns because of the diverse topography of the Philippines, and the frequency and severity of damage from catastrophic typhoons affect the sustainable management of upland agricultural systems. Farming systems must be adapted to take into account these various conditions.

Philippine upland farmers face a diversity of land types and high levels of risk, yet they have limited access to credit and marketing resources. Under these conditions, agricultural technologists must be able to offer practical, low-cost farming practices that are viable under a wide array of conditions or that are more specifically tailored to a few conditions but that produce results quickly.

CONTOUR HEDGEROW SYSTEMS

Research on upland agroforestry in the Philippines is limited. Agriculturalists and foresters have few technical tools to cope with the enormous variety of circumstances that require attention. Gibbs et al. (1990) pointed out that the highly inadequate knowledge of agroforestry techniques was probably the weakest aspect in the successful evolution of the government's Integrated Social Forestry Program.

Leucaena Hedgerows Leucaena ( Leucaena leucocephala ) is common in rural areas with less acidic soils. It was indigenously grown in fencerows as a fodder source for cattle. The National Research Council (1977) indicated that the tree showed promise as a hedgerow intercrop that could supply large quantities of nitrogen and organic matter to a companion food crop. Those observations stimulated applied research on hedgerow intercropping in several locations around the Philippines. Guevara (1976) reported that hedgerow intercropping produced crop yield increases of 23 percent. Vergara (1982) cited experiments in which yields increased by about 100 percent, with no advantage of inorganic nitrogen application beyond the nitrogen supplied by green leaf manure. Alferez (1980) observed a 56 percent yield increase when upland rice was grown in alleys between hedgerows of Leucaena.

Hedgerows of Leucaena provided a barrier to soil movement on sloping lands. Data from studies on a steeply sloping site in Mindanao indicated a dramatic reduction in both runoff and soil loss (O'Sullivan, 1985). In that study, O 'Sullivan (1985) also observed a consistent yield advantage over a 4-year period with maize fertilized by the Leucaena prunings obtained from adjacent hedgerows.

By the early 1980s, hedgerow intercropping was advocated by the Department of Agriculture as a technology that was better able to sustain permanent cereal cropping with minimal or no fertilizer inputs and as a soil erosion control measure for sloping lands. The extension of this system among Filipino farmers was encouraged by the work of the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC), a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that began working with Leucaena in the mid-1970s (Watson and Laquihon, 1987). MBRLC developed a 10-step program for farmer implementation of Leucaena hedgerows that was designated sloping agricultural land technology (SALT). SALT recommended that every third alleyway between the double hedgerows of L. leucocephala be planted with perennial woody crops, such as coffee trees, with the majority of the alleys maintained by continuous cropping with annual food crops. This concept offered the possibility of more diversified sources of farm income and improved soil erosion control.

By the mid-1980s, SALT was adopted by the Philippine Department of Agriculture as the basis for its extension effort in the sloping uplands. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources also used it as the technical basis for its social forestry pilot projects. A training effort for extension personnel was launched, and demonstration plots of SALT were installed on farmers' fields throughout the country. Several publications have been developed to spread

practical information about the SALT system (Celestino, 1984, 1985; Philippine Council for Agriculture and Resources Research and Development, 1986).

Some adoption of Leucaena hedgerows occurred in high-intensity extension projects, but there was little evidence of widespread farmer interest in the SALT system. The lack of secure land tenure was implicated as a constraint to the implementation of this or any long-term land improvement system among tenant farmers or occupants of public lands. Among farmers with secure land tenure, however, the large initial investment of labor, the difficulty in obtaining planting materials, and the technical training and information required for sustained implementation were serious constraints to initiating SALT systems. In addition, the labor needed to manage the hedges, particularly to prune them 3 to 10 times each year, depending on the management system, was found to absorb a large proportion of the household's available labor. This labor investment tended to compete with other income-generating tasks and may have limited the area that could feasibly be farmed in this manner (S. Fujisaka, Social Sciences Division, International Rice Research Institute, Los Baños, Philippines, personal communication, 1989).

Hedgerows of Other Species The extension effort on Leucaena hedgerows suffered a major setback in 1985 when the exotic psyllid leafhopper ( Heteropsylla cubana ) invaded the Philippines, attacking hedgerows and killing or stunting trees throughout the country. This forced a search for replacement hedgerow tree species. Gliricidia sepium has been the most common replacement, but it must be propagated from cuttings in most areas, increasing the labor investment to establish hedgerows. Other species that have shown promise in hedgerow trials include Flemingia congesta, Acacia vellosa, Leucaena diversifolia, and Cassia spectabilis (Mercado et al., 1989; H. R. Watson, Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center, Bansalan, Philippines, personal communication, 1989). Alnus japonica is used in the acid soil highlands in northern Luzon (Barker, 1990).

Pava et al. (1990) compared the changes in crop yields associated with planting a double row of leguminous hedgerows by a group of 10 farmers who adopted the system and a control group of farmers who did not. Over the 2-year interval of monitoring, maize yields increased by both methods, but the greatest increase was among the control group of nonadopters. Fertilizer use among both groups was very similar. When queried about the perceived value of the hedgerows, the farmers who adopted leguminous hedgerows emphasized that their investment in hedgerows was long-term insurance that their children could continue to farm the land.

Contour Bunding with Hedgerows World Neighbors, another NGO, made a substantial contribution during the past decade (Granert, 1990; Granert and Sabueto, 1987). The World Neighbors approach was oriented toward the development of a high degree of direct participation by farmers in devising and implementing local solutions to the perceived dominant constraints to crop cultivation on steeply sloping lands. A system of contour bunding was developed. The bunds provided a base for the establishment of double-contour hedgerows of leguminous trees or forage grasses and a barrier to surface runoff, which is carried off the field in contour ditches.

The contour hedgerow concept was applied to the strongly acidic upland soils by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Philippine Department of Agriculture (Fujisaka and Garrity, 1988). Although these soils are generally deep, soil loss is a problem because it exposes a very acidic subsoil with toxic levels of aluminum. After 3 years of hedgerow intercropping, there was a striking natural development of terraces ( Figure 3 ). Modest yield benefits were ob-

FIGURE 3 Terrace formation and crop growth in a contour hedgerow system of upland rice and leguminous trees on strongly acidic Oxisol soils. Source: Basri, I, A. Mercado, and D. P. Garrity. 1990. Upland rice cultivation using leguminous tree hedgerows on strongly acid soils. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Agronomy, San Antonio, Texas, October 21–26, 1990.

FIGURE 4 Yield (on a row-by-row basis) of upland rice grown in alleys between hedges of a leguminous tree, Cassia spectabilis, that supplied green. leaf manure for the rice crop. P, phosphorus; N, nitrogen. Source: Basri, I., A. Mercado, and D. P. Garrity. 1990. Upland rice cultivation using leguminous tree hedgerows on strongly acid soils. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Agronomy, San Antonio, Texas, October 21–26, 1990.

served when upland rice was grown between hedgerows of Cassia spectabilis, a common non-nodulating leguminous tree (Basri et al., 1990). Yields of maize and rice were consistently increased when they were intercropped with hedgerows of Gliricidia sepium (Mercado et al., 1992). However, crop yields were seriously reduced in the rows adjoining the hedges, with or without the application of external nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers ( Figure 4 ). The primary roots of both tree species spread laterally into the alleyways at shallow depths (20 to 35 cm) immediately beneath the plow layer. Feeder roots were situated to explore and compete for nutrients and water in the crop root zone.

Sustainability in Alley Cropping Systems The sustainability of crop yields in alley cropping systems is a major concern on all soil types. The work reviewed by Szott et al. (1991) raises particular questions about the viability of hedgerow intercropping on strongly acidic soils. The high level of exchangeable aluminum in the subsoil inhibits the

deep tree-rooting patterns that are typically observed on higher-basestatus soils. Phosphorus and other mineral elements are often more limiting than nitrogen in these soils. The acidity of the subsoil appears to promote intense competition among roots for mineral nutrients in the surface soil of the alleys and prevents nutrient pumping from the deeper soil layers. The organic matter inputs from hedgerow prunings of Gliricidia and Cassia spectabilis do not supply adequate quantities of phosphorus to meet the nutrient requirements of cereal crops (Basri et al., 1990). Furthermore, the prunings are composed of phosphorus that the tree may have captured predominantly from the crop root zone. The results obtained with other alley cropping systems on acidic Ultisols in Peru (Fernandes, 1990) and in Sumatra, Indonesia (Evensen, 1989), support the results obtained in Mindanao by IRRI.

Grass Strips Grass strips have also received major attention as contour vegetative barriers for erosion control in different parts of the world (Lal, 1990). Considerable work has been done in the Philippines with napier grass ( Pennisetum purpureum ), guinea grass ( Panicum maximum ), and other grasses (Fujisaka and Garrity, 1988; Granert and Sabueto, 1987). The predominant attention has been given to the more vigorous forage grasses, since they tend to provide high levels of biomass for ruminant fodder. Therefore, they are presumed to serve as a beneficial way to use the area of the field occupied by hedgerows, which is lost to food crop production. Experimental data ( Table 9 ) and field observations of plantings in various locations indicate that use of forage grasses for intercropping has the potential to markedly reduce erosion and rapidly develop natural terraces on slopes. Therefore, the establishment of forage grasses has been extended as an alternative to the use of leguminous tree species on contour bunds.

Two major problems have surfaced from the use of grass strips. Farmers have difficulty keeping the tall, rapidly growing tropical forage species trimmed to prevent them from shading adjoining field crops. The biomass productivity of grass hedgerows exceeds the fodder requirements of most small-scale farm enterprises, and it is a burden for farmers to cut the unnecessary foliage frequently. High levels of biomass production also tend to exacerbate competition for nutrients and water with the adjoining food crops and reduce cereal crop yields (D. P. Garrity and A. Mercado, International Rice Research Institute, unpublished data).

Intercropping with Noncompetitive Species The constraints observed from intercropping with both trees and forage grasses have stimu-

TABLE 9 Soil Loss Affected by Contour Hedgerow Grasses Vegetation

lated an alternative concept of using hedgerows that contain noncompetitive or relatively inert species (Garrity, 1989). An inert species is one that has a short stature and a low growth rate, which minimizes hedgerow-crop competition but provides an effective ground cover for filtering out soil particles. This concept places primary emphasis on the rapid and effective development of terraces to improve field hydrology and maximize soil and nutrient retention. Vetiver zizanioides may exemplify an inert hedgerow species (Smyle et al., 1990). Vetiver is found throughout the Philippines. It tends to form a dense barrier and does not self-propagate to become a weed in cultivated fields. However, it must be propagated by vegetative tillers, which is a laborious process.

Natural Vegetative Filter Strips An alternative approach that has received little attention is the installation of natural vegetative filter strips. These are narrow contour strips that are left unplowed and on which vegetation is allowed to grow naturally. They may be established at the time that a piece of fallow land is brought into cultivation or during the interval between crops in a continuous cropping system. The dominant species in natural vegetative filter strips are native weedy grasses: Imperata cylindrica, Paspalum conjugatum, Chrysopogon aciculatus, or others, depending on the location and the management regime to which the strips are subjected. These natural grasses can be suppressed by allowing cattle to graze them, cutting them down, or mulching them with crop residues. Natural vegetative filter strips are capable of reducing soil loss at least as effectively as commonly recommended introduced species ( Table 9 , Paspalum conjugatum treatment). They are generally less competitive with food

crops than other hedgerow species, and they are adapted to local ecosystems and resilient in terms of longevity and reestablishment.

There have been some isolated observations of the indigenous development of natural vegetative barriers by upland farmers in the Philippines (Balina et al., 1991; Fujisaka, 1990; Ly, 1990). However, research has not been targeted to exploit this option in Philippine uplands. (In the United States there has been extensive research on the use of natural vegetative filter strips for sediment and chemical pollution control [Williams and Lavey, 1986].)

Farm-level adoption of natural vegetative filter strips has been observed to be comparatively simple. Contour lines are laid out at the desired spacing. The field is plowed on the contour, allowing the designated strips to be left as fallow vegetation. In fields where the technique has been implemented, the soil in runoff water is deposited at the filter strip. This deposition, combined with the movement of soil down the slope during tillage operations, results in the rapid development of terraces of 30 to 70 cm deep within 2 years. The leveling effect of terrace formation evidently improves water retention in the field, and the loss of either applied or native soil nutrients is reduced. These effects need to be investigated under a range of field conditions.

The natural vegetative filter strip approach can be considered the initial stage in a long-term process of contour hedgerow development on farms. As terraces form, farmers may diversify the terrace risers for use in other enterprises by planting trees or perennial crops as they fit their management objectives. The natural vegetative filter strip concept may be a practical basis for the rapid, wide-scale dissemination of hedgerow technology. Therefore, a substantial effort in both strategic and farmer-participatory research on natural vegetative filter strips is warranted.

Cash Crop Production in Hedgerows may also be suitable for the production of perennial cash crops. Some perennial crops that have been used in these systems include coffee, papaya, citrus, and mulberry. The suitability of the perennial species is limited by the degree of shading of the associated food crops. The cash income that can be made is a major advantage of using perennial crops. Erosion control may not be provided by the perennial crop, but it may be provided by grass that occupies the area between the widely spaced plants.

Cattle Production Backyard production of cattle has become an important enterprise in some densely settled upland areas, particularly Batangas province. A trend toward more intensive small-scale beef and goat production is now under way in many parts of the country.

This trend is stimulated by historically high meat prices. Leguminous tree species, particularly Leucaena leucocephala and Gliricidia sepium, are widely used as high-protein forages, especially in the dry season. Backyard ruminant production will stimulate more intensive husbandry of manure. An important model of the development of leguminous trees in hedgerows is the use of prunings as a source of animal feed, either for on-farm use or off-farm sales (Kang et al., 1990). Harvesting of fodder potentially increases the value of the hedgerow prunings, but it also depletes soil nutrient reserves more rapidly because the nutrients contained in the prunings are removed from the field before they can provide their nutrients to the crop. Unless this manure is spread back on the land or replaced, and nutrient supplements provided in the form of fertilizer, the rate of soil depletion may be accelerated. Currently, the use of green leaf manure is insignificant in upland cropping systems.

The experience of the past 15 years with alley cropping and the use of contour hedgerows suggests that appropriate solutions must be tailored to the diverse soil and environmental conditions, farm sizes and labor availabilities, markets, and farmer objectives. The tendency for a package approach to be applied by extension systems must be replaced with a model that recognizes a wide range of possible hedgerow species and management systems (Garrity, 1989). There has been little attempt to clarify the appropriate hedgerow technologies for the range of specific local physical and institutional settings.

REDUCED-TILLAGE SYSTEMS

Clean cultivation is the universal soil management practice of Filipino upland farmers whether they use animal power or hand tillage on steep slopes. Crop residues are plowed under, burned, or removed and used as fodder. Retention of surface residues through conservation tillage systems is unexploited, although the value of such practices in reducing soil erosion is profound on tropical sloping uplands (Lal, 1990). Many studies have shown significant benefits from maintaining a surface mulch. Thapa (1991) found that soil loss was reduced by 90 percent by the presence of a vegetative barrier, but the maintenance of crop residues on the soil surface reduced soil loss by more than 98 percent. It has been shown (R. Raros, Visayas State College of Agriculture, Baybay, Leyte, Philippines, personal communication, 1989) that upland rice can be dependably established in thick residues without tillage in a hedgerow system, and the yields of a system with three continuous crops per year can be sustained.

At present, no practical approach has been developed to satisfac-

torily cope with weeds in reduced-tillage systems. Broad-spectrum herbicides such as glyphosate are beginning to be used on a limited basis by small-scale farmers, but the intense weed pressures on upland farms and the tendency for weed species to shift rapidly to resistance to herbicides has severely constrained the development of herbicide-based solutions.

The possibility of successfully using a reduced-tillage system has been reinforced by recent observations on a farmer-evolved system of maize production in Mindanao (D. P. Garrity, International Rice Research Institute, unpublished data). The system involves a crop sequence of three crops of maize monoculture per year but only one primary tillage operation annually. Interrow cultivation and late weeding during the maize grain-filling period enable the second and third crops to be planted on the day of harvest without tillage and with low weed pressures. This unconventional approach provides interesting prospects for practical techniques for reducing the tillage needed for food crop farming with limited resources.

NUTRIENT SUPPLY

External fertilizer use on food crops by upland farmers is seldom important. This is due to their severe capital constraints, transport difficulties, and low returns from fertilizer use. Therefore, a long-term decline in yields is typically observed (Fujisaka and Garrity, 1988). It is widely believed that the sustainability of food crop production could be enhanced by improved retention of crop residues and by the adoption of more diverse crop rotations that include nitrogen-fixing legumes (Mclntosh et al., 1981). The limited work done to date has shown that there are mixed benefits from these practices. The practical constraints to the implementation of improved nutrient cycling practices are often considerable.

Leguminous grains play an insignificant role in upland cropping systems. Mung beans ( Phaseolus aureus ) and soybeans ( Glycine max ) are adapted to neutral and slightly acidic soils, whereas cowpeas ( Vigna sinensis, also known as black-eyed peas) are more suited to highly acidic soils (Torres et al., 1988). When leguminous grains are inserted into cereal crop-based rotations immediately before upland rice or maize is planted, the legume improves the nutrient balance of the next cereal crop (Magbanua et al., 1988; Torres et al., 1989). Intercropping of cereals and legumes may increase their combined productivities, but it does not increase the net availability of nitrogen to the cereal crop (Aggarwal et al., 1992).

Farmers who cultivate grain legumes do so as an income or food

source, but they do not usually observe better cereal crop performance as a result of the legume's inclusion as a second crop in cerealbased rotations (International Rice Research Institute, 1991). This appears to be due to the low biomass production by tropical leguminous grains that mature early and to nitrogen losses during the long fallow period between the time that the legume is harvested and the establishment of the following wet season crop.

Forage legumes have greater longevity in the field than do leguminous grains, and they produce large amounts of nitrogen-rich biomass. On high base-status soils, viny legumes such as lablab ( Lablab purpureus ) or siratro ( Macroptilium atropurpureum ) can be intercropped with upland rice or maize. They produce 100 to 200 kg of nitrogen/ ha in plowed down green manure during the dry season for the succeeding wet season cereal crop (Aggarwal and Garrity, 1989; Torres and Garrity, 1990). They also provide high-quality forage during the dry season. Lablab also provides a nutritious and marketable food legume for humans (Torres and Garrity, 1990).

On strongly acidic soils, most of the forage legumes have slow establishment rates, are not resilient to pruning, and do not accumulate substantial amounts of biomass during the dry season. This may be attributed to poor rooting and nodulation in the presence of high levels of exchangeable aluminum and low amounts of available phosphorus in the soil. Their inclusion within annual crop sequences therefore often appears to be impractical without the application of lime or phosphorus or both.

PHOSPHORUS AS A CRITICAL CONSTRAINT

The acidic upland soils of the Philippines are predominantly fine-textured, with organic carbon contents of 2 to 3 percent and with a moderate level of total nitrogen. Phosphorus deficiency is frequently the most limiting nutritional problem (International Rice Research Institute, 1987) and often must be overcome before any response to nitrogen is observed (Basri et al., 1990; Garrote et al., 1986). Phosphorus pumping from the deeper soil layers is limited by subsoils with toxic levels of aluminum and low phosphorus reserves. Since constant nutrient removal or offtake is occurring, crop yield sustainability and significant biologic nitrogen fixation will depend on the importation of mineral nutrients, particularly phosphorus and lime. Greater appreciation of the importance of importing these nutrients in upland agroecosystems with acidic soils is needed.

Deposits of phosphate rock in the Philippines are an efficient source of both phosphorus and calcium (Atienza, 1989; Briones and

Vicente, 1985). The exploitation of phosphate rocks for farm use has been neglected and could be expedited. This would require greater government and commercial recognition of the fundamental importance of these minerals to permanent upland agricultural system.

PERENNIAL CROPS

Coconuts are the dominant plantation crop in the Philippines, which has the world's largest area devoted to this crop, covering nearly one-sixth of the land surface (4.88 million ha [Swedish Space Corporation, 1988]). In addition, there are about 100,000 ha of plantations of rubber and other estate trees.

Coconut trees occupy much of the steepest nonarable land at lower elevations. Although the canopy of a coconut plantation is relatively open, the land on which coconut is grown provides satisfactory soil protection against erosion when an appropriate grassy or leguminous ground cover is established. Much of the land on which coconut is grown is owned by wealthier families but is managed in smallholdings by tenants or caretakers. The livelihoods of millions of the poorest families and the economic future of many parts of the uplands are heavily dependent on the health of the coconut industry. A long-term decline in the world market demand for coconut oil is projected because of the increasing worldwide preference for vegetable oils, which have a lower saturated fat content.

Land tenure is the dominant barrier to more productive management of the lands on which coconut is grown. Landlords generally prohibit understory cropping to avoid future claims to permanent occupancy. However, numerous crop species thrive under coconuts (Paner, 1975). Multistory cropping systems—with a two- or three-tiered canopy that may include fruits, vegetables, and food crops—improve farm income and are observed in some areas. It is unclear whether the planned extension of agrarian reform to the areas planted in coconuts, which was indicated in the 1987 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program legislation, will have any effect in overcoming this land tenure barrier. The titling of lands on which coconut is grown to tenant farmers would result in a dramatic increase in land use intensity for coconut. This would significantly alleviate the high degree of income uncertainty for tenant farmers who grow coconuts.

FARM FORESTRY

The concept of farmers producing fast-growing trees as crops was popularized in the mid-1970s by the Paper Industries Corporation of

the Philippines, which set up woodlots on farms to grow trees for pulpwood production (World Bank, 1989a). The practice has gained momentum in recent years, as the depletion of old-growth hardwood forests sent domestic timber prices steeply upward. Substantial numbers of small-scale farmers in northern Mindanao now plant in short rotations and then sell gmelina ( Gmelina arbored ) and falcata ( Albizia falcataria ) as timber. G. arborea is harvested and coppiced in up to three 10-year cycles. Fast-growing hardwoods such as gmelina are also integrated into contour hedgerow systems. The Master Plan for Forestry Development (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990) places emphasis on contract forestry with private individuals and communities and is supported by a loan from the Asian Development Bank. Development of these systems would be greatly accelerated if credit for contract tree growing is extended to small-scale farmers and hardwood production in hedgerows is encouraged.

DIVERSIFICATION

The most plausible model of sustainable smallholder farming in the uplands is one of diversification into mixed farming systems. Given the exceptionally high production and marketing risks in the uplands and the generally low marginal returns, a number of alternative enterprises must be undertaken on upland farms to provide stability (Chambers, 1986) and to take maximum advantage of the complementarities that occur among income-generating activities (for example, leguminous trees for fodder, green leaf manure, and fuelwood; cattle for labor, cash income, and manure).

Upland farm families must place primary or exclusive emphasis on subsistence food crop production. The land use systems that result from the pursuit of these needs, however, are the least ecologically sustainable alternatives. The issue from policy, research, and extension perspectives is how to enable the farm enterprise to move profitably along a trajectory that will continually increase the area devoted to perennial plants and decrease the area devoted to annual plants ( Figure 5 ). The gradual expansion of home gardens, ruminant livestock production, and plantation and timber tree crops will contribute to this end. Greater private and public sector support for the development of these enterprises will be essential. However, this must be linked with the improvement of methods for greater sustained food crop production per unit area to release land and labor for other cash-generating activities.

The Philippine Department of Agriculture has only recently begun to give significant attention to the task of understanding upland

FIGURE 5 Model of the evolutionary development of a small-scale upland farm on sloping land.

agricultural technologies. Upland agricultural systems are in starkcontrast to the less heterogeneous lowland systems that have historically received overwhelming attention. Therefore, a major reorientation of both the research and extension approach is under way. This reorientation involves the decentralization of operations to the local level. The Department of Agriculture has adopted a farming systems research and development model for technology generation in the uplands, with strong emphasis on farmer-participatory research (Dar and Bayaca, 1990). To be effective, this transformation must be pursued more vigorously and will require major increases in staff capability and mobility.

The Grasslands and Brushlands

The most common form of vegetation in the Philippine uplands is grass, predominantly Imperata cylindrica (cogon) or Themeda triandra (samsamong, silibon, or bagocboc) or, at higher elevations, Miscanthus japonicus (runo). The rhizomes of these perennials are highly resistant to fire, but the shoots are flammable during dry periods. They readily invade abandoned swiddens, land cleared of forests, and forest openings. A small portion of the grassland area may be a result of natural disturbances, but the overwhelming majority owe their existence to repeated disturbance by fire, which is usually started by humans to obtain game or fodder or to clear land (Bartlett, 1956).

At the turn of the twentieth century, 40 percent of Luzon and extensive areas of other Philippine islands were covered with grass. The land classification of 1919 estimated that grassland covered 19 percent of the country, a figure that stayed roughly constant through 1957 (Roth, 1983). An analysis (Swedish Space Corporation, 1988) of Philippine land use estimated the area of pure grassland to be 1.8 million ha, with an additional 10.1 million ha in extensive cultivation mixed with grasslands and brushlands (that is, about 33 percent of the country's land surface). This suggests that more than 20 percent of the surface area of the country is covered by grasslands (see Table 2 ). The grasslands appear to have served as an intermediate zone—a portion continually being transformed into permanent croplands or plantations—for a long period of time, whereas new area is created as the forest withdraws. In some intensive grass-fallow rotation systems, fire climax savannah is used indefinitely as the fallow species (for example, see Barker [1984]).

The cogon grasslands are commonly used as pasture, but they have a carrying capacity that is probably lower than 0.25 animal units (0.3 cattle) per ha (World Bank, 1989a). Cogon grass is suitable as a forage only during early growth, so the range is regularly burned toward the end of the dry season, which contributes to wildfires that penetrate and further destroy forestlands. Range management by private ranchers is generally poor, and improved management practices have not resulted in competitive economic returns. Overgrazing during the regrowth period reduces ground cover and makes grassland the most significant source of soil erosion in the Philippines. Thus, the net social returns from cattle ranching are low, and justification of this form of land use is questionable.

There has been a precipitous decline in ranching during the past 15 years. A major factor has been the communist insurgency, which targeted its operations against ranches. Associated with this has been a 50 percent decline in the size of the national cattle herd during this 15-year period.

What should be done about the grasslands? They continue to function as a migratory sink for the settlement of landless and jobless families, and in this sense, they are still a frontier. The social value of these lands, however, is greatly constrained by government land use policy and a regressive pattern of formal and informal land tenure. Although the land is publicly administered as forestland by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), wealthy families (pseudo-landlords) have laid claim to large areas, relegating settler families to tenancy.

Small-scale farming in grasslands is predominantly practiced with

animal labor. Settlers initially practice a migratory system of farming, shifting their farm area as necessary to sustain crop yields. The greater population densities necessitate rotating the fallow areas of fields within permanent farm boundaries. As the farm size decreases, permanent cropping evolves, in many cases with extremely low comparative yields (Vandermeer, 1963).

SECURITY OF LAND TENURE

Since 1894, the Philippine state has proclaimed about two-thirds of the country's area as public forestland. In 1975, all land with a slope of 18 percent or greater was proclaimed by legislation to be part of the public domain. Subsequent legislation further eroded the rights of occupant families to the land on which they lived. Although the legislation was ostensibly intended to strengthen the state's ability to conserve the forests, its unanticipated effect was to greatly weaken occupants' interest in any long-term forms of sustainable land management.

Later, the realization grew that the upland populations were going to be permanent and were increasing rapidly. This led to a succession of weak programs that involved occupancy permits and communal tree farming contracts. The Integrated Social Forestry Program (ISFP) arose in the early 1980s as an extension of the earlier approaches. It was based on a Certificate of Stewardship Contract (CSC), which grants leasehold occupancy rights for up to 7 ha of land to a family for a 25-year period and is renewable for another 25 years (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). CSC holders are obligated to use conservation farming practices, plant at least five trees per hectare, and assist in protecting adjacent forest areas. The ISFP promotes agroforestry practices, particularly contour hedgerow farming.

Although the CSC is aimed at strengthening the land tenure security of upland farm families, it is a weak instrument for doing so. Many poor farmers and their families face substantial problems in asserting a CSC claim against the claim of more powerful but absentee pseudo-landlords. The CSC lease is nontransferable and, thus, cannot be used as collateral for loans for investing in farm improvements. The CSC lease may be canceled at the discretion of the Forest Management Bureau, and it is heritable only within the 25-year lease period.

The speed of implementation of ISFP has been disappointing. Only 2.5 percent of the upland area has so far been included in stewardship leases. The Master Plan for Forestry Development (Depart-

ment of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990) targeted CSCs to be issued to 626,700 families during the 10-year period from 1988 to 1997. This would cover an estimated 1.88 million ha of public land. Assuming an average of six persons per family, this would involve a population of 3.76 million. These targets appear to be overly optimistic unless major new funding and staffing becomes available.

Secure land tenure in the uplands would decrease the number of large land claims by elite individuals who use poor families as tenants. Many poor families are part of a well-organized effort of occupation of forestlands carried out by wealthier individuals who hope to lay claim to the land by paying taxes on it. Under such arrangements, the agricultural inputs of the cultivator may be subsidized by the pseudo-landlord and personal credit may be advanced to the cultivator, or the cultivator may be contracted to plant perennial crops for an agreed price per plant and permitted to grow food crops on the young plantation until the trees become established. Then, the cultivator must move on to a new area to renew the cycle or may be hired to care for the plantation.

CSC leaseholds provide a mechanism that serves as a counter-weight to the grip of local elites. Effective independence for the cultivator will depend, however, on the infrastructure and support services that will make it possible to earn a viable living from the land without the patronage of landlords. The sense of security that the CSC provides to powerless migrant farmers was explored by Pava et al. (1990). The granting of CSCs will encourage more migration into the uplands. This will happen even if recent migrants are excluded from the program. It will be especially pronounced in areas where the bulk of the fertile lowlands are controlled by a few landed elites.

FALLOW IMPROVEMENT SYSTEMS

There are a variety of farming systems in the grasslands, ranging from shifting cultivation to permanent cultivation systems. The technology appropriate for a shifting cultivation system differs from that for a permanent field cultivation system because of the major differences in labor and land use intensity required for each system. As Raintree and Warner (1986) pointed out, shifting cultivators maximize their returns to labor rather than to land and resist inappropriate labor-intensive technologies. Hedgerow farming is a solution that is suitable to the more intensive stages of permanent cultivation. A more relevant concern in shifting systems is management of fallow fields.

Barker (1984) analyzed the role of fallow fields in shifting cultivation. A crop that improves fallow fields must yield higher nutrient levels and accumulate more organic matter than the natural fallow it is to replace. Little work has been done on practical methods of rapidly regenerating soil fertility in fallow fields of the Philippines. Fallow fields are usually burned or subjected to intensive grazing. Farmers acknowledge that these practices are often ineffective in regenerating fertility, and this has been corroborated by sampling the nutrient status of fields (Fujisaka, 1989).

Leguminous cover crops have been proposed as candidates for managed fallow fields, but empirical evidence of their practical utility is sparse. The ubiquitous presence of dry season grassland fires and the difficulty in preventing fires on the grasslands will limit this practice. Protection from communal grazing is also a constraint in many areas. Problems of seed supply and seed collection limit the adoption of leguminous cover crops, but a system for marketing cover crops is rapidly developing (P. C. Dugan, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, personal communication, 1990). A much greater research effort is needed at national and local levels, particularly regarding species that can be used as food for humans (for example, Psophocarpus palustris [siratro]).

Systems for enhancing fallow fields with leguminous trees have been demonstrated. MacDicken (1990) described an indigenous planned fallow that has evolved on steep slopes in Cebu since before 1900. Dense stands of naturally reseeded Leucaena leucocephala are used in the fallow portion of the cycle. When the Leucaena trees are cut, the stems are placed on the contour and staked to create contour bunds. A fallow period of 3 to 7 years is followed by several years of cereal cropping. The concept of naturally reseeded fallow fields deserves serious attention as an alternative fallow for both grassland and forest agroecosystems, where natural woody plant regeneration after cropping is suppressed. Tree species that are suited to strongly acidic soils and are prolific in seed production also need to be identified. Flemingia congesta is a candidate species for medium-elevation sloping acid soils, and Alnus japonica is a candidate species for the highlands.

A tree fallow system for shifting cultivation on the island of Mindoro, which used cuttings of Leucaena that was intercropped with the food crops, allowed development of a tree cover on fallow land after the cropping cycle (MacDicken, 1990). The value of such systems remains unconfirmed. There are also uncertainties in applying these systems—or variations of them—to the diverse range of fallow environments on grasslands or forestlands. Exclusion of fire will also be

a dominant concern in successful implementation of such systems. A major sustained research effort on managed fallows is critical.

REFORESTATION EFFORTS

The grassland areas have been a major target of Philippine government reforestation efforts for the past 30 years (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). Official forestry statistics indicate that about 1 million ha of tree plantations was planted between 1960 and 1989. This effort was managed by the Forest Management Bureau.

In most ongoing reforestation contracts, fast-growing and leguminous hardwoods are planted as nurse trees to form a protective canopy, with a few premium species planted as the climax crop. Foremost among the nurse trees are Acacia mangium, Acacia auriculiformis, Leucaena diversifolia (psyllid-resistant strains of L. leucocephala), and Gliricidia sepium. The major premium quality species include Swietenia species and Pterocarpus grandiflorus. Other species that can grow in areas dominated by Imperata cylindrica are Gmelina arborea, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, and leguminous pioneer species. Sometimes, contractors mechanically till the areas to be planted and seed leguminous cover crops during the first year to improve the soil microenvironment. In most projects, nursery-grown plantings are used.

The success record, however, has been disappointing. In a recent nationwide inventory of the status of plantations (Forest Management Bureau, 1988), the actual extent of surviving trees was found to be only 26 percent. In the central and western areas of the country, which have prolonged dry seasons, the situation was more dismal. For example, Reyes and Mendoza (1983) found that after an intensive reforestation effort in the watershed containing the Pantabangan Reservoir, the survival of replanted trees was only 10 to 15 percent because of poor weed control, pests and diseases, and fire.

Control of fires on newly established plantations is difficult and costly. Public reforestation projects are given neither adequate incentives nor appropriate management capabilities to provide protection from fires. In fact, many plantations were deliberately torched by local people who saw that there was nothing to be gained from the presence of a government plantation in their area.

CONTRACT REFORESTATION

The overwhelming failure of reforestation efforts managed by the Forest Management Bureau has recently prompted a major redirec-

tion in approach. The approach is called contract reforestation, by which DENR plans to establish artificial forests via contracts with families, communities, local governments, the private sector, and NGOs on about 630,000 ha by the year 2015 (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). Contracting consists of a two-phase strategy. First, DENR contracts for the establishment, maintenance, and protection of artificial forests for a 3- to 4-year period. If the contractors perform well in meeting the provisions of the reforestation contract, they can apply for a Forestland Management Agreement (the second phase). This entitles them to harvest, process, and sell or otherwise use the products grown on their reforested areas. The private forestland manager, however, must pay the government a share of the income from sales of production output. This share is equivalent to the amount of money needed to reforest 1 ha of denuded area when 1 ha of 3- to 4-year-old trees is cut. Harvesting and other thinning activities are done in accordance with a DENR-approved management plan.

The majority of the lands targeted for the contract reforestation program are relatively degraded or remote. Because of low profitability and high interest rates, private firms are hesitant to invest their own corporate funds to establish industrial tree plantations (Domingo, 1983; Guiang, 1981). The funds that the government has designated for this program are largely from international donors, particularly the Asian Development Bank.

DENR hopes to generate reforestation funds from production shares under the Forestland Management Agreement. In this way, DENR could spread the financial and environmental benefits of reforestation activities. It is presumed that managers have strong incentives to protect and manage their artificial forests, since they reap the major profit from the sale of the tree crops. They can also plant and intercrop cash crops, fruit trees, and other agricultural crops to augment their incomes and to provide additional incentive for protecting, replanting, or enriching the plantation forests. DENR has also provided an indirect subsidy for rehabilitating grasslands and brushlands that are not profitable under the industrial tree plantation scheme. Enthusiasm for contract forestry is tempered by apprehension about constrictive regulatory controls. If the regulatory attitude prevails during implementation of the program, as is typical of DENR programs, progress will be disappointing.

A major factor in the success of the contract forestry program is the assumption that independent managers will strive to protect their investment from fire. The excellent fire control technologies of indigenous peoples, for example, methods used on the 15,000-ha ancestral

lands of the Kalahan Education Foundation, Nueva Viscaya, can be more widely disseminated (Barker, 1990).

THE ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT OF FIRE

When an area is cleared of tropical forest it changes from an ecosystem essentially immune to fire to one in which fires are extremely common. J. B. Kauffman's research (cited in Savonen [1990]) showed that rain forests are capable of catching fire only on an average of 1 day each 11 years, but partially logged areas burn after an average of only 6 rainless days. Grassland areas are flammable after only 1 rainless day.

Repeated burning kills potential tree propagules in fallow fields and favors grasses, in particular Imperata cylindrica, over perennials. When burning or other disturbance is halted, I. cylindrica is rapidly invaded and shaded out by taller, woody species. If the area is large enough, however, I. cylindrica grass may persist for decades, even after the fires have stopped, because the propagules of other plants have been eliminated.

All aspects of this discussion on technology for more productive uses of grasslands for agriculture and forestry emphasize the dominance of fire as a debilitating constraint. Determined ecologic and farm-level management research on fire control will be essential to achieve progress in the better use of grasslands. Identification of practical and cost-effective tactics will require a systems approach. A national research project on the ecology and management of fire could collate the knowledge on the subject that can be provided by indigenous peoples, design a comprehensive framework for investigation, and assist regional and local research teams in undertaking work in this area within the respective land use system research programs.

LOCAL ORGANIZATION FOR CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

During the past decade, social forestry research has provided much insight into the complex constraints in the evolution of effective community organizations to sustainably manage local upland resources (Borlagdan, 1990). Many of these organizations will be needed to serve the needs of upland farmers in thousands of villages throughout the Philippines. The initiation of farmers' organizations has so far been limited to specific project sites. Careful consideration must be given to the development of a structure that will link these organizations at the provincial, regional, and national levels. Such a struc-

ture might draw on some of the experiences of the conservation districts in the United States (Cook, 1989). These independent units of local government, of which there are more than 3,000, regulate resource use and assist farmers in implementing conservation practices. Conservation districts are created through a referendum involving all occupants of the land. They are governed by an elected board that enlists the skills and services of government agencies at all levels to advance conservation programs in the district.

Saving and Rebuilding the Remaining Natural Forests

The commercially exploitable old-growth dipterocarp forests in the Philippines are nearly exhausted. The Master Plan for Forestry Development (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990) estimates their extent at slightly less than 1 million ha. We estimate that the actual extent may be closer to 700,000 ha—or lower. Nearly all of this area is to be protected under recently enacted DENR policies banning logging in old-growth forests. Therefore, DENR anticipates that further declines in forested areas will be slight (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). It appears to be optimistic to assume that commercial logging will stop immediately, that illegal logging can be controlled (since it has been resilient in the past), and that indigenous communities and migrants to the forest will not further convert significant areas of the forest to permanent agricultural uses.

The Philippine government has now acknowledged that it is incapable of managing forestlands on its own (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). DENR recognizes the logic of community control in managing forest resources. The issue now is whether DENR mechanisms set in place to implement this concept will be sufficient to address the needs.

THE ROLE AND RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

The people of the indigenous communities differ in their willingness to accept the concept of stewardship leases rather than full titling of the land to the community. Their reasons fall into three categories, depending on the community's circumstances:

Ethnic communities that have been able to maintain secure control of their land: Forest-dwelling ethnic minorities of the Cordillera who have staunchly protected their land fear that acceptance of stewardship leases will mean that they must give up their claim to ownership.

Communities that have traditionally possessed land but whose lands are under strong encroachment pressure from lowland settlers or plantation expansion: Groups such as the Ikalahans and Mangyans struggled successfully over a long period of time to obtain a lease and consider stewardship leases to be the best practical means for trying to maintain the integrity of their land.

Communities that have been displaced from their traditional lands: These communities, such as the T'boli, have been forcibly dispossessed and inhabit new locations where they do not have a basis for traditional land claims. Others, such as the Bilaan, have been completely dispossessed of any land and live in squalid refugee camps. These groups are desperately seeking some form of land tenure security and are highly receptive to leasing arrangements.

The predominant concern of many communities regarding land tenure is encroachment by outside interests. The first Communal Forest Lease was obtained in 1974 by the Ikalahan in Nueva Viscaya (Cornista and Escueta, 1990). The major land threat was from lowland farmers and elites from the nearby municipality who claimed land on the Ikalahan 's traditional reservation. By 1988, a total of nine communal leases ranging from 50 to more than 15,000 ha were issued to a variety of groups.

An organizing force was critical to the eventual development of these leases. This was usually provided by an NGO. Developing community leadership to manage the process was an essential and often difficult process. Many failures in community management can be anticipated; therefore, a heavy investment in management skills will be essential within DENR, NGOs, and the communities.

COMMUNITY-BASED FOREST MANAGEMENT

In 1989, DENR moved to implement the Community Forestry Program (CFP) (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). This allows organized cooperatives of forest occupants and upland farmers to extract, process, and sell forest products in exchange for the community 's commitment to protect, manage, and enrich the residual forest. DENR provides 25-year wood utilization permits to organized communities under a Community Forestry Management Agreement, which is renewable for another 25 years. The change in policy was intended to democratize access to forest resources, generate employment in the uplands, and manage the remaining production forests in a sustainable manner.

Under DENR's Master Plan for Forestry Development (1990), a

total of 1.5 million ha is targeted for community-based forest management. The forests classified for CFP are generally fragmented, inadequately stocked, part of canceled concession areas, near rural communities, and unprofitable for large-scale commercial extraction and processing. In 1990, 26 percent of the forests classified for CFP were in good condition, 40 percent were in fair condition, and 34 percent were in poor condition. Only small-scale and labor-intensive types of forest extraction and processing will result in profitable operations in these forests.

The CVRP-1 Social Forestry Project (1984–1989) was the first test of the community-based forestry concept (Dugan, 1989). The project was located on a 17,000-ha site on Negros Oriental island that had 4,500 ha of forest and about 17,500 inhabitants. The area had been under a logging ban since 1979, but illegal deforestation continued at an annual rate of about 1,360 ha. Eighteen Forest Stewardship Associations composed of forest occupants and farmers were initiated. They assumed responsibility for managing and conserving designated portions of the forest under the guidance of the project staff. The rate of forest destruction declined abruptly—by 92 percent—as the cooperatives began policing their zones, and it remained at only 100 ha annually through 1989. Shifting (slash-and-burn) cultivation in the forest was drastically curtailed. Large-scale illegal logging was eliminated. Using labor-based technology, the cooperative members participated in limited wood extraction, which increased their incomes far beyond what they had earned previously. These projects were proven successes that supported the hypothesis that the deforestation process can be controlled only when the forest occupants have a direct stake in the enterprise.

Nevertheless, some serious deficiencies in community organization, training, and cooperative management were observed. These deficiencies led to confusion in the cooperatives, and instances of corruption and abuses of forest regulations were uncovered. The need for a major reorientation of the skills and attitudes of the foresters involved in a community-based management setting was also highlighted. Success of the approach will be possible only with a large core of committed and competent people. Currently, no organized pool of people has such expertise. The limitation of human resources in the communities and in DENR will make the rapid expansion of community-based forestry uncertain. To date, DENR's experience with implementation of CFP has been limited to the selection of NGOs to operate the program and site identification, but inadequate attention has been given to organizing and training members of the community (Guiang, 1991; Guiang and Gold, 1990). Therefore, emphasis

on training programs that can teach the required managerial skills will be needed.

The technical, managerial, social, marketing, and financial management requirements of community-based forest management projects are enormous. Most NGOs, which have strong community-organizing capabilities, must strengthen their capabilities in taking resource inventories, preparing management plans, harvesting methods, marketing, processing, and managing finances.

Under a 1989 DENR directive, part of the money from the sale of products extracted from residual forests should be invested in systems that provide forest dwellers with alternative livelihoods. These systems must not be dependent on forest resources. A key need is for investment in village nurseries that will supply perennial and timber seedlings to individuals on a sustained basis.

SUSTAINED-YIELD FORESTRY

Little is known about the ecology of dipterocarp forests. It is not possible to say with confidence that any selective cutting system will ensure the sustained development and harvest of dipterocarp wood. Therefore, maintenance of the remaining fragments of lowland and upland old-growth dipterocarp forests is of the highest priority. Much more research into the ecology and physiology of dipterocarp forests is essential if the remaining fragments are to be expanded into viable forests. Previous efforts to establish dipterocarp forests have generally failed, but there have been a few cases of dipterocarp forest survival on plantations (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). The factors that govern such successes need to be investigated more thoroughly.

LABOR-BASED TIMBER EXTRACTION

Some foresters argue that sustained-yield timber extraction is highly feasible when native-style logging exclusively is used by local communities (Dugan, 1989). The experience gained from the CVRP-1 Social Forestry Project lends strong support to this contention. Timber extraction is naturally limited by the lower technical efficiency of carabao (water buffalo) logging, but the economic efficiency and profitability for both local harvesters and sawmills is attractive as compared with mechanized logging. Mechanized logging is skewed toward once-over extraction of the 150-plus-year-old virgin trees, with a return harvest expected after some 30 to 100 years, assuming that

forest destruction in the logging operation did not permanently disrupt the ability of the valued timber species to regenerate.

Indigenous logging methods emphasize repeated extraction of small amounts of timber and other forest products. These labor-based systems may allow an incremental annual extraction, determined on the basis of the annual accumulation of wood that can be harvested. This would provide continuous income from a limited tract of land and would be less destructive to the environment than capital- and machine-intensive systems. Employment in forest industries may quadruple if indigenous systems are adopted (P. C. Dugan, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, personal communication, 1990).

FOREST ENRICHMENT

As communities manage forests to achieve sustainable yields, there will be a tendency to extract the higher quality species, which will eventually lead to species impoverishment—a major concern. Enrichment planting of valuable timber species is a method that has been proposed to avoid impoverishment of economically valuable species in selectively or severely logged forests. There are virtually no data, however, to verify the effectiveness of enrichment techniques or to address the numerous practical questions that arise in their implementation. A strong research effort involving species establishment and ecologic studies in the field is urgently needed. Strategic research will need to be complemented with in-depth surveys of the methods of indigenous farmers and evaluations by participating farmers from multiple locations in forests representing wide ecologic gradients.

FUTURE IMPERATIVES FOR SUSTAINABLE UPLAND FARMING AND FORESTRY

The phenomenal depletion of natural resources in the Philippines reflects major deficiencies in the country's development efforts since its independence in 1946. The outstanding characteristics of the lack of development are the failure to create jobs and raise the living standards of the majority of Filipinos as well as the large inequalities in the distribution of wealth and access to financial and social resources. Therefore, a critical consideration in an assessment of future scenarios of forestry and agriculture in the Philippine upland ecosystem must include accurate prediction of trends in the political economy.

There is a no lack of detailed studies of the state of the Philippine environment or suggestions as to what should be done. Such studies include Dames and Moore International et al. (1989), Fay (1989), Por-

ter and Ganapin (1988), World Bank (1989a), and the Master Plan for Forestry Development (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). The major structural problem in the Philippines has been the inequality of income and wealth. Most observers agree that land reform in postwar Philippines has failed to reduce the power of the landed elites or to transfer substantial amounts of land to tillers. Implementation of the current agrarian reform program is clouded by similar doubts.

Another dominant structural problem is the failure of the industrial sector to provide new jobs at a rate fast enough to absorb the burgeoning labor pool. Upland agricultural and environmental problems cannot be solved as long as the mass of Filipinos are unemployed or underemployed and earn less than a subsistence wage. There must be a structural shift away from agriculture. The upland sustainability crisis is strongly interconnected with national political, economic, and ecologic stability. The strategy for attacking it must be bold, but it must be sensitive to the realities of these aspects.

Elements of a Strategy

There are three overarching elements to a comprehensive strategy for evolving sustainable land use systems in the Philippine uplands: tenure, technology, and delivery. Tenure encompasses human populations and their relationship to the land. Technology covers the technical solutions and the institutional capabilities to develop them. Delivery involves the mechanisms that government institutions and the private sector use to deliver the policy and various infrastructural supports to facilitate and guide the process of change.

TENURE: PEOPLE AND EMPOWERMENT

Reduce Population Growth Rates Any strategy to address the sustainable management of upland resources must include a reduction in the rate of population growth. This must be powered by a national consensus on the need for a vigorous population control program. National and international efforts could vigorously pursue that policy dialogue by supporting the call by a group of Filipino development specialists for a new national consensus on establishing the two-child family (Porter and Ganapin, 1988).

The poorest households in the rural uplands have the highest birth and mortality rates. Government must redirect health care programs to ensure that there are greater investments in village-level health and paramedical personnel, and family planning support and

education should be an integral part of the effort. The cost and political risks from embarking on a vigorous population control program will necessitate strong and sustained international support. Demographic goals and an effective organization to meet those goals must be highlighted as a fundamental component of such support.

Reform Land Tenure to Reinforce Local Stewardship Future success in bringing sustainable land use to the uplands is fundamentally dependent on major changes in the ways that public lands are managed. The Philippine government has proved to be incapable of managing the country's land area. The area under direct central government control must be decreased rapidly. Although this is a declared intention of government policy, progress has been slow.

To harness the energies of upland populations in creating sustainable land use systems and to ensure the success of reforestation and forest remnant conservation efforts, the national government must establish a new political relationship with the upland population. It must recognize the boundaries of the lands held by the indigenous occupants and move to recognize their full ownership rights. The dominant issue is empowerment of the upland people so that they can have a secure stake in the land.

The Philippine Constitution restricts leaseholds on public lands to terms of 25 years, which are renewable for another 25 years. However, further definition of the terms of the lease is at DENR's administrative discretion. As of 1988, only 2.2 percent of publicly owned forestlands were placed under leasehold arrangements; thus, only a fraction of the upland farming population has been affected. The Master Plan for Forestry Development (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990) projects a large increase in leaseholds, but DENR has not allocated budgetary support and does not have the implementation capacity to effectively carry out an aggressive program.

In addition, the form of land tenure security in the Certificate of Stewardship Contract (CSC) now being issued will not be adequate to foster viable farm operations with the degree of land stewardship needed. The CSC must be amended to enable it to be transferable and so that farmers can use it as collateral to obtain credit. The transferability of the CSC should, however, apply only to actual land occupants, to avoid an eventual concentration of landholdings.

These provisions should be interpreted as the initial stages that will eventually lead to unrestricted land titles. They give the occupants time to demonstrate their capacity to develop a sustainable land management system. Complete title to the land would then be-

come an incentive to practice conservation farming methods and to be a good steward of the land. Granting of immediate and unconditional titles to the land is not practical because of the immense administrative work load it would entail.

A comprehensive government response must be initiated to deal with the existence of tenancy in the uplands resulting from the land claims of pseudo-landlords. Although they are illegal, these claims result in nominal tax revenues for local governments, which otherwise have very limited sources of income. It is essential that local governments realize that the changes in land tenure in the uplands will be to their benefit through taxes, income, and social stability. Therefore, the national government must make provisions for local governments to receive alternative sources of income. The 1991 Local Government Code began the process of enabling local governments to obtain local tax revenue. Two additional mechanisms that can be implemented are the allocation of authority for local governments to levy modest taxes on individual leaseholds and to undertake contractual forestry activities on the public lands in their jurisdiction.

Recognize the Ancestral Rights of Indigenous Occupants There is a strong legal basis granting ownership rights to indigenous peoples who have historically inhabited the land (Lynch and Talbott, 1988). Recognition of these rights has so far been ignored by DENR, but we believe it is a crucial element in the sustainable management of upland resources. In general, the optimum mechanism by which these rights can be recognized is a community title. The precise instrument by which secure tenure should be granted, however, may have to vary somewhat for different communities. Direct titles to the land should immediately be given to indigenous communities that have strong and cohesive leadership, particularly in the autonomous regions in Muslim Mindanao and the Central Cordillera area of northern Luzon, which have legislative power over ancestral domains and natural resources.

Initially it is not necessary that all those with ancestral property rights receive titles that recognize those rights. The most immediate need is for the delineation of the ancestral domains by survey teams, so that a common basis of understanding exists between the national government and the communities (Lynch and Talbot, 1988) and so that communities can exercise effective control over their domains.

An important activity in developing an instrument of land tenure should be the formulation of a management plan than contains flexible but comprehensive mechanisms for allocating land among the

inhabitants and for applying sound land management practices. As public land management is progressively privatized, it will be necessary to give local governments the authority to apply zoning restrictions so that they can control private land usage. These functions will strengthen local governments and overcome the strong objections from some quarters that the titling of public lands will lead to abuse of the land.

TECHNOLOGY: DEVELOPMENT AND DISSEMINATION

Research Upland Agriculture New technologies will be critical to the development of sustainable agriculture in the uplands, but the technologies being extended have not been proved in the diverse environments and for the variety of circumstances farmers face in the uplands. Two issues must be addressed: What will it take to make small-scale farming permanently sustainable? What will it take to improve fallow-rotation systems where they are still practiced?

Permanent small-scale upland farming systems are evolving in the sloping upland areas and are gradually replacing shifting cultivation. Acceleration of the trend toward permanent agricultural systems will fundamentally require simple, effective soil erosion control on open fields by use of vegetation barriers and residue management; mineral nutrient importation to balance the uptake of nutrients by crops and to stimulate greater biological nitrogen fixation; and diversification toward mixed farming systems that include perennials and ruminant animals, in addition to subsistence food crops. The technologies needed to meet these needs are known. Some fulfill multiple requirements (for example, trees in contour hedgerows may provide erosion control, fodder, and crop nutrients). But knowledge of how to adapt them to the wide array of diverse ecologic niches encountered by upland farmers is still inadequate. Much can be done now to take specific action to implement these concepts. The work must rely on farmer-participatory experimentation to refine specific solutions for local conditions.

The major innovation for farming on sloping lands has been the sloping agricultural land technology (SALT) that uses hedgerows of leguminous trees. A serious constraint of SALT is its high labor requirement. On acidic soils, there are questions concerning negative crop-hedgerow interactions. A major extension problem is the lack of hedgerow planting materials of forages, multipurpose trees, and perennial crops.

Because of the limitations of trees and introduced forage grasses in hedgerows, serious efforts should be invested in the refinement

and dissemination of simpler methods, including natural vegetative filter strips. The advantages of natural vegetative filter strips are their simplicity of installation, their low labor requirements, and their excellent erosion control and terrace formation capabilities. They also provide a good foundation for soil conservation efforts, so that farmers may subsequently diversify into more labor-intensive hedgerow enterprises, including those that grow perennials, leguminous trees, and improved forages.

The importation of mineral nutrients will be essential to the development of sustainable food crop production on permanent farms in the uplands. Because the majority of soils are strongly acidic, phosphorus is usually the most limiting nutrient, and lime application is often necessary to lower the soil's acidity and alleviate aluminum toxicity. Programs that help upland farmers reduce soil degradation should also consider how to provide supplies of phosphorus and lime at the most favorable prices and provide instruction as to their most efficient use. Nitrogen fertilizer is an important tool that can be used to familiarize lowland rice farmers with nutrient use and bolster national rice sufficiency.

In areas that use fallow rotation systems, there is hope for improved fallow management if fire can be controlled. The use of trees planted in fallow fields has been demonstrated successfully in systems without animal labor. Little research has been directed to the agronomics of trees in fallow fields. In systems that use animal labor, forage legumes have been tested as an alternative to natural Imperata cylindrica infestation, but their effects are poorly documented. Much more research will be needed to refine the agronomic practices used in managed fallows in different environments.

Other top research priorities for sloping lands involve the development of appropriate small-scale mixed farming systems, such as those that include animal, perennial, and tree production, to gradually reduce reliance on food crops. Systems research will be essential for making more rapid progress in diversifying small-scale upland farms. Many NGOs are active in promoting sustainable low-input agricultural systems in the Philippines (Garcia-Padilla, 1990) and will play an important role in adapting solutions to specific local conditions.

Integrate Livestock into Upland Farming Systems There must be greater emphasis on ruminant livestock in achieving sustainability in mixed farming systems. Most hedgerow systems supply the farm with increased quantities of legumes or grass forage. Hedgerow farming enables larger livestock populations and contributes to alleviating the deficit in ruminant meat production.

There is an opportunity for greater investment in NGO-operated

programs to distribute ruminants (cattle, goats, and sheep) to small-scale upland farmers for cut-and-carry production systems. Animals would be distributed to farmers who have succeeded in installing hedgerows that contribute to conservation practices. The incentive would popularize the use of contour hedgerows and make it economically attractive to practice conservation. Farmers would receive parent animals and then retain female animal offspring, returning the parent animals so that the program rolls over and expands. International donors may also find such a program to be a sound investment, if it is well managed.

Reorient Forestry Research and Development Forestry in the Philippines will change dramatically in the next 20 years. The extraction of high-value timber from old-growth dipterocarp forests will disappear as the few remaining forests vanish or become protected. The reorientation of forestry to the development of sustainable management systems for secondary forests should begin in earnest. Interest in rehabilitating degraded forests will grow as the real value of timber rises. Tree plantations and farm forestry can then become viable income-producing activities.

Management systems in forestry must be drastically altered, but the technical knowledge base to support these changes is extremely weak. Research on both technical solutions and management systems must be accelerated to provide a sound basis for new directions. Major research efforts will be needed in the following areas: the ecology and management of dipterocarp forests for sustained production, community-oriented forest management, restoration systems for degraded secondary forests, the ecology and management of fire, the impact of policy changes on the supply of wood, and plantation and farm forestry issues. The research must be strongly oriented to the social as well as biologic sciences and requires a systems approach. The development of joint international collaboration will be important to the acceleration of forestry research.

Develop a Research Methodology It is at the interface between forestry and farming that the major future research and development challenges will be encountered ( Figure 6 ). The forestry sector must engage in forestry for the benefit of the land and the people, and the agricultural sector must do the same, thereby creating sustainable upland farming and forestry. An understanding of the constraints and solutions is needed before upland farming populations and government can become effective partners in conserving, managing, and replanting forests while meeting basic subsistence food production needs. Teamwork is essential.

FIGURE 6 Evolution of a more integrated approach to sustainable land use in sloping uplands.

Farming systems research evolved as a framework for a more comprehensive, multidisciplinary attack on the complex constraints in agroecosystems (Harrington et al., 1989). Ecosystem-based research should be targeted to the broader continuum that includes forest management and agriculture. Such work needs a methodology that provides foresters and agriculturalists a common framework within which to interact.

Hart and Sands (1991) have proposed a sustainable land use-systems research strategy based on a farming systems approach that may provide a starting point. It applies a farming systems perspective to the land use system, targeting the land management unit within the context of its biophysical and socioeconomic environments and emphasizes the ecosystem as the starting point of problem analysis and research design ( Figure 7 ).

The watershed is the natural unit on which to base a systems research effort because of the interconnected nature of all land uses

FIGURE 7 A research and development process that could be used by a multidisciplinary team as a guide in the development of an appropriate sustainable land use systems research framework. Source: Hart, R. D., and M. W. Sands. 1991. Sustainable land use systems research. In Sustainable Land Use Systems Research, R. D. Hart and M. W. Sands, eds. Kutztown, Pa.: Rodale Institute.

within a water catchment area, particularly the interplay between uplands and lowlands. The most technically and economically efficient approach would focus on site-specific conservation-oriented farming and forestry technologies. The watershed framework ensures that the social, economic, and political linkages between upstream and downstream lands are not neglected in the analyses (Magrath and Doolette, 1990).

Institutional mechanisms and project structures need to be evolved to make it feasible for the forestry and agricultural sectors to jointly participate in common research and extension work. Professionals in both sectors—long separated by administrative barriers and divergent academic traditions—need to recognize the improved research that can be the result of working together. International donors can assist in generating research opportunities; for example, the Ford Foundation has provided support to a team of foresters and agriculturalists at Central Mindanao University to develop methods of farmer participation in generating practical solutions for sustainable hillside cultivation (Pava et al., 1990).

Colleges of agriculture and forestry need to be encouraged to set up joint academic and research programs targeted to upland ecosystems. The recent initiation of the Committee on Agroforestry at the University of the Philippines, Los Baños, is a step in this direction (R. del Castillo, Agroforestry Program, University of the Philippines, Los Baños, personal communication, 1990). Mechanisms for research collaboration between professionals in DENR and the Department of Agriculture are urgently needed. These may be fostered by an expansion in scope and the participation of the Upland Working Group of DENR (Gibbs et al., 1990). Explicit linkages between the Ecosys-

tems Research and Development Bureau of DENR and the Department of Agriculture's research programs, particularly key community-based forestry and contract reforestation projects, would generate a greater focus on the constraints to using various land use systems in deforested areas. The Philippine Council for Agricultural and Resources Research and Development, which has responsibility for approving and encouraging both agriculture and forestry research, will play a central role in expanding resource management-oriented research.

The Philippines needs a more definitive network of on-farm (field) laboratories in carefully selected watersheds where multidisciplinary research and development teams can focus their efforts. These field laboratories need sustained support with a budget structure that keeps team members working together. These sites would be linked to the less intensive applied research and extension programs carried out by NGOs and government departments. Research should be particularly sensitive to the use of techniques that enhance participatory approaches to rural development, drawing strongly on the technical knowledge of indigenous people in all phases of research (S. Fujisaka, Social Science Division, International Rice Research Institute, Los Bañ os, Philippines, personal communication, 1989).

Support International Research The complex upland sustainability issues faced by the Philippines are common to most countries in Southeast Asia. Because the problems transcend national boundaries, stronger international mechanisms that provide efficient research and development support to the respective nations are needed. A number of institutions and networks are involved with upland resource management (Garrity and Sajise, 1991), including the Southeast Asian Universities Agroecosystems Network, the Asian Rice Farming Systems Network, the International Board for Soils Research and Management (IBSRAM) Sloping Lands Network, and the Multipurpose Tree Species (MPTS) Network.

The major challenge is to evolve new institutional arrangements that direct research toward the upland ecosystem as a totality. A focus on the Southeast Asian upland ecosystem does not fall within the mandate of any of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). But there are major CGIAR initiatives in forestry (Center for International Forestry Research) and agroforestry (the Southeast Asian regional program of the International Centre for Agroforestry Research). Nevertheless, there remains concern that such efforts may address only components of the upland ecosystem, whereas the key to eventual success lies in coping with the interrelatedness of

the problems across sectors and in developing the capacity to strengthen each country's research and development institutions to conceptualize, plan, and implement interventions that are appropriate to each ecosystem. This will require a novel upland ecosystem-based approach to international research. The evolving concept of ecoregional research (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, Technical Advisory Committee, 1991), under which a consortium of international centers is planning a joint long-term effort to develop alternatives to shifting (slash-and-burn) agricultural systems, represents a promising mechanism for providing this leadership.

DELIVERY: INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE, PROGRAMS, AND POLICY

Implement Institutional Changes DENR has recognized that its future role will be primarily in development, replacing its historical role as a regulatory agency. It acknowledges that development and management of production forests and plantation forestry are the domain of the private sector and that it should support and guide this transition (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990). Such a role will require a fundamental restructuring of DENR's administration, policy framework, and staff technical capabilities and attitudes. The recent enactment of the Local Government Code requires the transfer of many DENR functions to local government units, decentralizing resource management and giving much greater authority to local leaders.

The redirection of DENR must specifically include a systematic strengthening of forestry policy and planning capabilities, for which there is substantial support expected from international donors. Operations will need to be further decentralized, with much greater accountability and resources at the local level.

DENR has consistently claimed exclusive control over public forestlands, 55 percent of the land area of the country. However, the majority of that land is devoted to agricultural pursuits, not forestry. The development of sustainable upland agricultural systems is a task for which the Department of Agriculture has a much stronger capability. DENR should recognize the potential role of the Department of Agriculture in providing agricultural and agroforestry research and extension services. Within the past several years, the Department of Agriculture has reoriented its priorities to give much greater attention to upland agriculture. A much greater level of support for upland technology development and extension is required to widen this role.

Vigorously Implement the Master Plan for Forestry Development The Master Plan for Forestry Development (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990) marks a fundamental turning point in the philosophy and methodology of forest management in the Philippines. It provides a basis for a range of reforms and restructuring that is essential to future forest preservation and sustainable land use systems. The master plan contains unrealistically optimistic projections for trends in forest cover, but it provides a framework for the kind of comprehensive, directed effort that is necessary.

Enforce Timber Pricing Reform and Logging Ban New fees for timber cutting based on recent legislation have been increased to 25 percent of the actual market price (for example, for logs with a price of P2,000 [US$80.00] per cubic meter, the fee is P500 [US$20.00]). It remains to be seen how effective the government will be in collecting the increased fees and using them to increase forest protection and management expenditures.

A major national debate on a total logging ban occurred in 1991. DENR directives in 1991 instituted a ban in old-growth dipterocarp forests. Logging in secondary-growth forests was restricted to lands with slopes of less than 50 percent and land less than 1,000 m above sea level. Enforcement of these policies will be impossible, however, unless greater investments in enforcement procedures are made and forest occupants are directly involved in forest preservation through limited use of the forests. An integrated protected area system for the conservation of the most important natural habitats is under development. NGOs are seen to be the key to the successful implementation of this effort. They will assume responsibility for the management of national parks, wildlife refuges, and other wild lands.

Give Priority to People-Oriented Forestry Now that regulation of the forests by the national government has been acknowledged to be inadequate, forest protection through empowerment of people and their communities is officially accepted as the only workable model. Implementation of a successful community forestry program will be an immense organizational task that will require a strong commitment by the forest occupants and upland farmers. Capable NGOs will be a key to the program. If further conversion of forests to agricultural uses is blocked through effective community enforcement and shifting cultivation is to decline, there must be agricultural innovation to maintain viable farming systems on the lands surrounding the forests. The equitable capture of income from the limited harvest of forest products will be crucial to financing this transition.

The implementation of current policy will turn the primary responsibilities for forest protection, tree production, and land conservation over to upland communities, NGOs, and individuals. This grass roots approach will open a new era in the management of the uplands. However, it may not be any more effective in forest conservation than a top-down approach unless local management entities receive appropriate support to develop the complex skills needed to guide their efforts. Community-based organizations will require professional guidance to achieve even minimal management capabilities.

NGOs will be involved in implementing many of the new people-oriented forestry programs. They are working as partners with DENR in contracting reforestation and community forest management projects. Eventually, they might form local environment and natural resource centers that would assist the national government in training and on-farm research. Only a few NGOs are competent to handle community-based resource management on a large scale. A major priority of national and international support must be to strengthen NGOs.

The Timber License Agreements (TLAs), by which logging rights are allocated, need thorough reform. Long-term security is essential to engendering a sustainable management perspective among private forest managers. The national government, however, has the tendency to cancel leases on areas peremptorily, sometimes without due process. Many TLA holders continually fear the cancellation of their leases as political circumstances change, with the consequent loss of their fixed investments in processing plants, infrastructure, and forest development in their areas. Moreover, the total 50-year lease period (an initial 25 years that is renewable for another 25 years) does not provide sufficient time for responsible firms to practice sustained forest management. Dipterocarp forests require at least 30 to 40 years for each cutting cycle, and cutting cycles are often much longer. To overcome the destructive short-term perspective, longer lease periods will be necessary. However, these will be accompanied by much stricter enforcement of sustainable forestry practices, making the threat of cancellation solely contingent on quantifiable performance standards. TLAs will be given to only a few firms that demonstrate a people-oriented management focus.

Coordinate International Donor Imperatives Foreign assistance has been critical in all facets of the change toward people-oriented forestry and forest policy reform that has emerged in the Philippines in the recent past. The Ford Foundation 's sustained support for research on social forestry developed the knowledge and institutional base for government to test the concept. Innovative projects supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (particu-

larly the Rainfed Resources Development Project) and the World Bank enabled new models of upland management to be implemented on a trial basis. Because the administrative and policy environment has shifted in a favorable direction, international aid to ensure the success of new models will be even more crucial.

The overall effort needs a comprehensive blueprint for sustainable upland management. The Master Plan for Forestry Development (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990) is an important step in this direction. A coordinated donor approach to upland development could assist in rationalizing the priorities and ensuring that the effort is comprehensive and consistent. The redirection of programs within DENR and the Department of Agriculture will place tremendous pressure on their limited staffs and resources. It is essential that staff supported by international projects be equally distributed among programs managed by the departments. However, project aid should be contingent on identifiable progress made by the national government in implementing policy and institutional change over a set period of time. NGOs are envisioned to assume a vastly greater role in upland development.

Deforestation Scenarios

The Master Plan for Forestry Development (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990) is an appropriate starting point for anticipating future land use scenarios in the Philippine uplands. The plan recognizes the limitations of past forestry management and attempts to formulate a macrolevel plan to change the nature of the forestry sector. Specifically (Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 1990:60),

the forestry sector of the country will be directed in the long run towards a condition whereby all of the forest resources will be under efficient and equitable management, conservation, and utilization, satisfying in appropriate ways and on a sustainable basis the needs of the people for forest-based commodities and services.

The master plan presents three scenarios to the year 2015 based on (1) a continuation of the status quo, (2) the implementation of a total logging ban, and (3) the implementation of the master plan. If implemented, the master plan would provide for extensive reforestation, continued logging of secondary forests on a commercial scale, and an aggressive integrated social forestry program. The estimated increase in total protection and production forests would be from 6.693 million ha in 1990 to 8.422 million ha in 2015.

Several major shortcomings of the plan have led to overly optimistic projections. The master plan states that total forest cover in 1990 was 6.694 million ha; however, the Philippine–German Forest Resources Inventory Project (Forest Management Bureau, 1988) concluded that forest cover in 1988 was only 6.461 million ha. The master plan may have started with a larger forest base than is justified.

The master plan assumed a deforestation rate of 88,000 ha/year in 1990. The Philippine–German Forest Resources Inventory Project (Forest Management Bureau, 1988) determined the deforestation rate to have been 210,300 ha/year between 1969 and 1988 and suggested a rate of about 130,000 ha/year in 1987–1988. Kummer (1990) calculated the rate to have been 157,000 ha/year from 1980 to 1987. It is likely that the current deforestation rate is significantly greater than the master plan's assumption.

The master plan indicates that reforestation increased from 40,000 ha in 1987 to 131,000 ha in 1989. Such a rapid increase appears optimistic, considering the actual maximum plantation survival rates of 50 to 70 percent. The sustainability of such rates is also uncertain. The master plan also assumes that secondary forests can be managed effectively to achieve sustained yields. Little evidence is available to support this, particularly the expectation that selectively logged forests can be returned to their full stocks in 20 to 40 years.

Overall, the master plan does not adequately address the numerous constraints that may limit its success. Given the past failure of Philippine forest management, the current political and economic uncertainties, and the sustained commitment of personnel and resources that is necessary, the master plan appears to be overly optimistic, even if one were to assume a best-case scenario.

Table 10 presents three scenarios of projected trends in the natural forest cover of the Philippines. These estimates were constructed to envelop the range of forested areas that may be expected. The baseline scenario assumes a current rate of forest loss of 125,000 ha/ year that gradually decreases to 25,000 ha/year by 2015. It assumes that it will be about a decade before there is an effective capability to enforce policies that limit either old-growth or secondary forest loss and that a moderate rate of reforestation (75,000 ha/year) will begin to significantly reduce the pressure on the natural forest after 2000.

The worst-case scenario assumes that the political and economic fortunes of the Philippines will deteriorate during the 1990s. Reforestation rates would decline to 25,000 ha/year ( Table 11 ). Natural forest cover loss would continue to exceed 100,000 ha/year into the first decade of the twenty-first century because of the lack of enforcement capability and political uncertainty. The natural forest cover would be reduced to 3.32 million ha by 2015.

TABLE 10 Scenarios of Natural Forest Cover in the Philippines, 1990 –2015

TABLE 11 Alternative Reforestation Scenarios of Natural and Plantation Forests in the Philippines, 1990–2015 (Hectares)

TABLE 12 Estimates of Forest Cover in 2015 Based on Three Scenarios (in Hectares)

In the best case scenario, it is assumed that the master plan will be largely successful. Substantial annual reforestation (100,000 ha/ year) will occur, and deforestation will drop to negligible levels by 2015. The natural forest cover at that time would be 4.90 million ha. This compares with the 5.40 million ha estimated to result from full implementation of the master plan ( Table 12 ). The master plan assumes a confluence of numerous optimistic assumptions in limiting natural forest losses, for which the cumulative probability is low. However, the two scenarios provide similar estimates for the area of coverage achieved in forest plantations by the year 2015 (2.90 million versus 3.00 million ha), up from less than 0.50 million ha in 1991. The Philippines will be highly dependent on the successful expansion of plantation forestry to avoid the complete loss of natural forest cover.

The next 30 years will be a crucial period for the Philippines. Recognition is dawning that many aspects of life will be changed. The land frontier that had always existed as a safety valve for poor and dispossessed people has disappeared during the present generation. The forest resources that had seemed virtually inexhaustible were expended in a prodigal manner. Yet, the population that relies on extractable resources from the uplands is growing as rapidly as ever. The ecologic balance has been lost, and national awareness of the dire implications of this loss is only beginning to emerge. It is difficult for a country to learn how to cope with circumstances in which all of the old assumptions are overturned. Such a serious crisis, however, also offers opportunities to take bolder steps than would be politically feasible in better times. It will be a period in which the willingness to experiment with new solutions will grow.

What is the desired vision of the state of the uplands in 2015 emerging from the current national debate? It is one of a much denser

upland population than was previously anticipated. However, uplanders will be involved in managing forestlands and farmlands in novel ways. Families that occupy upland farms will have a form of secure land tenure by which they can gain credit to intensify and diversify their farming systems. Perennial and tree cropping systems will be common enterprises and will be integrated with livestock and food crop production. Cropping systems will use improved cultivars along with soil fertility-enhancing fertilizer and lime amendments and will be practiced on slopes that are naturally terraced with vegetative barriers. The structural transformation of the national economy will have occurred, and the population of the rural uplands will gradually have begun to decline.

In 2015, large areas of degraded grasslands will be managed as farm forests planted by individuals and communities under secure land tenure agreements. The natural production forests will be managed by local communities—with guidance from professional foresters—by using low-disturbance logging methods with animal labor. Indigenous communities will have secure control of their ancestral lands. The preservation forests and protected areas will be managed by communities and NGOs in collaboration with the national government. Much of the Philippines' remaining biodiversity will have been lost in this period, but protection will have stabilized some of the most representative habitats.

Such a picture of the future of the uplands may be overly optimistic. It embodies landmark changes in philosophy and policy that are now accepted by the national government and some that are already part of existing programs. The critical concern, however, is whether the political will and the management capacity can be developed to thoroughly implement the changes. During the years between now and then, judicious international assistance in research, training, policy, and financing will be critical.

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Talbot, L. M., and M. A. Talbot. 1964. Renewable Natural Resources in the Philippines—Status, Problems, and Recommendations. Manila, Philippines: International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources .

Tamesis, F. 1937. General Information on Philippine Forests. Manila, Philippines: Bureau of Printing.

Tamesis, F. 1948. Philippine forests and forestry. Unasylva 6:316–325.

Thapa, B. B. 1991. Evaluation of Infiltration, Surface Runoff, and Soil Losses at Various Levels of Rainfall in Relation to Surface Cover, Tillage and Soil Management Practices. Master's thesis. University of the Philippines, Los Baños.

Thung, H. L. 1972. An Evaluation of the Impact of a Highway on a Rural Environment in Thailand by Aerial Photographic Methods. Ph.D. dissertation. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Tiongzon, M. L., A. Regalado, and R. Pascual. 1986. Philippine Agriculture in the 70s and 80s: TNC's Boon, Peasants' Doom. Agricultural Policy Studies No. 2. Quezon City, Philippines: Philippine Peasant Institute.

Torres, R. O., and D. P. Garrity. 1990. Evaluation of batao (Lablab purpureus L. Sweet) as a dual purpose component of upland cropping patterns . Paper presented at the 6th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Federation of Crop Science Societies of the Philippines, Naga City, Philippines, May 16–18, 1990.

Torres, R. O., R. D. Magbanua, and D. P. Garrity. 1988. Evaluation of cow-peas as legume component in acid upland rice-based cropping systems. Philippine J. Crop Sci. 13(2):91–98.

Torres, R. O., D. P. Garrity, R. J. Buresh, R. K. Pandey, R. T. Bantilan, F. M. Tumacas, and A. Montecalvo. 1989. Production in rice-based rainfed upland cropping systems. Paper presented at the 5th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Federation of Crop Science Societies of the Philippines, Iloilo City, Philippines, April, 26–28, 1989.

Umali, R. M. 1981. Forestland assessment and management for sustainable uses in the Philippines. Pp. 289–301 in Assessing Tropical Forestlands: Their Suitability for Sustainable Uses, R. A. Carpenter, ed. Dublin: Tycooly.

U.S. Agency for International Development. 1980. Preliminary Analysis of Philippine Poverty as a Base for a U.S. Assistance Strategy. Manila, Philippines: U.S. Agency for International Development.

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Rainforests are rapidly being cleared in the humid tropics to keep pace with food demands, economic needs, and population growth. Without proper management, these forests and other natural resources will be seriously depleted within the next 50 years.

Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment in the Humid Tropics provides critically needed direction for developing strategies that both mitigate land degradation, deforestation, and biological resource losses and help the economic status of tropical countries through promotion of sustainable agricultural practices. The book includes:

• A practical discussion of 12 major land use options for boosting food production and enhancing local economies while protecting the natural resource base.
• Recommendations for developing technologies needed for sustainable agriculture.
• A strategy for changing policies that discourage conserving and managing natural resources and biodiversity.
• Detailed reports on agriculture and deforestation in seven tropical countries.

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Philippine Agriculture is Dying—What Will It Take to Save it?

Posted by Joseph Purugganan | Aug 6, 2021 | Opinion/Analysis , Philippines

The Rice Trade Liberalization Law signed by Duterte in February 2019 was strongly opposed by farmers. Photo by Joseph Purugganan. March 2019

By Walden Bello*

There are various adjectives that people use to describe Philippine agriculture these days, but “healthy” is not one of them. Most often, the adjective is “neglected.” Sometimes, “stagnant.” But perhaps the most accurate is “dying.”

Duterte’s Insight

At the start of his victory speech in Davao on June 4, 2016, President-elect Rodrigo Duterte unexpectedly launched into an attack on the World Trade Organization, saying that the “onslaught of the WTO on an unprepared country” had created a crisis for sugar, rice, and other agricultural products. “We have become dependent on importation. You can no longer go to any country in ASEAN and say we won’t buy your products because we can produce it here. We have to buy them.” [1]

One may disagree with the president on many things, as I do, but on this matter, the central cause of the crisis of Philippine agriculture, he was right on the mark.

The fight over becoming a member of the World Trade Organization during the presidency of President Fidel Ramos was the most important struggle over economic policy in the first two decades of the 21st century. Those who opposed membership lost the battle but they were correct that the consequences would be terrible for Philippine agriculture. The vibrant and efficient agriculture creating “500,000 new jobs a year” that had been promised by advocates of membership did not materialize. Instead, our agriculture went into a tailspin.

Destabilizing Philippine Agriculture

In the years prior to our joining the WTO, our annual agricultural trade was most often in surplus. The last time our agricultural trade was in surplus was in 1993. Since we joined the WTO in 1995, our agricultural trade went into deficit, growing from $149 million in 1995 to $960 million in 2005 to a whopping $7.9 billion in 2019.[2]

Twenty-six years after we joined the WTO, not only have we eliminated all quotas on agricultural products–including the last one, on rice, in 2019; according to the the US Department of Agriculture, Philippine tariffs, which replaced quotas, are now “among the lowest in the region and often close to the preferential rates” offered to members of ASEAN.[3] Not surprisingly, import penetration of almost all agricultural commodities is quite high, translating into huge profits for foreign producers and local importers and into a permanent crisis for local producers. The Philippines is, in fact, a classic example of how to turn a highly self-sufficient agricultural economy into a highly import-dependent one.

The reason often given for the reversal of agricultural trade from surplus to deficit is that Filipino farmers are inefficient, that their costs of production are too high, making them uncompetitive with foreign exporters. This is a case of a falsehood repeated often enough that it takes on the status of truth, to paraphrase Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chieftain. The explanation, rather, is that our farmers can’t compete because our agricultural market has become a dumping ground for foreign commodities that can be sold at dirt cheap prices because their producers are highly subsidized. This is very clear with respect to the US and the European Union, the two biggest exporters of agricultural products to the Philippines.

In the nearly three decades since we entered the WTO, the US has become the country’s top supplier of agricultural goods, accounting for 21 per cent of imports, followed by the European Union, whose share is 11 per cent.[4] This is no cause for surprise since state subsidies for American and European Union farmers are the highest in the world. In 2020, the US agricultural sector received a record $46.8 billion in subsidies, which translated to government subsidizing 39 per cent of the average American farmer’s cost of production.[5] In the European Union, total subsidies have totaled over 50 billion euros yearly, translating to the average European Union farmer being subsidized to the tune of 20 per cent of the cost of production.[6] With such a huge chunk of their cost of production covered by government subsidies, one can no longer speak about US and European Union agriculture as being run on free market lines but as socialist agriculture.

Now, I have no problem with socialist agriculture, but when the two biggest global producers practice socialist subsidization in a global capitalist trading system where smaller producers like the Philippines engage in the free market, the result is massive dislocation and marginalization for the latter. The reason is that massive subsidization has what experts have describes as the “pernicious” effect of promoting overproduction in the US and the European Union, and this leads to dumping of excess produce in world markets, leading to lower world prices for agricultural commodities.[7] Those prices cannot be matched by local farmers, who have to foot the total cost of production themselves since that they run on a purely free market system and enjoy little or no subsidies from government that would allow them to be price competitive.

In the case of the Philippines, with the elimination of quotas as decreed by the WTO and the so-called Minimum Access Volumes (MAV’s) providing little protection, dumping of massively subsidized products triggered crises in the corn, pig, poultry, and vegetable sectors, leading to the bankruptcy of large numbers of small and medium producers and increased poverty across the board in a country where poverty had already been concentrated in the rural areas. The desperation of Philippine producers was echoed by one of our negotiators at a meeting of the WTO Agricultural Committee in Geneva: “Our agricultural sectors that are strategic to food and livelihood security and rural employment,” he told the body, “have already been destabilized as our small producers are being slaughtered in our own markets, [and] even the most resilient and efficient are in distress.”[8]

The much-publicized opposition to large-scale pork imports by hog farmers in 2020 to make up for the short-fall in domestic supply caused by the spread Asian Swine Flu owed itself to their fears that, having been swamped periodically by unwarranted surges in pork imports in the past, the ASF virus would serve as the excuse for the technocrats at the Department of Agriculture to permanently institutionalize massive importing, allegedly to benefit consumers.

The Agony of Rice Farming

The agony of our rice agriculture had been going on for three decades before President Duterte signed the Rice Tariffication Act in 2019 that effectively put an end to its suffering by proclaiming a death sentence.

Under the Agreement of Agriculture (AOA) of the WTO, developing countries were allowed to retain a quota or import restriction on one commodity. In the case of the Philippines, it was rice. The country was required to import rice that amounted to 4 per cent of domestic consumption and none beyond that. But, in fact, the government imported amounts far beyond the figure demanded by the agreement, with imports shooting up from 263,000 MT (metric tons) in 1995 to 2.1 million MT in 1998, 836,999 MT in 1999, and 639,000 MT in 2000. High levels of imports continued over the next two decades, the figure being dependent not so much on estimates of domestic consumption but on the lobbying power of domestic rice importers and foreign exporters at the National Food Authority, making the NFA one of the most corrupt agencies of the government.

The impact on our rice producers was disastrous, since it was near to impossible to compete with super-subsidized Thai rice and Vietnamese rice, which President-elect Duterte in June 2016 correctly identified as the sources of the misery of our rice farmers. For instance, under the Rice Farmer Assistance Program that was in place from 2011 to 2014, the Thai government paid farmers about $450 a metric ton for their rice. Because that was above the market price for rice, stocks mounted, shooting up to 15 million tons, leading the government to dump rice into the export market for $380 to $390 a metric ton to recoup part of the cost of its subsidies. [9]

Similarly, in Vietnam, the government subsidizes its farmers to the tune of $236 per metric ton, and the rice purchased in this program has to be exported, that is, dumped at low prices in countries like the Philippines. As in the case of Thailand, dumping rice in global markets is a way to recoup part of the costs of subsidization. And like Thailand, Vietnam was said to greatly breaching the limits set for subsidies by the WTO, which should come to no more than 10 per cent of the value of production.[10]

The common assumption is that the ending of the rice quota and its replacement with tariffs with the passage of the Rice Tariffication Act came about owing to concerns about rice security. In fact, the quota had been breached so many times in the previous 27 years, not owing to a real shortfall in supply but to the pressure of the powerful rice import lobby. But one actor wanted to repeal it altogether, and that was the United States, which was the informal but main enforcer of WTO rules on member countries as it aggressively tried to open up markets for its heavily subsidized products.

The quota on rice imports was supposed to end on June 30, 2012, but in July 2014, under pressure from rice farmers, the Philippines was able to secure an agreement with the WTO extending it to July 2017. To get the US nod on this extension, however, the Philippines committed to signing a bilateral agreement reducing its tariffs on a variety of agricultural products, including buttermilk, cheese, grapes, poultry, and walnuts.[11] Under pressure from the US, the Duterte administration agreed not to seek an extension of the rice quota after 2017 and begin moves to draft a law to replace the quota with tariffs. How the full court press of Washington achieved the desired goal is recounted with candor by the US Trade Representatives’ Office:

The Philippine President issued Executive Order No. 23 in May 2017, which unilaterally extended [to the US] tariff concessions (e.g., for mechanically deboned poultry meat) until the Philippines enacted a law on the tariffication of rice. While the Philippine Congress considered the rice tariffication law, the United States encouraged Philippine industry to advocate for maintaining tariff concessions as a way to stimulate economic activity and ensure affordable food prices. As part of an October 2018 Joint Statement concluded under the United States-Philippines TIFA, the Philippines recognized the U.S. interest in the extension of Philippine tariff rates on certain agricultural products. The Philippines also committed to expeditious consideration of petitions for the extension of such rates, consistent with established procedural rules.[12]

The agency then points out that the upshot of all this lobbying was that the “Philippine President signed rice tariffication legislation into law on February 14, 2019,”[13] replacing rice quantitative restrictions with a 35 per cent import tariff.

During his last State of the Nation address on July 26, 2021, President Duterte appeared to have forgotten his assertion five years earlier that the WTO was principally responsible for the crisis of Philippine rice agriculture. He offered no justification for the sentence of death he had given it, the Rice Tariffication Act of 2019, except a limpid statement it would stabilize the country’s supply of rice and that the revenues from it would be spent on modern agricultural machinery.[14] But then there was no way of prettifying his waving the white flag. Even the most pro-tariffication study, one done by the Philippine Institute of Development Studies in February of 2021, could not dispute the fact that “[R]ice tariffication ultimately causes an increase in income poverty, across a variety of measures, geographic categories, and time,” [15] because they would not be able to compete with cheap, subsidized rice.

It is true that Philippine agriculture was not in the best of health when we entered the WTO in 1995, but the cure, import liberalization on our part as the rich countries maintained their highly subsidized trade structures was a cure far worse than the disease. As the leading agricultural policy think tank, the Washington, DC-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), warned, “[W]ithout reform of agricultural trade barriers in industrialized countries, import liberalization in the developing world will perpetuate unfair competition.”[16]

The Absentee State

While being the central cause of the crisis of Philippine agriculture, WTO-imposed liberalization was not the only problem. Another was a state that was content to leave agriculture in a state of neglect, benign or otherwise. As other developing countries, such as Thailand and Vietnam, poured money into subsidies, research and development, and infrastructure, the Philippines skimped on spending. A good part of the reason is that the structural adjustment programs imposed by the World Bank and the IMF beginning with the presidencies of Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos in the late eighties and early nineties left very little money for capital expenditures after spending for personnel and operations.

Also robbing the country of resources for capital expenditures was the Automatic Appropriations Law requiring that repaying foreign creditors must be prioritized in the budget, which meant that some 20 to 40 per cent of the budget annually was allocated to foreign debt service in the period from 1986 to 2015.

From 5.5 per cent of the total budget during the Marcos regime, funding for agriculture dwindled in succeeding administrations, coming to 3.6 per cent during the nine-year reign of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. [17] By the end of the Arroyo administration, the area under irrigation, at 1.3 million out of 4.7 million hectares, was practically the same as that under Marcos a quarter of a century earlier.[18]  Crop yields sagged across the board: the average of 2.8 metric tons of rice per hectare was way below the yields in China and Vietnam. [19] Farm to market roads are key to agricultural productivity but by the end of the 1990’s, only 17 per cent of the Philippines road network was paved, compared with 82 per cent in Thailand and 75 per cent in Malaysia.[20] The parlous state of government support was underlined by the fact that although the Agreement on Agriculture allowed countries a rate of subsidization of 10 per cent of the total value of production, the Philippines could only manage an average of four per cent overall, with government market price supports for rice at a measly five per cent and for corn at one per cent.[21]

The Agrarian Reform Mess

Another major reason for the crisis of Philippine agriculture have been the uncertainties surrounding the agrarian reform program. After nearly 35 years, the agrarian reform program has stalled. As of 2015, some 700,000 hectares remained undistributed—about 450,000 of which were private lands that were among the most productive in the country.[22]

The backlog in land redistribution was not the only problem. Support services were severely underfunded and, in many instances, not provided at all to land reform beneficiaries. Equally problematic was the lack of security of tenure. Many land reform beneficiaries were actually nominal titleholders for landlords seeking to maintain effective control of “redistributed” lands. Moreover, in many parts of the country, landlords brought cases against beneficiaries that had already received certificates of land ownership (CLOAs) in an effort to regain their lands.[23]

Pervasive insecurity of property rights discouraged smallholders from investing to make their land more productive and banks from providing credit to them. As a result, as one study put it, “large numbers [of farmers] have been abandoning the countryside for what they see as the lack of opportunities resulting from persisting inequalities and the absence of incentives. Their logic is compelling: better to take your chances in Saudi Arabia than scratch a living from land from which you can get evicted any time.”[24]  Agrarian reform need not be a drag on development. In fact, it can be the engine of development, as was the case in South Korea and Taiwan. The Philippines, in contrast, is an object lesson on the perils of half-way or indecisive agrarian reform.

The Anti-Agriculture Mindset

The parlous state of agriculture is also connected to the fact that the most dynamic sectors of the economic elite appear to have lost interest in agriculture as a source of wealth. As sociologist Kenneth Cardenas has argued, Filipino capitalists value land as a source of wealth, but instead of using it as a base for agricultural pursuits, they are using it for real estate development not just in the old urban centers but in the suburban periphery.[25]  The highest rates of return on investment come from shopping malls, office buildings, middle and upper middle class housing, and tourist attractions in what used to be rice fields.

Where land has not yet been transformed into malls, rural elites often leave them empty and unplanted, waiting for land values to rise as suburban expansion stretches to the rural hinterland, then selling at the “right price” at the “right time.” You just need to travel north and south of Metro Manila to realize that what used to be thousands of hectares of productive farmland in Calabarzon, Bulacan, and Pampanga in the 1990’s have, in the twinkling of an eye, been turned into an urban landscape.

There appears to be more than narrow economic calculus at work in the decline of the countryside. Much development thinking among technocrats, economists, and the business sector is centered on improving the atmosphere for business activities in the city, promoting a dynamic real estate industry, supporting the growth of financial services, and attracting more investment in BPO (“Business Process Outsourcing”) activities. Development is anchored on servicing the needs of a growing globalized middle class. In this mindset, agriculture is an afterthought, and food security is one that can be met with increased imports.

In this paradigm, the over 50 per cent of the population that rely on agriculture or agriculture-related activities for their living are caught up in a low-value-added enterprise that is not a dynamic source of development, the main engine of which is seen to be urban economic activities fueled by foreign investment, financial services, and billions of OFW remittances. From this perspective, the bulk of the population that remains in agriculture is “excess baggage” constituting a drag on development, the main solution to which is not to make them more productive but to siphon their ranks to overseas work to earn dollars that can then be recycled to their families to spend in urban consumption.

What is to be Done?

For those that believe that agriculture is critical to our economy, our society, and our culture, there are important measures to be taken to revive this neglected sector.

First, it is important to find ways to stop or reduce the dumping of foreign agricultural commodities on our agricultural markets, using both those mechanisms allowed by the WTO and those that may not. Owing to US unilateralism that has paralyzed the dispute settlement system, the WTO Is today a much weaker body than it was 26 years ago. Skillful legal navigation can enable us to escape fulfilling many of its onerous impositions without incurring penalties, as many countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand, are doing, despite protests from the US and the WTO.

Second, agrarian reform must be decisively completed and supported with adequate support services and strong legal action must be made available to prevent landlords from retaking land. A prosperous agriculture based on successful land reform converted the countryside in Taiwan and Korea into a beehive of prosperous smallholders whose demand triggered their industrial take-off in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. With enough political will, the Philippines can follow in their footsteps.

Third, government must no longer be simply a passive force but serve as an active developmental agent that furnishes the support for small and medium landholders that mere market incentives cannot provide. This support should be in three forms: one, programs such as direct assistance and credit support that enable farmers to improve their performance; two, legal assistance to secure security of tenure, and three, leadership in providing a vision of a dynamic agricultural future and assistance in organizing farmers as an effective pressure group.

Four, we must abandon the anti-agricultural bias of neoliberal technocrats and economists who see agriculture in narrow terms as a loss-making activity that entails a large opportunity cost from more profitable ventures and make it serve instead, with the right policies, as the engine of a development process that brings about prosperous, equitable, and sustainable development. In short, we must get rid of a mentality that results in agrocide.

Finally, and perhaps this is the most difficult challenge, our agriculture must be adapted to the needs of an era of rapid climate change and environmental crises. With its low carbon intensity, small-scale agriculture that combines ecologically resilient traditional technology with advanced technology has increasingly been seen as the best way to do agriculture in the era of climate change. The economic interest of small farmers and the well-being of the climate are increasingly converging, and government can play a positive role in accelerating their convergence.

Philippine agriculture is dying. It will take decisive steps to save it—and the Development Bank of the Philippines can contribute to this challenge.#

*Walden Bello is chairperson of the Board of Rights, a farmers’ support organization and senior analyst at the Bangkok-based think tank Focus on the Global South. He is the author of The Food Wars (2009) and co-author of Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines (1982), The Anti-Development State: The Political Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines (2004), and State of Fragmentation: The Philippines in Transition.

This article is drawn from a presentation  at a seminar of the Development Bank of the Philippines on August 5, 2021 and will appear as a two-part series in Rappler.

[1] “Rodrigo Duterte’s Speech at His Thanksgiving Party,” June 4, 2016, Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXNv7qetYKA

[2] Philippine Statistical Authority , Selected Agricultural Statistics , 1997, 2007, 2016, 2020

[3] USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, “Philippines 2019 Export Highlights,” https://www.fas.usda.gov/philippines-2019-export-highlights

  [5] Chuck Abbott, “Record-High Agricultural Subsidies to Supply 39 per cent of Farm Income,” Successful Farming, March 12, 2020, https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/record-high-ag-subsidies-to-supply-39-of-farm-income

[6] Ian Mitchell and Arthur Baker, “New Estimates of European Union Agricultural Support,” Center for Global Development , Nov 2019, pp. 1-2.

[8] Submission of the Republic of the Philippines, World Trade Organization Committee on Agriculture, Geneva, July 1, 2003.

[9] Forrest Laws, “Rice subsidy program cost Thailand $27 billion,” Farm Progress , April 3, 2015, https://www.farmprogress.com/rice/rice-subsidy-program-cost-thailand-27-billion

[11] United States Trade Representative’s Office, 2021 National Trade Estimate on Foreign Trade Barriers (Washington, DC: USTR, 2021), p. 418.

[14] CNN Philippines, “Full Text: President Rodrigo Duterte’s 2021 State of the Nation Address,” July 21, 2021, https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2021/7/27/Duterte-SONA-2021-full-text.html

[15] Roehlano Briones, “Does Rice Tariffication in the Philippines Worsen Income Poverty?,” Policy Notes , Philippine Institute of Development Studies (PIDS), No. 2021-02 (Feb 2021), p. 6.

[16] Quoted in “Trade Facts,” Business World , Sept 5-6, 2003, p. 28.

[17] Government data provided by Riza Bernabe, personal communication, May 5, 2008.

[18] Walden Bello, “The Philippines: Failed State, Failed Economy,” in Walden Bello et al., State of Fragmentation: The Philippines in Transition (Manila: Focus on the Global South, 2014), p. 14.

[19] Rovik Obanil, “Rice Safety Nets Act: More of a Burden than a Shield,” Farm News and Views (1 st Quarter 2002), p. 10.

[20] Bello, ibid.

[21] Walden Bello et al., The Anti-Development State: The Political Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines (Manila: Anvil, 2009), p. 151.

[22] Mary Ann Manahan, “Agrarian Atrophy and the Changing Countryside,” in Bello et al., State of Fragmentation, p. 112.

[23] Ibid ., p. 110.

[24] Bello, “The Philippines: Failed State, Failed Economy, p. 16

[25] Kenneth Cardenas, “Urban Property Development and the Creative Destruction of Filipino Capitalism,” in State of Fragmentation , pp. 35-65.

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Transforming Philippine Agriculture: During Covid-19 and Beyond (June 2020)

Attachments.

MANILA, September 9, 2020--- Transforming Philippine agriculture into a dynamic, high-growth sector is essential for the country to speed up recovery, poverty reduction and inclusive growth, according to the latest report released by the World Bank.

Titled " Transforming Philippine Agriculture During Covid-19 and Beyond ," the report says that transforming the country's farming and food systems is even more important during the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure strong food value chains, affordable and nutritious food, and a vibrant rural economy.

"Modernizing the country's agricultural sector is a very important agenda for the Philippines," said Ndiame Diop, World Bank Country Director Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. "With the exception of a few small natural resource-rich countries, no country has successfully transitioned from middle- to high-income status without having achieved an effective transformation of their agri-food systems. Transforming agriculture and food systems is always challenging. But the country's new vision for agriculture, it's current thrust for diversification and use of modern technologies, and its effective management of food supply during this pandemic clearly indicate that the country is well-equipped to overcome the challenge."

"Our vision is a food-secure and resilient Philippines with prosperous farmers and fisherfolk," Agriculture Secretary William Dar said. "Realizing this vision will require dedicated efforts among major agri-fishery industry stakeholders, led by the Department of Agriculture, to continuously empower farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural entrepreneurs, and the private sector to increase agricultural productivity and profitability, taking into account sustainability and resilience."

The report, which was prepared as part of World Bank support to the Department of Agriculture's "new thinking" in agricultural development, suggests shifting away from a heavy focus on specific crops towards improving the overall resilience, competitiveness, and sustainability of the rural sector.

In the past, spending has gone mostly toward price supports for selected crops and goods, as well as subsidies on inputs such as fertilizer, planting materials, and machines. Global experience shows that while ensuring the availability of key inputs remain important, reorienting significant public spending toward investments in public goods---including research and development (R&D), infrastructure, innovation systems, market information systems, and biosecurity systems---results in faster poverty reduction and greater productivity gains through an overall modernization of agriculture.

The report says that small farmers have difficulty accessing inputs and markets for their produce, while buyers such as agribusiness enterprises and wholesalers find it difficult to get the quantity and quality of produce that they need for processing on a timely basis. Government support can help overcome this market failure by bringing together buyers and producer organizations and providing support for the preparation and implementation of profitable business plans that benefit both parties.

In situations where farmers need support to help them access markets and improve their livelihood, or when compensation measures are needed for farmers affected by trade policies such as the rice liberalization in the Philippines, direct cash payments or cash transfers can be a better option, as practiced in many countries like Turkey, European Union, and the US, says the report. These direct payments have many advantages, such as giving farmers more choices and encouraging private sector development in upstream (inputs and agricultural services) and downstream (processing, marketing) markets, thereby helping farmers connect to these markets and opportunities.

The report says that interventions like farm consolidation (including cooperative farming schemes for instance), better extension services, e-commerce, and investments in agribusiness start-ups can further advance modernization of Philippine agriculture.

"These paradigm shifts will be crucial to meet the emerging domestic and global market opportunities, while creating jobs, raising farmer incomes and ensuring the food security needs of the country and meeting the new challenges of climate change," said Dina Umali-Deininger, World Bank Practice Manager for Agriculture and Food for East Asia and the Pacific.

World Bank's support to the Philippines includes long-running programs aiming to raise agricultural productivity and reduce poverty in rural communities. A current example of this is the Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) which aims to help increase rural incomes and enhance farm and fishery productivity.

Several projects are in the pipeline to help raise agricultural productivity, resiliency and access to markets of farmers and fisherfolk in selected ancestral domains in Mindanao and improve management of coastal fishery resources in selected coastal communities.

PRESS RELEASE NO: 2020/04/PH

David Llorito

[email protected]

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Facing the big challenges in Philippine Agriculture

As the Philippines dealt with the ‘perfect storm’ – the COVID-19 pandemic, African Swine Fever (ASF), and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war – agriculture is among the sectors to receive the hardest blow, feeling every inch of strain, horrifying the entire food system altogether. The Department of Agriculture (DA), under the leadership of outgoing President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, left no stone unturned to lessen, if not totally eradicate, the devastating impacts that are rippling out beyond borders and across societies, further increasing indignant instability.

While the country is slowly going back to its normalcy after battling the COVID-19 pandemic for more than two years now, the current health crisis continues to dampen global goods trade, amplifying job and income losses of most middle- and low income Filipinos. At the onset of the crisis, food supply chains were shackled, imposing restrictions on the movement of goods as well as people. These protection measures resulted to food price inflation, further increasing hunger and poverty incidences.

The DA acted upon this with urgency, employing measures to cushion the impact of the pandemic to the already ailing Filipinos. The Department wasted no time in restructuring its public funds and programs, allowing movement of agricultural goods, access to affordable food, providing protection and intervention to local farmers and fisherfolk, all for the assurance of food security.

Among the DA’s interventions include the farmers’ and fisherfolk’s access to credit and other financing programs and technical support, establishment of the Kadiwa ni Ani at Kita, provision and distribution of farm inputs, equipment, and machineries, promotion of urban farming/gardening, among others, to keep the food production chain going.

The persistence of the ASF is still holding the country hostage, where the speed and severity of its damage has collapsed the hog industry. The DA took strides to stop the spread of the ASF virus through precautionary culls while compensating local hog raisers. The DA distributed more than P2 billion as indemnification to affected swine farmers.

To prepare the country in transboundary animal diseases and its proliferation within Philippine borders, the DA has put in place stricter biosecurity control measures in tandem with the Philippine Ports Authority, Bureau of Customs, and the local government units (LGUs). According to the Secretary, this will be a common practice to prevent or at least minimize the future risks of transboundary animal diseases. The Department has also collaborated with public and private partners in the development of a vaccine against ASF – a first of its kind in the Philippines.

Secretary Dar said that the ASF vaccine’s initial trial from February 10 to May 6 in San Miguel, Bulacan, showed promising results. “In the trial, no clinical signs associated with ASF disease were observed and minimal non-ASF related mortality was posted,” the agri chief said.

Rice Tariffication Law (RTL)

The enactment of the RTL since 2019 is considered the crescendo of the Duterte administration. It has raised so many controversies, even accusing the DA to be anti-farmers.

Since the 80’s, restrictive trade and regulatory policies have stunted the growth of the country’s rice industry. For more than 30 years, the National Food Authority (NFA), whose monopoly power rests over imports and prices, dominated the rice market. As a result, Filipino consumers pay high prices of rice in the market, the government keeps on subsidizing NFA losses, while rice farmers remain poorest of the poor. It was in 2018 when a severe rice shortage became a major driver of inflation, rising by a factor of 10. With the Philippines being a rice-eating country, the effects were disheartening as rice is a basic household expenditure of every Filipino family, rich or poor.

The political will of President Duterte gave a massive turn to the rice sector, when he signed the RTL into law. Basically, this replaced rice import quantitative restrictions with tariffs.

This resulted to two major things: (1) rice is no longer a main contributor to inflation, benefitting millions of Filipino rice consumers as rice prices were made cheaper by an average of almost P7/kg., and (2) P10 B-fund to make rice farmers more competitive.

“The RTL has increased the purchasing power among the bottom 40 percent of the income groups due to the savings they gained from lower rice prices,” the agriculture chief said.

Moreover, with the inflow of tariffs, the government created a P10-billion Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF). Under the RTL, all import duties collected from rice imports will be used for RCEF that will ultimately benefit Filipino rice farmers: provision of quality, certified seeds, farm machinery and equipment, financial support, and trainings.

Three years since the implementation of the RTL, the DA continues to see major accomplishments, making RTL truly a game changer in the agriculture sector. In fact, the record palay harvests for two consecutive years is proof of the success of the RTL.

“RTL has been instrumental in the increased productivity from 3.69 metric tons (MT) per hectare (ha) in 2019 to 4.03 MT/ha in 2021 wet season. This is about P5,100 per hectare increase at P15 per kilo gram of dry palay,” Secretary Dar said.

Ukraine-Russia War

While the country has only been slowly recovering from these crises, it took another disaster for the Philippines to plunge into another devastation – probably the greatest of them all – the Ukraine and Russia conflict.

This ongoing war has fueled food insecurity to the highest power.

Food insecurity is now inclined to be an even more threatening trend, with the two power countries at war being among the breadbaskets of the world. This means that export activities are challenged, putting other dependent countries vulnerable, including the Philippines.

The rising prices on energy, oil, fertilizer, wheat and wheat products, and add to that the export bans being imposed by other countries to “protect their own people” continue to put many countries at risk, especially the Philippines, who is reliant on these key producing countries to fill local production gap.

Needless to say, the Ukraine crisis accentuated the discrepancies and inequalities in food production, thus the humane necessity to fill the gap through importation.

In the most basic sense, importation is allowed for an economy to thrive – to supply nonexistence and scarcity of products and goods, reduce domestic food prices, and provide wider choice in consumer goods, to name a few. Agricultural trade does not only happen in the Philippines, rather it is a global phenomenon that helps stimulate economies.

“We continue to put premium on protecting our farmers and fishers. Our goal has always been geared toward food security, eventually leading to food sovereignty. We only allow imports to fill in the deficit or what we cannot produce locally,” the DA chief said.

“Even President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who included food sovereignty as one of his priority agenda, mentioned how importation is being forced on us simply because local production is not sufficient,” Secretary Dar added.

The woes of local production

Food production cannot keep up with the immense population growth.

The Philippines’ population expansion rate was estimated at 1.4 percent in 2019 by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), while the agriculture sector grew by a measly 0.5 percent in late 2020. These figures clearly show the food-population imbalance, where the rapid rate growth of the population outpace the capacity to produce food.

While the measures to control population growth are implausible as of the moment, the government must focus on boosting local food production instead.

Secretary Dar continues to call upon the national government to increase the agriculture’s budget, proposing a P250 B allocation as the first, and most crucial step.

“If next year’s budget is not doubled or tripled, and it will be at the same level as the budget we have today, we will always have the same problem that we have had before,” the agri chief stressed.

To substantiate this campaign, the DA created the National Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization and Industrialization Plan (NAFMIP), a 10-year strategic plan focusing on a long-term vision of commodity industry and agricultural infrastructure development which will usher the sector towards food sovereignty.

The implementation of the agrarian reform has also induced a significant downfall in the local food production of the country. This reform caused fragmentation of farm lands, with farmers individually tending small parcels of land. On average, a farmer’s land ownership is at 1-3 hectares, which is not a sizable land area for big-shot commercial and industry development.

“Farmers’ land ownership ceiling must be significantly raised to 25 hectares, if we want an industrialized sector. If not, then we can act on it by consolidating these small farm plots, so that we can breed technology and innovation, including infrastructure and mechanization development which in turn will open doors for bigger markets, thus bigger incomes for our farmers,” Secretary Dar said.

Keeping the balance

Until the agriculture sector gets its fair share of public funding to make the dream of a food sovereign country happen, the DA will keep on working – despite its limitations – for the greater good of the Filipino farmers and fisherfolk.

While lands cannot be increased for farm use, and food production remains a challenge, the DA will continue to employ other efficient methods to provide food for every Filipino.

The OneDA Reform Agenda, Secretary Dar’s brainchild, has kept the agriculture sector afloat and resilient, amid the challenges for the past three years. Built on four pillars: Consolidation, Modernization, Industrialization, and Professionalization, the OneDA Reform Agenda’s ultimate goal is to modernize and industrialize Philippine agriculture, and in the long run make it a major contributor to the country’s gross domestic product.

“It is a transformative strategy, capitalizing on technology, innovation, and the drive to make our farmers and fishers prosperous at the end of the day,” said Secretary Dar.

Once fully adopted and implemented, the OneDA Reform Agenda promises to make the Philippines a powerhouse in agriculture, at par with other ASEAN countries.

In its short years of execution, the OneDA Reform Agenda has birthed gains and breakthroughs, leaving a dent in the agricultural landscape of the Philippines. These include trade and export development, agri-industrial business corridors, youth engagement in agriculture, easy and affordable access of farmers and fishers to agri financing, private sector participation in agriculture as ‘big brothers,’ mechanization and infrastructure investments, and agriculture digitalization, among others.

“What works for now is our conscious unity to work towards the goal despite these myriad of challenges. We were able to showcase it through this perfect storm: the COVID-19 pandemic, the ASF, the birth pains of RTL, and now the Ukraine crisis. I assure you that the DA has been working to serve our farmers and fishers, and the rest of our fellow Filipinos. We take the lessons, we act on them, and hopefully, we realize a prosperous agriculture and fisheries,” Secretary Dar concluded. ### ( Daryl Lou Battad, DA-StratComms )

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• Published: 27 June 2024

Colonial policy, ecological transformations, and agricultural “improvement”: comparing agricultural yields and expansion in the Spanish and U.S. Philippines, 1870–1925 CE

• David Max Findley 1 , 2 ,
• Noel Amano   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7871-2230 1 , 2 ,
• Ivana Biong 3 ,
• Greg Bankoff 4 ,
• Patricia Irene Dacudao 4 ,
• Francis Gealogo 4 ,
• Rebecca Hamilton 1 , 2 , 5 ,
• Ruel Pagunsan 6 &
• Patrick Roberts   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4403-7548 1 , 2 , 3  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  839 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Environmental studies

Burgeoning global trade and colonial policies promoted transformations in land use and agriculture throughout tropical regions in the 19 th and 20 th centuries, but the local and regional ecological consequences of landscape changes are still being identified and analysed. The Philippine Archipelago, which experienced successive colonial regimes across more than 7100 islands, exemplifies the multiplicity of ecological outcomes produced by these transformations. To better characterise diverse landscape change, we use colonial censuses and datasets to assess land use, production and agricultural yields in the Philippines during the late Spanish and early U.S. colonial periods (ca. 1870–1925). Our novel digital, quantitative analysis indicates that, at the national and provincial scales, agricultural production and land use increased for all major crops in both periods, while agricultural yields were mostly constant. Our results suggest that colonial investments to “improve” Philippine agriculture, specifically their efforts to increase production per hectare, were not effective. Our provincial-scale analysis also confirms the importance of distinct labour patterns, geographies and socio-political arrangements in defining this period’s ecological consequences, and we provide quantified and historically contextualised data in a format amenable to ecologists to promote future, localised historic ecological research.

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Introduction.

Four centuries of European colonial expansion transformed human-environment interactions at all scales, affecting land use, biodiversity, climates and ultimately the entire Earth System (Lewis and Maslin, 2015 ; Lenzner et al., 2022 ; Roberts et al., 2023 ). Colonial systems’ impacts at large scales over ~400 years included: the substitution of native flora and fauna with newly imported species (Crosby, 1986 ); extensive deforestation (Grove, 1995 ; Tucker, 2000 ; Williams, 2006 ); and the replacement of Indigenous land use and food production with European-inspired systems of cultivation (Boserup, 1965 ; Cronon, 1983 ). Burgeoning global trade in the 19th and 20th centuries accelerated many of these alterations, including in tropical regions (i.e., regions located between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn) that produced commodities like sugar, cotton, chocolate, rubber and lumber (Moore, 2003 ; Ross, 2017 ). Given that tropical landscapes, and tropical forests in particular, are hotbeds of biodiversity that strongly influence the atmosphere and Earth System (Malhi et al., 2014 ), colonial-inspired landscape transformations in these two centuries were likely globally significant and merit both scientific and historical investigation as potential components of the Anthropocene (Roberts et al., 2023 ).

Less well chronicled are the localised ecological consequences of growing commodity production in the tropics, which partially reflects the difficulties of detailing such varied changes. Whereas global impacts may be discerned through rigorous examination of commodity chains or inferred from prescribed agricultural practices, localised alterations were geographically and chronologically non-uniform (e.g., Ross, 2017 ). They were determined by the interplay between local factors—topography, agricultural practices, population and political status—and the aforementioned global market forces and colonial policies of various states (Boomgaard, 2007 ). Diverse historical ecological outcomes must thus be enumerated to fully comprehend past landscape transformations and their consequences for both local communities and the wider Earth System (Thomas et al., 2020 ; Roberts et al., 2023 ).

Precisely detailing local and regional ecological change in the past, and using that research to understand past human impacts on the Earth System, will ultimately require multi-disciplinary collaboration that integrates archival research into ecological sciences, including zoology, botany, geology and geochemistry (e.g., Amano et al., 2021 ; Hamilton et al., 2021 ). As a first step towards such collaboration, information on human-environment interactions contained in archival documents must be made compatible with the highly quantitative data that natural scientists use to study the Earth System. Historical data, in its many formats, must be translated and quantified (see Camenisch et al., 2022 ). In the context of 19th and 20th century commodities in the tropics, this means quantifying and characterising agricultural land use, agricultural production, and the ratio between them—the “productive yield” or “yield”—over time for different commodity crops. The Philippine Archipelago epitomises the challenges and benefits of this type of historic ecological research. Consisting of over 7100 geographically diverse islands, the Philippine Islands are home to many ethno-linguistic and cultural groups who had distinct experiences of two separate colonial regimes: the Spanish (1565–1898 CE) and the United States (U.S.; 1902–1941 and 1945–46). Of particular interest are the “late Spanish” (1870–1898) and the “early U.S.” (1902–1925) periods (for more on periodisation, see Supplementary Notes). In those fifty-five years, both administrations expended great effort to fully incorporate the colonial Philippines into global markets for agricultural goods by encouraging or enforcing the production of rice, corn, sugar products, coconut products, abacá fibre (“Manila hemp”), tobacco, coffee, cacao and other commodities (de Jesus, 1980 ; McLennan, 1980 ; McCoy and de Jesus, 1982 ; Owen, 1984 ; Larkin, 1993 ; Legarda, 1999 ; Ventura, 2022 ; Dacudao, 2023 ).

While available data on commodity production suggests unprecedented agricultural changes took place in these two colonial periods, the pace and consequences of these changes were not uniform across provinces or islands (Larkin, 1993 ). Of the two colonial eras, the early U.S. period proved more transformative to landscapes. This occurred, in part, because the U.S. occupation was better funded, but also because the U.S. justified its presence in the archipelago through explicit efforts to “improve” Philippine agriculture (Owen, 1984 ; Larkin, 1993 ; Ventura, 2009 and 2016 ; Orquiza, 2020 ). It funded the construction of new irrigation channels, roads and railways (A. Corpuz, 1999 ; Tecson y Ocampo, 1908a and 1908b ); redistributed land from Spanish friar estates to Philippine smallholders (Roth, 1977 ; Ventura 2009 ); and created agricultural banks and credit lines to finance farming expansions (McLennan, 1982 ; Ventura, 2009 ). Simultaneously, U.S. authorities endorsed “best agricultural practices,” a.k.a. “scientific agriculture” (Ventura, 2022 ), through widely distributed journals and pamphlets including the Farmers’ Bulletin and Philippine Agricultural Review ; a newly established educational system; and agricultural research stations like the University of the Philippines’s College of Agriculture at Los Baños (Miller, 1911 ; May, 1980 ). Late Spanish period policies were less well-financed but were still significant. The opening of various ports to international trade, the construction of overland infrastructure and the founding of the islands’ first national bank in the latter half of the nineteenth century all catalysed agricultural expansion and facilitated increased international commerce (Legarda, 1999 ). Agricultural research centres and the Escuela de Botanica y Agricultura were also founded to promote best practices, and agricultural manuals were irregularly published through groups like the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País (Patero, 1872 ; Gutierrez Creps, 1878 ; Copeland, 1908 ; Elena and Ordonez, 2000 ).

The similarities in both regimes’ policies reflect a shared desire to increase the profitability of Philippine agricultural products (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1905 , hereafter the Census of 1903, 1905). From this goal was derived a consistent notion of “agricultural improvement” that was applicable in the Philippines and, seemingly, mirrored similar concepts across the world (International Institute of Agriculture, 1937 ; Boserup, 1965 ; Anker, 2001 ; Ventura, 2009 ; Jones, 2016 ) Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, incipient sciences including agronomy, forestry, ecology and conservation claimed their mediations could “improve” land management in supposedly “underutilized”, “underperforming” or “wild” landscapes to generate greater profits and productive gains in agriculture, animal rearing and commercial logging (Krinks, 1975 ; Anker, 2001 ; von Ausdal, 2012 ; Orquiza, 2012 ; N. Roberts, 2014 ). Concurrently, the emergence of statistical accounting by states (Statistik) promoted the belief that effective management was derived from the ability to count people, their land use and their trade (Ileto, 1999 ; Jones, 2016 ). Lastly, how statisticians and states viewed and counted agricultural land was increasingly modelled on factory-inspired conceptualisations of production, time and value (Thompson, 1967 ; Pasquinelli, 2022 ). The intellectual convergence of these thoughts defined “agricultural improvement” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, resulting in policies designed to increase measurable production, minimise measurable “waste”, and thereby achieve greater production per hectare, a.k.a. yield. In colonial contexts, this new definition also reinforced long-standing condemnations of tropical agriculture, which was derided as “indolent” and “wasteful” (Conklin, 1957 ; Conklin, 1961 ; Boserup, 1965 ; Spencer, 1966 ; Ross, 2017 ; Smith and Dressler, 2020 ). Numeration, then, provided the basis and impetus for “improvement,” while also denigrating traditional techniques not intent on maximising profits.

The metrology—the system of measurement—inherent to this conceptualisation of improvement encouraged taking civic censuses (Cavada, 1876 ; Census of 1903, 1905; Census Office of the Philippine Islands, 1920 , hereafter Census of 1918, 1920). The U.S. regime in particular was dependent upon routine national censuses as well as non-compulsory statistical reports to measure “agricultural improvement”, a fact reflected in the immediate taking of a civic census, which included agricultural data, in 1903 upon the conclusion of U.S. military rule in the islands (Census of 1903, 1905). However, the first ecclesiastic and civic censuses in the Philippines were undertaken during the Spanish period. These censuses were taken semi-routinely and their agricultural data was often incomplete or unreliable (Cavada, 1876 ; Census of 1903, 1905; Gealogo, 1998 and 2011 ; Supplementary Notes). However, they did use the data gathered to calculate productive yields, characterise Philippine agriculture as “underperforming”, and propose solutions (Cavada, 1876 ). Thus, both regimes increasingly understood Philippine agriculture through productive yields and the emerging metrology of commercial agriculture, and both relied on censuses to assess progress towards “improving” Philippine agriculture. While overlapping approaches to agriculture between the two regimes have been discussed in environmental, socio-economic and demographic histories (e.g. May, 1980 ; McCoy and de Jesus, 1982 ; Bankoff, 2007a and 2013 ), the recent proliferation of digitised copies of the censuses and open-access geo-analytical tools like QGIS permit novel and rapid analysis of voluminous datasets. This newly-utilisable data, in conjunction with qualitative archival material and historical scholarship, can now be used to quantify and compare changes in land use, production and yields associated with colonial policies throughout the Philippine Archipelago. Simultaneously, that same data can be integrated with ongoing ecological research to more precisely detail past human-environment interactions at scales ranging from small islands and provinces to the entire Earth System.

This paper analyses civic censuses, annual agricultural reports, and educational publications from both the late Spanish and early U.S. colonial periods to extract statistical information on the changing land use, production and yield of commodity crops in the Philippines between 1870 and 1925 CE. Using datasets from the 1903 and 1918 censuses, and internal governmental reports provided to Vice Governor Joseph Ralston Hayden (Hayden, n.d. , hereafter the JRH papers) for the years 1903, 1910, 1915 and 1920–25, we establish how land use, production, and yields shifted throughout the early U.S period. Since the late Spanish period lacked comparably reliable and thorough statistical counts (see Supplementary Notes), we analyse agricultural manuals from both colonial periods to deduce how production and yields changed in the late Spanish period. This analysis serves two purposes. First, it provides an environment-centric and quantitative history that assesses whether colonial states’ own censuses indicate progress towards the agricultural “improvement” they sought, complementing and building on the well-developed body of socio-economic research on this period. Second, it assembles historical agricultural data in a quantified format compatible with contemporary ecological and Earth System research, setting a framework for future collaborative work and indicating regions where further research is needed.

Censuses and the Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers

Agricultural data for the Philippine Archipelago in both colonial periods were gathered from the JRH papers located at the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the Censuses of 1903 and 1918, which were digitally available via HathiTrust. The JRH papers, official documents assembled by the Division of Farm Statistics of the Bureau of Agriculture, reported national land use and production for more than two dozen crops and agricultural products in the years 1903, 1910, 1915 and 1920–25, as well as provincial data for 1925. The censuses of 1903 and 1918 reported provincial and national-scale land use and production for their respective years.

Data transcription, selection and preparation

All quantitative datasets presented were transcribed in Microsoft Excel. This data is made available in the Supplementary Material. In both the Censuses of 1903 and 1918, there were occasional disagreements between provincial-scale tables, which are highlighted in our datasets. To minimise these discrepancies’ impact, we only transcribed and analysed data found in tables in the 1918 Census that compared provincial land use and production in 1903 and 1918.

Due to scarcity of data, as well as the varying quality of the earliest census and statistical reports (Supplementary Notes), some crops were excluded from analysis. Crops that were not reported at all three timepoints—1903, 1918 and 1925—were not considered. Items whose production could not be expressed in kilograms based on available data were also excluded from consideration (Table 1 ). Further, items whose land use across the islands totalled <5000 hectares were not analysed, with the exception of coffee and cacao due to the emphasis placed on both items in the censuses and JRH papers. Ultimately, these criteria disqualified bananas, cotton, mandarins, oranges, cassava, ube (yams), gabi (taro), mango, maguey, lumbang, peanuts, castor bean, kapok, pomelo, pineapple, papaya, pili nuts, lanzones, tugui and rubber from analysis. Kamote (sweet potato) was also excluded because it was severely under-reported in 1903, despite meeting our other criteria (see “Sulu” in Supplementary Datasheets).

Because the aforementioned comparative tables in the 1918 Census presented data from the Census of 1903 in accordance with provincial boundaries in 1918, we were able to account for most historic changes to internal boundaries without adjusting transcribed data. To reconcile the 1918 Census’s comparative tables with the JRH papers, small adjustments had to be made to both datasets. The 1918 Census reported land use and production in several sub-provinces and two cities not included in the JRH papers. In these instances, reconciliation required sub-provinces’ reported land use and production be added to their provinces’ data. Similarly, the JRH papers reported data for Camarines Norte and Sur, two provinces formed from splitting Ambos Camarines. Again, adding data for the two provinces together reconciled the JRH papers and 1918 tables. However, while relying on the comparative tables, we were unable to fully account for substantial changes to provincial boundaries in Mindanao and Luzon’s Cordillera region. In Mindanao, the “Moro Province” that comprised nearly two-thirds of the island in the first decade of U.S. rule was separated into several smaller provinces, and no agricultural data from 1903 is available for three of these. Nonetheless, these provinces were included in our provincial-scale analysis (Fig. 1 ). Boundary changes in Luzon’s Cordillera were too frequent and substantial to be addressed, and the region was therefore excluded from analysis at all timepoints. Lastly, we were unable to account for small adjustments to the provincial boundaries of Ilocos Sur, La Union, Cagayan, Pangasinan, Zambales, Nueva Vizcaya and Misamis made between 1903 and 1918. These changes, which mainly involved switching settlements between provinces, were insufficient to preclude comparison across timepoints (for additional detail, see Supplementary Notes).

All provincial boundaries are drawn as described in the Census of 1918 (1920) .

Lastly, prior to analysis, all relevant production data were converted to kilograms. Products such as rice, cacao, coffee and corn were reported in hectolitres or litres in the censuses. The JRH papers reported all solid-form products in kilograms, including data gathered from the 1903 Census, which provided us with conversion factors for these products. For crops like coconut trees and sugarcane, which produce several saleable products such as molasses, basi (a sugar-based spirit), nuts, coconut oil and tuba (coconut wine), we only analysed data for solid-form products that were reported in kilograms: granulated sugar for sugar cane and copra for coconut trees (see Table 1 ).

Data analysis

Land use and production data for the entire archipelago as well as all provinces were used to calculate productive yield in kilograms per hectare at the national and provincial scale. Additionally, we calculated the average annual growth rate of each crop’s land use and production in each province for the intervals 1903–1918 and 1918–1925.

Non-quantitative publications, reports and Farmers’ Bulletins

Historical analysis is influenced by prevailing social, cultural, economic and intellectual currents. To minimise subjectivity, our analysis emphasises the arrangement of information in colonial-era documents, the problems they aim to redress, and their underlying rationale and justification, all of which is analogous to the scientific “paradigm” that informs each publication (Kuhn, 1996 ). Thus, when comparing documents from both colonial periods, we search for thematic and structural convergence or disagreement. This approach emphasises how knowledge is sought, created and presented rather than the technical advancements made between publications, and is therefore especially useful when comparing scientific documents published decades apart.

We apply this method to the first volume of the Agricultural Review as well as the first 16 volumes of the Farmers’ Bulletin manuals, all of which were digitised by HathiTrust and were physically available at the Hatcher Graduate Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We also study the article-length Spanish period manuals Cultivo del cacao y café and Memoría de la cultivación de azúcar , both of which were available through the Worcester Collection at the Hatcher Graduate Library. These documents were either published directly through government offices (i.e. the Bureau of Agriculture) or through groups closely aligned with colonial authorities (such as the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Filipinas).

To create Figs. 1 and 4 , a digital scan of John Bach’s 1929 map of the Philippine Islands was acquired from the National Library of Australia and georeferenced in QGIS. 126 points were georeferenced and fitted using a 2nd Order Polynomial, and the separate provinces of Camarines Norte and Sur were merged.

Early U.S. Period, National Scale Land Use

According to the censuses and JRH papers, Philippine agricultural land increased from ~1.2 million hectares (ha) to ~3.6 million ha between 1903 and 1925 (Fig. 2 ). Cultivated land tripled between 1903 and 1921 and then oscillated between ~3.6 and ~3.7 million ha until 1925. Agricultural land use grew fastest between 1903 and 1910 as the archipelago recovered from the effects of the Philippine-American War, which temporarily depressed cultivation by as much as 20% (McCoy and de Jesus, 1982 ). In this period, six crops accounted for 93% to 99% of all reported land use: rice, sugarcane, corn, coconut trees, abacá plants, and tobacco (Fig. 3a ). From 1903 to 1925, rice was the most commonly planted crop, and its land use increased 191%. Over the same period, land planted to corn increased 218%, coconut trees increased 233%, sugarcane increased 119%, abacá plants increased 384% and tobacco increased 128%.

a Reported farmland planted to all crops in hectares. b Reported agricultural production for the eight items that could be measured in kilograms and are displayed in Table 1 . c Estimated value of all agricultural products reported in the JRH Papers. Value estimates are not given in the 1903 or 1918 censuses and are not available for these years. All data presented was transcribed from the Censuses of 1903 and 1918 as well as the JRH Papers.

a Area Planted for Major Crops in Hectares for the Philippine Archipelago. b Production of Major Agricultural Products in Millions of Kilograms for the Philippine Archipelago. c Yields in Kilograms per Hectare for Major Agricultural Products in the Philippine Archipelago. d Yields in Kilograms per Hectare for Major Agricultural Products in the Philippine Archipelago, Excluding the Year 1918. The category “Excluded Crops” is the sum total of reported land use for bananas, maguey, sweet potatoes, gabi, cassava, lumbang, castor beans, kapok, mandarins, pomelos, papayas, rubber, ubi, tugui, lanzones, oranges, pineapples and peanuts.

The remaining 1%–7% of cultivated land grew a variety of crops, only some of which received consistent attention from colonial authorities. Coffee and cacao farming were meticulously recorded in the censuses and JRH papers, despite neither crop occupying more than 0.2% of Philippine fields in any given year. Both were likely included in the censuses due to their past or potential commercial value (Clarence-Smith, 2000 ; Topik, 2009 ). Coffee, prior to an outbreak of blight in the last years of the nineteenth century, was one of the archipelago’s largest exports (Sastrón, 1895 ; Castro, 2003 ). Philippine cacao never achieved coffee’s prominence in the international market, and it was mostly grown to satisfy local demand (Clarence-Smith, 2000 ). Notably, unlike the six major crops, land use for coffee and cacao decreased by 7% and 60%, respectively, between 1903 and 1925. Lastly, the cumulative land use of crops excluded from further analysis (see Methods) is depicted in Fig. 3A as “Excluded Crops.” This category exhibited erratic growth between 1903 and 1925, but nonetheless increased by 269% in that interval.

Early U.S. Period, National Scale Production

Multiple products were derived from the eight crops described above (Table 1 ), but we only analysed agricultural goods whose production could be measured in kilograms (Figs. 2 and 3b ). These are palay (“rough” or unhusked rice), granulated sugar (or sugar), abacá fibre (or abacá), tobacco, corn, copra (the dried flesh of coconuts), cacao and coffee. Production of all eight increased between 1903 and 1925: palay production grew 298%, corn production grew 377%, copra production grew 746%, granulated sugar production grew 292%, abacá production grew 170%, tobacco production grew 146%, coffee production grew 1270% and cacao production grew 142%.

Production proved highly individualised for each agricultural product and, for several, the year 1918 was exceptional (see Supplementary Notes). Of all eight products, palay , copra, and corn experienced the greatest growth. Palay production surged from 504 million kg in 1903 to 1.8 billion kg in 1918, momentarily fell in 1920, and then gradually rose to surpass 2 billion kg in 1925. Corn production, in contrast, surged from 1910 to 1918, reaching an absolute maximum of ~600 million kg in 1918 before decreasing to ~450 million kg from 1923 to 1925. Copra, however, experienced no surge in 1918. Instead, production grew from 43 million kg in 1903 to 210 million kg in 1918 before leaping to 362 million kg in 1920, after which it oscillated between 361 and 387 million kg.

Granulated sugar, tobacco, and abacá production were more volatile. Sugar production decreased between 1903 and 1910, increased to 380 million kg in 1915, and then collapsed to 42 million kg in 1918—likely due to sugar mosaic virus (Asuncion, 1925 ; Abbott and Tippett, 1966 ). National production recovered by 1920, fluctuating between 400 and 500 million kg until 1925, when production reached a maximum of 710 million kg. Abacá production also vacillated, surging from 67 to 280 million kg between 1903 and 1918 before declining to 110 million kg in 1921. Production partially recovered afterwards, oscillating between 180 and 200 million kg between 1923 and 1925. Similarly, tobacco production rose from 17 million kg in 1903 to a maximum of 65 million kg in 1920. By 1922, production had decreased to 30 million kg and eventually stabilised between 1924 and 1925 at 42 million kg.

Cacao and coffee production were orders of magnitude smaller, but experienced consistent growth in this period. Cacao production increased from 459,000 kg in 1903 to 1.1 million kg in 1922 and then vacillated between 1.0 and 1.2 million kg until 1925. Coffee production, previously devastated by disease, soared from 86,000 kg in 1903 to 1.1 million kg in 1921 and 1.2 million kg in 1925.

Early U.S. Period, National Yields

Most products’ yields (Fig. 3c ) fluctuated between 1903 and 1925 rather than exhibiting clear growth. 1918 was an exceptional year for several agricultural goods, producing the highest reported palay , corn and abacá yields and the lowest sugar and cacao yields. These abnormal yields may be attributable to crop-specific factors like the sugar mosaic virus or may have resulted from external factors like natural hazards or the unique market conditions created by WWI. The latter would have permitted lower-quality goods to be profitably grown and sold and may thereby have momentarily increased production per hectare (Golay, 1997 ). Alternatively, higher production in 1918 may reflect differences in data collection between the mandatory civil censuses and reports made by the government’s Statistics Office (Supplementary Notes). If data from 1918 are excluded from analysis (Fig. 3d ), a clearer picture of productive yield emerges. Coffee, cacao, copra and palay yields all increased between 1903 and 1925. Corn, tobacco, abacá and sugar yields did not increase, instead oscillating within a fixed range, although each product reported exceptional years.

Abacá and tobacco yields exhibited the greatest stability between 1903 and 1925. Abacá yields fluctuated between 306 and 407 kg/ha, only falling beneath 300 kg/ha from 1920 to 1922. Tobacco yields exhibited similar behaviour, with yields oscillating between 500 and 601 kg/ha except from 1915 to 1920, when yields repeatedly exceeded this range. Corn and sugar exhibited greater volatility. Corn yields decreased 1% between 1903 and 1925, swinging from 496 kg/ha in 1910 to 904 kg/ha in 1915 and then ranging between 677 and 852 kg/ha. Sugar’s reported yields fluctuated between 1897 and 2507 kg/ha from 1903 to 1924 before reaching a new high of 2953 kg/ha in 1925. Among the products whose yields increased, coffee experienced the greatest growth. Its yield increased 1,365% between 1903 and 1925, rising from 83 to 1239 kg/ha in 1920 and then shifting between 1261 and 1323 kg/ha. Cacao’s yield followed a similar trajectory, growing 509% in the early U.S. period from 130 kg/ha to 859 kg/ha in 1921, after which it swung between that value and 775 kg/ha. Copra’s yield grew 166% between 1903 and 1925, increasing from 289 kg/ha in 1903 to ~903 kg/ha in 1920–1921 before oscillating between 767 and 841 kg/ha until 1925. Lastly, palay’s yield increased 37% in the early U.S. period, reporting yields between 693 and 851 kg/ha until 1920, after which yields undulated between 1052 and 1164 kg/ha.

The observed increases in yields for coffee and copra likely did not result from colonial interventions. As previously mentioned, commercial coffee production was decimated by disease in the late Spanish period. Increases in its yield are largely attributable to the outbreak’s wane, while the observed decrease in coffee planting suggests colonial managers and farmers alike took little interest in the crop. As for copra, increases in its yield are largely attributable to how government reports calculated coconut and copra production. Both came from the same trees, so both had the same reported land use. However, between 1903 and 1918 the emphasis of production shifted from nuts (for food) to copra. In that period, total coconut tree farmland increased 166%, but total nut production fell 33%. In the same interval, copra production grew 390% (Census of 1918, 1920: 366–367) whereas copra yields grew 82%, suggesting a shift in production may account for the majority or entirety of the observed increase in copra yields. In contrast, gains in palay’s and cacao’s yields cannot be attributed to disease, counting conventions, or external factors.

Early U.S. Period, Provincial-Scale Data

In the sources consulted, provincial scale data was available for the years 1903, 1918 and 1925. As discussed in the Methods, we excluded Mountain Province from analysis, and data from 1903 was unavailable for the Batanes Islands as well as Mindanao’s Lanao, Bukidnon and Agusan provinces, which in 1903 were part of “Moro Province.” These exclusions aside, provincial-scale land use and production data for the eight aforementioned crops in the early U.S. period were assembled at all timepoints for 41 provinces and sub-provinces (Fig. 4 ).

Maps for Sugarcane, Tobacco and Abacá are included in the Supplement as Figs. S2 – S4 . Note that minor boundary shifts made to Pangasinan, Zambales, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Cagayan, Nueva Vizcaya and Misamis between 1903 and 1918 cannot be accounted for from census and statistical data (see Methods), but these changes do not prevent analysis. Data is not available for Agusan, Bukidnon and Lanao in 1903. Substantial boundary changes to Mountain Province mean it cannot be analysed at any timepoint (see “Methods” section).

Agricultural land use and production increased in all provinces, but gains were unevenly distributed. Likewise, the rates at which land use and production grew in each province and region were non-uniform, speaking to differing degrees of ecological transformation. Land use grew fastest in Mindanao, with provinces like Davao reporting average annual growth of 43% between 1903 and 1918. However, provinces in Mindanao also reported some of the lowest total land use in the entire archipelago. Conversely, provinces in Luzon, Panay and Cebu routinely reported the largest total land use—agricultural land in both Pangasinan and Cebu exceeded 200,000 ha by 1925—but also registered the lowest annual growth rates (see Supplementary Data). In all islands and provinces, growth in land use was driven primarily by one or two crops, suggesting increasing agricultural specialisation at the provincial scale over time.

Differential growth rates as well as regional specialisation in production were sufficient to skew national scale data. For instance, Pangasinan in 1918 reported an unprecedentedly productive year, generating ~594 million kg of palay from ~122,000 ha of farmland (an incredible yield of 4,872 kg/ha, more than double the expected maximum yield for rice prior to the Green Revolution; see Bray, 1994 ; Greenland, 1997 ). This amounted to 33% of all palay produced in the Philippines that year and caused an abrupt rise in palay’s yield at the national scale (Fig. 3C ). Other agricultural products’ abnormal performances in 1918 may also be attributed to relative surges or collapses in production in specific provinces (Fig. 4 ). The suddenness and severity of those oscillations affirms that provincial scale yields must be directly assessed to confirm national scale trends. These oscillations also emphasise the now well-studied vulnerabilities of geographically specialised monoculture to external and localised disruptions such as diseases or natural hazards (Warren, 2016 ).

Early U.S. Period Productive Yields at the Provincial Scale

To demonstrate how yields changed across provinces during the early U.S. period, Fig. 5a–k plot all provinces’ production as a function of their reported land use in 1903, 1918 and 1925. Figure 5a depicts palay production and land use for all provinces, while Fig. 5b, c graph the same relationship for the ten provinces that produced the greatest amount of palay at each timepoint. Figure 5c excludes Pangasinan at all timepoints due to its abnormally high production in 1918. The figures indicate all provinces, excepting Pangasinan, exhibited a strong, linear relationship between reported land use and production, especially the most productive provinces. Palay’s productive yield appears to have grown significantly between 1903 and 1918, but not after. However, the three graphs confirm that these gains were minor relative to the massive expansion of paddy land. Extraordinary growth in palay production, then, was primarily owed to expansion complemented by modest gains in yield across multiple provinces.

a Palay , All Provinces. b Palay , 10 Most Productive Provinces; ( c ) Palay , 10 Most Productive Provinces Excluding Pangasinan. d Corn, All Provinces. e Abacá, All Provinces. f Tobacco, All Provinces. g Granulated Sugar, All Provinces. h Copra, All Provinces. i Cacao, All Provinces. Linear Regression best-fit lines for 1903, 1918 and 1925 have the following R 2 values for each figure: ( a ) 0.806; 0.682; 0.934; ( b ) 0.821; 0.736; 0.955; ( c ) 0.761; 0.958; 0.935; ( d ) 0.962; 0.911; 0.989; ( e ) 0.861; 0.869; 0.977; ( f ) 0.844; 0.962; 0.990; ( g ) 0.933; 0.653; 0.885; ( h ) 0.789; 0.819; 0.967; ( i ) 0.592; 0.671; 0.830.

Assessment of the other seven agricultural products (Fig. 5d–i ) largely confirms trends seen at the national scale. Corn (Fig. 5d ) exhibited no sustained growth in productive yield between 1903 and 1925, particularly once Cebu’s extraordinary performance in 1918 is excluded from consideration. Likewise, abacá and tobacco (Fig. 5e, f ) showed no appreciable or sustained change in yield in this period. Data for sugar (Fig. 5g ) is inconclusive as this crop’s yield was severely reduced in multiple provinces in 1918 due to disease. Data for copra (Fig. 5h ), cacao (Fig. 5i ) and coffee (Supplementary Fig. S5 ) all indicate sustained, clear and relatively large gains in productive yield across provinces in the early U.S. period. Copra yields increased over time with the largest gains transpiring between 1918 and 1925, likely due to factors discussed above. Cacao and coffee exhibited more erratic production relative to land use, particularly in 1903 due to blight and disruptions caused by the Philippine-American War. Nonetheless, their yields clearly increased during the early U.S. period, with coffee showing massive gains as the aforementioned blight subsided.

Late Spanish Period, quantified data

No census or statistical document from the late Spanish period is directly comparable to the U.S.-era censuses. Ecclesiastic censuses detailing parishes’ annual baptisms, deaths and marriages provided colonial administrators a valuable, but imperfect, proxy for understanding regional populations and predicting tax revenues (Cullinane, 1998 ; Gealogo, 2011 ). However, these ecclesiastic accounts did not regularly provide quantified data on agricultural production or land use. That began to change in the late 19th century as agriculture became of greater interest to colonial administrators (Buzeta and Brave, 1851 ; Cavada, 1876 ). The first civic census of the Philippines, an item comparable to the U.S.-era censuses in intent, design and organising principles, was the Historia geográfica, geológica, y estadística de Filipinas authored by Agustín de la Cavada y Vigo de Mendez and published in 1876. Although his civic census quantified agricultural production for several major crops, it did not offer similarly complete reports of land use. Furthermore, the land use data presented was copied in large part from numbers reported in the 1870 Ecclesiastic Census, and much of Cavada’s data, by his own admission, is incomplete (1876). After the Historia was published, agricultural data became increasingly common and reliable in official guides and subsequent accounts of the islands but often remained incomplete or partially based on rumour and hearsay (see Moya y Jimenez, 1883 , Montero y Vidal, 1886 ; Puya Ruiz, 1887 ; Foreman, 1890 ; Millán y Villanueva 1891 ). Given the variable quality of the data, direct comparison of Spanish-era agricultural statistics to information found in U.S. censuses is not possible.

Comparisons between the two periods, then, must rely on proxies, the most accessible of which is export data from Spanish-era customs houses reported in the Census of 1903 (reproduced in Fig. 6 ). Customs house records only include the most common exports of the late Spanish period: granulated sugar, abacá, tobacco, coffee, indigo and tintarrón (a liquid dye). These records do not provide provincial-scale data, but research by de Jesus ( 1980 ), Larkin ( 1993 ), Legarda ( 1999 ) and Owen ( 1984 ) confirms sugar, tobacco and abacá production were concentrated in the same regions as in 1903. Coffee cultivation was largely confined to Batangas Province near Taal Lake and indigo cultivation primarily took place in the Ilocos region of northwest Luzon (Census of 1903, 1905). Figure 6 shows that all exports, while subject to some variation, increased between 1870 and 1890. After 1890, coffee exports collapsed due to blight; tobacco, indigo and tintarrón exports held relatively constant after 1892; and sugar and abacá exports exhibited continuous growth, reaching their absolute maxima of ~341 and ~107 million kg, respectively, in 1895.

Data reported in the Census of 1903, based on records retrieved from Spanish export houses. For discussion of the reliability and accuracy of these official records, see Supplementary Notes.

Customs records give no data on land use or yields. However, historical research drawing upon difficult-to-access archival documents indicates that increased sugar and abacá production in the late Spanish period was primarily driven by expanding land use (Owen, 1984 ; Larkin, 1993 ). Implied is that, much akin to the early U.S. period, gains in productive yield for these exports were insignificant. Given the lack of other readily available, quantified proxies, further insights on land use, production, and yields in the late Spanish period must be derived from qualitative sources like government-produced farmers manuals, which detail the changes colonial administrators envisioned as essential to “improving” Philippine agriculture.

Late Spanish and Early U.S. Period Farmers’ Manuals

Comparison of farmers’ manuals produced between 1870 and 1925 can identify changes in the “best practices” colonial authorities promoted. Publications analysed here include several issues of the Farmers’ Bulletin (1902–1910), a magazine published by the US Bureau of Agriculture in the Philippines to assist in the cultivation of commercial crops and foodstuffs; Memoria Sobre el Cultivo, Beneficio y Comercio de Azúcar (Gutierrez Creps, 1878 ), a nearly 80 page treatise on best practices for sugar cultivation produced as part of a competition held by the “Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Filipinas” 56 ; and Cultivo del Cacao y Café (Patero and Changco, 1872 ), two forty-page descriptions of strategies for planting cacao and coffee in the Philippines published as a single book. We compare sources’ self-rationalisation, how they present information, and their prescribed remedies for Philippine agriculture. By focusing on these themes, we minimise the subjectivity of our analysis while emphasising shifts in thinking (or “paradigms”, as in Kuhn, 1996 ).

Manuals in both periods assumed Philippine agriculture would be vastly improved through the rigorous application of scientifically derived best practices, as established by European and US researchers. The manuals’ impact on Filipinos, who comprised the vast majority of landowners and farmers, in the late Spanish period was limited by both the linguistic diversity of the islands and low literacy rates. In the early U.S. period, the implementation of a national education system in English lowered these two barriers substantially over time (Miller, 1911 ; Schueller, 2019 ). Manuals in both periods were also designed to partially overcome these impediments as evidenced by authors tailoring their works towards well-educated Filipino smallholders and landlords, particularly those in the Manila region. Cultivo del cacao y café was authored by Santiago Patero in Spanish and was translated to Tagalog by Vincente Changco, with text in both languages arranged in parallel columns on each page (1872), while several manuals of the Farmers’ Bulletin were published in Spanish and English (e.g., Boudreau, 1904 ). These attempts at outreach suggest both regimes saw manuals as a way to influence bourgeois landowners’ behaviour, likely with the expectation that changes would percolate to sharecroppers.

Manuals from both periods described cultivation as a step-by-step process. Comparing Memoria sobre el cultivo, beneficio, y comercio de azúcar with the first issue of Farmers’ Bulletin , “A Primer on the Cultivation of Sugar Cane”, typifies the template both manuals used. Their similar formats were used to convey similar advice. Both stress the importance of selecting good land and agree the best soil is aerated, porous humus. Both underscore the importance of constant weeding and selecting for varieties of cane that produce the most valuable product. And, when discussing how to maintain high productive yields, both describe at length the disadvantages of Philippine shifting cultivation (“caingin” in texts; see Olofson, 1980 ) and the profitability of consistently applying fertiliser. This point of focus deserves further analysis since both manuals describe the repeated burning of forests and the resting of fields as wasteful and “idleness” (Gutierrez Creps, 1878 : 43; Lyon, 1904 : 9). To end “wasteful” practices, they provide instructions on creating and applying fertilisers made from domestic animal and plant waste, guano and inorganic compounds— Memoria offers ten pages of advice on manufacturing and applying fertiliser while expounding on its benefits (Gutierrez Creps, 1878 ; Lyon, 1904 ). Overall, the manuals’ shared format and overlapping instructions underscore their shared assumption: that farmers’ ignorance is the problem.

The manuals’ proposals for raising production, meanwhile, are suggestive of the similar approaches both regimes employed, which has implications for yields in both periods. The Spanish-period manual, Memoria , advocated for the creation of an agricultural bank, the lowering of customs fees for Philippine sugars, mechanising refining processes whenever possible, and using model farms to develop and promote new ways of cultivating sugarcane (Gutierrez Creps, 1878 ). Many of these policies could not be implemented by cash-strapped Spanish administrators, but were adopted in the early U.S. period. The U.S. colonial regime established agricultural banks, lowered sugar tariffs, and provided loans to modernise sugar mills (Larkin, 1993 ). However, these changes failed to improve sugar yields before 1925, as our analysis indicates. Yields’ failure to improve in the early U.S. period and the manuals’ similar prescriptions imply that sugarcane cultivation did not markedly change between 1870 and 1925, and therefore yields would have been consistent across both periods (on sugar milling and refining, see Supplementary Notes and Table S1 ). Since other crops whose yields did not change during the early U.S. period—abacá, tobacco and corn—received less financing than sugar and experienced minimal mechanisation (Miller, 1911 ; Supplementary Notes), it is likely that their yields also did not markedly change in the late Spanish period.

Manuals also provide insights on products whose yields increased in the U.S. period. The lack of a coffee manual among the analysed volumes of Farmer’s Bulletin confirms U.S. administrators’ lack of interest in the former export crop, while the manual detailing coconut cultivation emphasises the newness of the copra industry and the relative lack of known best practices for monoculture (Lyon, 1905 ). As for cacao, comparing El cultivo del cacao y café and its counterpart in Farmers’ Bulletin , “Cacao Culture in the Philippines”, indicates Spanish-era cultivation strategies may have been more conservative. Cultivo advises readers that cacao cultivation in the Philippines is very difficult owing to strong winds, that it should be supplemented with coffee plantations, and that certain plants should be used to shelter cacao from typhoons and gales (Patero and Changco, 1872 ). “Cacao Culture”, though, does not warn readers against typhoons, does not advise using coffee to supplement cacao, and suggests replacing non-commercial sheltering trees with abacá to improve profits (Lyon, 1902 ). This amounted to a “high-risk, high-reward” strategy where farmers could profit from cacao as long as no typhoons or strong storms struck their fields. Whether those suggestions were implemented, were successful, or caused cacao yields to increase after 1903 is unclear at present.

Of particular interest is how the Farmers’ Bulletin discussed palay , by far the largest agricultural product by volume and land use. The Bulletin’s “Modern Rice Agriculture” is unique among the series, reflecting the U.S. Bureau of Agriculture’s familiarity with rice following the establishment of a thriving commercial rice industry in Louisiana in the 1870s–1890s (Boudreau, 1904 ). To improve production, the bulletin recommended adapting several mechanical threshers and ploughs previously developed for the bayous to Philippine wetlands. However, due to high costs and the socio-economic circumstances surrounding rice cultivation in the Philippines, most of these machines were not adopted (O. Corpuz, 1997 ). The pamphlet also recommended that planters grow japonica (short-grain) rice, which was more amenable to U.S. machinery and had a higher yield than the indica (long-grain) varieties commonly grown in the Philippines (Boudreau, 1904 ). These arguments would not have been compelling to smallholders who lacked machinery or grew rice for subsistence and its taste rather than profit (Corpuz, 1997 ; Kerkvliet, 2002 ). The pamphlet’s final, and likely most impactful, recommendation was to develop Philippine irrigation. Widespread irrigation, it was hoped, would allow for two rice harvests per year while expanding cultivable land. Colonial authorities, investigators and local landholders all advocated for improving irrigation, and the expansions that did take place likely increased production and yields, including in the “rice basket” region of Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan and Tarlac (Boudreau, 1904 ; Census of 1918, 1920; McLennan, 1980 and 1982 ). Thus, for this single crop, policies specific to U.S. colonial institutions could have increased yield in ways the comparatively cash-strapped Spanish could not.

Our analyses of the late Spanish and early U.S. periods quantify changing agricultural land use at the regional and national scales, permit commentary on the overall success of efforts to “improve” Philippine agriculture, and lay the foundations for historical-ecological research that links quantified human land use to specific environmental changes over time. In the early U.S. period, our results indicate total agricultural land use trebled. This cultivated land was primarily dedicated to growing rice, sugarcane, abacá plants, coconut trees, corn and tobacco. While each crop’s total land use increased in the early U.S. period, these increases were not uniformly distributed across provinces and occurred at different rates over distinct spans of time, reflecting both increasing agricultural specialisation in Philippine provinces and the diverse constellations of geographic, socio-economic and cultural factors that characterised disparate regions (McCoy and de Jesus, 1982 ).

Production, like land use, greatly increased for each crop but also proved more volatile year-to-year. As a result, agricultural yields could exhibit considerable variation from timepoint to timepoint. Nonetheless, our analysis strongly suggests that the yields of granulated sugar, abacá, corn and tobacco did not significantly increase or decrease whereas the yields of copra and palay increased. Copra’s increased yield is primarily attributable to how the census measured nut and copra production. As for palay yields, given that the U.S. initially lacked easily-applied fertilisers for rice fields and struggled to mechanise Philippine rice cultivation, their observed increase is likely owed to the expansion of irrigation, which U.S. administrators expressed strong interest in and Filipino landholders routinely encouraged (Boudreau, 1904 ; Tecson y Ocampo, 1908c ; Census of 1918, 1920).

Quantitative data from the late Spanish period proved less reliable and could not be directly compared to U.S. period datasets. However, the strong similarities between late Spanish and early U.S. policies towards Philippine agriculture, the available quantitative data, and the relative consistency of yields in the early U.S. period all suggest agricultural yields did not increase in the late Spanish period. Spanish records indicate the islands’ agricultural exports increased between 1870 and 1895, and previous historical research confirms that increased production of these export crops was primarily driven by expanding land use. Farmers’ manuals also suggest cultivation strategies under late Spanish and early U.S. colonial authorities were largely identical, and routine complaints by colonial observers indicate fertilisers—which could have increased production per hectare—were not widely used between 1870 and 1925 (JRH Papers). It must also be noted that early U.S. colonial authorities implemented many of the programmes Spanish colonial observers envisioned for improving Philippine agriculture (see Bankoff, 2011 ), and these did not substantially increase most agricultural yields between 1903 and 1925. All evidence strongly implies that yields did not increase for any of the major Philippine agricultural products during the late Spanish period.

The failure of yields to increase in both periods raises questions about the efficacy of colonial policies to “improve” Philippine agriculture. The censuses and statistical counts colonial authorities used to track “agricultural improvement”—which, as stated previously, was defined as increased production through decreased “waste” (a.k.a. higher yields) with the end goal of maximising profits—do not show it. Instead, historical data indicate that the overall value of Philippine agricultural goods rose as did total agricultural production (Fig. 2 ), and that both were primarily realised through massive expansions of agricultural land. While colonial authorities bemoaned the “wastefulness” of this expansion, which replicated low-yield agriculture across an ever-widening region, their main objection was to cleared lands being left fallow (Census of 1918, 1920; JRH Papers). Thus, while it may be argued that colonial policies, including new transport infrastructure and agricultural banks, catalysed agricultural expansion that increased total production and profits, the goal of increasing agricultural yields was not achieved. Whether this means colonial policies to increase yields were not effective, were consistently confounded by factors like disease, locusts and natural hazards (see DeBevoise, 1995 ), or were never implemented in the vast majority of the Philippines is still to be determined.

The degree to which colonial policies were implemented, and where, would have profoundly affected local ecological transformations. Such changes were also predicated on the types of crops planted, the labour practices employed—e.g., smallholder agriculture, extensive plantations, or supervised convict labour (Larkin, 1993 ; Ventura, 2022 )—and parallel expansions of commercial ranching and logging (Bankoff, 2007b and 2013 ; N. Roberts, 2014 ). Nonetheless, from the national scale data assembled here, we may broadly hypothesise on the ecological effects of late Spanish and early U.S. agricultural transformations on the Philippine Archipelago. For instance, we may assume that the trebling of agricultural land required converting large tracts of forests and wetland into farms. We may further infer that market and governmental pressures to increase production likely caused both old and new farms to experience shorter fallow periods, which would have impaired soil rejuvenation and secondary forest regrowth (Conklin, 1957 ; Olofson, 1980 ). Shorter fallows in conjunction with commercial logging likely decreased forest cover and contributed to erosion and landslides (Nelson et al., 1998 ), while the extension of commercial monocropping pressured Indigenous shifting cultivators, who had less land to practice less intensive agriculture (Boserup, 1965 ; Conklin, 1961 ). Notably, these expected consequences largely conform to Moore’s theory of Capitalist Ecology, which contends that environmental devastation is the natural outcome of a capitalist-oriented world market system (Moore, 2007 , 2010 , 2014 and 2016 ).

This paper’s provincial scale data also provides a starting point for detailing the local ecological changes prompted by late Spanish and early U.S. period agricultural transformations. For example, massive expansions in wet-rice cultivation in Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan, Tarlac and Pampanga likely led to the fragmentation of local wetland environs, which reduced the connectivity and resilience of those hydrological systems (Zedler and Kercher, 2005 ); decreased biodiversity associated with wetlands and forests (e.g., Zheng et al, 2021 ); and reduced consistent rainfall in those four provinces along with soils’ ability to retain water, ironically jeopardising rice cultivation (McLennan, 1980 ). How land expansion progressed and how transforming ecologies affected ongoing internal migrations (Doeppers and Xenos, 1998 ) or the rising social tensions that produced the Huk Rebellion (Kerkvliet, 2002 ) are fruitful grounds for coordinated research between historians and environmental scientists.

Simultaneously, the two largest sugar-producing provinces in the Philippines, Pampanga and Negros Occidental, emphasise the importance of labour and land ownership in historic ecological change. Pampangan sugar growing was dominated by smallholders, but sugar in Negros Occidental was grown on large monocrop plantations primarily owned by several “sugar barons” (Larkin, 1993 ; Aguilar, 1994 and 2017 ). Greater concentration of land ownership permitted Negros Occidental’s plantation-owners to purchase industrial centrifuges that Pampangan smallholders could not afford, and these centrifuges catalysed the continued expansion of sugarcane monoculture in Negros. As a result, Negros Occidental experienced greater soil degradation, and at a faster pace, than Pampanga. Pampanga, meanwhile, continued to specialise in both sugar production for local markets and rice growing, which initially curtailed environmental degradation despite Pampanga’s high population density (Larkin, 1993 ). Other types of environmental degradation often associated with sugar, such as forest clearance and loss of biodiversity (El Chami et al., 2020 ), also occurred in Negros at a faster pace than they had in Pampanga, whose timber products were drawn upon since the Spanish first established their capital in Manila in 1571 CE (Larkin, 1982 ). These divergent outcomes therefore seem dependent not only on different patterns of labour, but also changing modes of colonial administration and the prominence of global exchange.

Lastly, the histories of abacá and copra production illustrate the role of “best agricultural practices” in producing divergent ecological outcomes. Starting with abacá, whose ecological impacts are not as well-studied as other commodities, Owen ( 1984 ) posited it was not especially detrimental to soils, noting smallholders reliably grew it for seventy years on the same plots of land. In support of this theory, ecological research demonstrates abacá plants are very demanding of soils, but fields can be used for decades if nutrients are returned by clipping the plants (Robinson and Johnson, 1953 ; Huke, 1963 ). Nonetheless, Dacudao’s ( 2023 ) recent study of abacá plantations in Davao in conjunction with observations made by Owen ( 1984 ) suggest abacá plants in Davao grew taller and wider than plants in Luzon’s Bikol Region. Whether that evidences gradual soil depletion in Bikol, the benefits of scientifically-informed agriculture in Davao, or that newly cleared soils in Davao momentarily possessed greater nutrients is unclear. Similarly, Ventura ( 2022 ) studied how penal colonies in Zamboanga and Palawan trained convicts to plant and tend coconut trees to prolong and enhance fertility, ultimately producing more nuts. These methods may have been more demanding of soils. However, it is unclear whether these techniques were widely employed by farmers in Tayabas, which planted ~115,000 ha to coconut trees in 1925 compared to ~19,000 ha in Zamboanga and ~2500 ha in Palawan (JRH Papers). These examples again raise questions about the efficacy and extent of colonial policies and “scientific agriculture”, and—in conjunction with labour practices, crop-specific factors and local geographies—are suggestive of the variety of ecological outcomes produced over time by commercial agriculture in the Philippines.

This brief discussion of regional ecological consequences provides a basis for our concluding argument. Our analysis suggests that, at the national scale, the Philippines’s experience of nineteenth and 20th century agricultural expansion, driven by market integration at the behest of two colonial regimes, broadly aligns with experiences in the rest of the tropics described by Moore ( 2016 ) and Ross ( 2017 ). However, our data also draws into question those same colonial regimes’ ability to effectively bring about the “agricultural improvements” they desired while also demonstrating the increasing geographical specialisation of Philippine agriculture in the late Spanish and early U.S. colonial periods. This outcome has historical and ecological implications. First, it emphasises the importance of local factors, such as capacity to ignore or resist colonial authority, labour practices, demography and geography in the extent and pace of agricultural expansion. Second, it suggests the ecological impacts of agricultural expansion in the late Spanish and early U.S. periods were highly variable by location, being affected by the crops planted, the rate of expansion, and the ways crops were cultivated, harvested and prepared for sale (see Kummer et al., 1994 ).

Detailing these diverse processes of environmental change is, we contend, essential for historians and ecologists alike. For historians, detailed historical ecologies permit new understandings of how local actors responded to their transforming surroundings, contextualising past decisions and actions. For Earth Scientists and ecologists, being able to define and connect the cumulative actions and structures of humanity—the Technosphere (Rosol et al., 2022 )—requires enumerating their constituent parts. Our novel consideration of the censuses provides a starting point for appraising historical ecological change on these smaller scales, ultimately with the aim of helping to reassemble a more complete picture of human impacts on the Earth System (see Fluet-Chouinard et al., 2022 ) and specifically the repercussions of colonial interventions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Moving forward, we suggest that comparisons should be made between the Philippines and other regions of today’s “Global South” to further test colonial agricultural policies’ efficacy and precisely describe their environmental legacies. Studies on ecological transformations in rice producing regions in this same period may show why Philippine palay yields increased (e.g., Adas 1974 ; see also Geertz, 1963 ), while comparisons to other commodity-producing regions outside the Philippines will further characterise the diverse ecological outcomes of commodity agriculture in this period (see Wells et al., 2018 ). Simultaneously, as our results indicate, the pursuit of this detailed and quantitative ecological history can provide new perspectives on long-standing historical questions, such as colonial policies’ impacts. One potentially effective method for making such comparisons is historic land use modelling, which repurposes the metrology of improvement to assess and compare different societies and means of productions’ impact on landscapes (Morrison et al., 2021 ; Findley et al., 2022 ). Such studies may ultimately demonstrate how the Anthropocene is comprised of regionally diverse outcomes, the results of uniquely local responses to pervasive global trends. And, once the Anthropocene is understood at smaller scales, previously unrealised solutions may begin to take shape.

Data availability

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Research undertaken for this paper was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 850709; PANTROPOCENE). David Max Findley, Noel Amano and Patrick Roberts also thank the Max Planck Society for additional funding.

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Findley, D.M., Amano, N., Biong, I. et al. Colonial policy, ecological transformations, and agricultural “improvement”: comparing agricultural yields and expansion in the Spanish and U.S. Philippines, 1870–1925 CE. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 839 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03310-z

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How important is agriculture in the philippine economy?

Agriculture plays a vital role in the Philippine economy. The country is blessed with rich natural resources, making it ideal for agricultural production. crops such as rice, corn, and bananas are the main source of income for many farmers in the Philippines. Agriculture also contributes to the employment of millions of Filipinos.

Agriculture is a vital sector of the Philippine economy, accounting for about 10.4% of the country’s GDP and employing about 26.9% of the labor force. The sector is also a major source of export earnings and foreign exchange, with agricultural exports accounting for about US$4.4 billion in 2016. The Philippines is a major producer and exporter of tropical and subtropical agricultural products, such as coconuts, bananas, pineapples, mangoes, and other fruits and vegetables. The country is also a significant producer of coffee, sugar, tobacco, and rice.

Why agriculture is considered the backbone of the Philippine economy?

Agriculture is the backbone of the Philippine economy. The sector accounts for 113% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2014 and 32% of total employment in 2012. About 67% of the population is directly or indirectly involved in the sector.

The country’s agricultural sector is characterized by its diversity. The country is a leading producer of rice, corn, coconuts, sugar, and tobacco. Other agricultural products include fruits and vegetables, livestock, and fish.

The Philippines has a land area of 30 million hectares, of which about 11 million hectares are devoted to agriculture. About two-thirds of the agricultural land is devoted to crops and the remaining one-third to livestock.

The Philippines is a major producer of rice, corn, coconuts, sugar, and tobacco. Other agricultural products include fruits and vegetables, livestock, and fish.

Agriculture plays a vital role in the economic growth and development of a country. It is the backbone of the economy and the main source of food for the population. It also provides raw materials for industries, which contribute to the economic activity in other sectors of the economy.

Why is agriculture important in the Philippines essay

Agriculture is important for the Philippines because it is the main source of employment for many Filipinos. Even children are often engaged in agriculture, helping their parents to farm the land. However, despite the importance of agriculture to the Philippine economy, many Filipinos remain poor. This is due to a number of factors, including a lack of access to land, poor working conditions, and low wages. As a result, agriculture remains one of the social problems in the Philippines.

The Philippines is a country with a large rural population. More than half of the country’s 100 million people live in rural areas, and more than a third of them are poor. Agriculture is the primary source of income for poor rural people, and the only source for many of the poorest households. Most of them depend on subsistence farming and fishing for their livelihoods.

The government has been working to improve the situation of rural farmers and fishermen, but progress has been slow. Some progress has been made in recent years in terms of increasing agricultural productivity and incomes, but much more needs to be done. The government needs to do more to support the agricultural sector, and to provide more opportunities for rural people to escape poverty.

How much does the Philippines rely on agriculture?

Agriculture plays an important role in the Philippine economy. It employs about 40 percent of Filipino workers and contributes an average of 20 percent to the Gross Domestic Product. The sector is important in providing food and other basic needs for the population. It also provides raw materials for industries and generates employment opportunities. The government is working to further develop the sector through initiatives such as the expansion of agricultural credit, investments in infrastructure and research, and the provision of extension services.

The rising prices on energy, oil, fertilizer, wheat and wheat products, and add to that the export bans being imposed by other countries to “protect their own people” continue to put many countries at risk, especially the Philippines, who is reliant on these key producing countries to fill local production gap.

The Philippines is particularly vulnerable to these rising prices and export bans as it is an import-dependent country. In order to meet the local demand for these products, the Philippines has to rely on other countries to fill the production gap. This reliance puts the Philippines at a disadvantage as other countries can impose export bans at any time, which would disrupt the supply of these essential products to the Philippines.

The rising prices and export bans are a major concern for the Philippines, and the government is working to find ways to mitigate the impact of these factors. In the meantime, the Philippines will continue to be at risk of these disruptions to the supply of essential products.

Is Philippines an agricultural country?

The Philippines is an agricultural country with a large portion of Filipinos living in rural areas. The agricultural sector is the main source of livelihood for the rural population. The country is endowed with fertile soil and a favourable climate for agriculture. The government is taking steps to improve the agricultural sector and provide support to farmers.

Agriculture is an important part of the economy of the Philippines. Crops like rice, coconut and sugar dominate the production of crops and exports. It employs 23% of the Filipino workforce as of 2021, according to the World Bank.

What are 5 important of agriculture

The agricultural sector is the backbone of many economies, providing jobs, food security and export income. Despite this, the sector is often undervalued and neglected, with farmers often struggling to make a decent living.

There are many reasons why agriculture is important, not just for developing countries but for the world as a whole.

1. Food security: Agriculture is the primary source of food for most people around the world. Without a thriving agricultural sector, it would be difficult to ensure that everyone had enough to eat.

2. Jobs: The agricultural sector provides employment for a huge number of people, often in rural areas where jobs are scarce.

3. Livelihoods: For many people, agriculture is the only source of income. If the sector is not doing well, it can have a devastating impact on people’s ability to support themselves and their families.

4. Export income: Agriculture is a major source of export income for many countries. This is especially important for developing countries, which often rely heavily on agricultural exports to boost their economy.

5. Environmental protection: Agriculture plays a key role in protecting the environment. For example, trees and other vegetation help to prevent soil erosion, while wetlands act as natural filters, pur

What is the most common problems of Filipino farmers Why?

The lack of storage facilities, farm-to-market roads, and equipment needed to prevent losses from exposure, pests, and natural deterioration have been perennial issues for Filipino farmers. These infrastructure deficiencies have caused significant financial losses for farmers, as they are unable to store their crops properly or transport them to marketplaces. As a result, many farmers have been forced to sell their crops at below-market prices, or have been forced to throw them away. These problems have been exacerbated by the fact that the Philippines is an archipelago, which makes transportation logistics more difficult and expensive. The lack of efficient transportation options has also made it difficult for farmers to access inputs such as seed and fertilizer, and marketplaces where they can sell their products.

The Philippines is a country located in Southeast Asia. The country’s major agricultural crops are rice, corn, coconut, sugarcane, banana, cassava, pineapple, and vegetables. The major livestock products are hog, cattle, carabao, goat, and dairy products. Chicken and duck are the leading poultry products.

Why Philippines is poor in agriculture

It is clear that poor rural infrastructure and climate extremes are key factors contributing to low agricultural productivity. In order to address these challenges, the government should reorient its public expenditure programs and promote research and development to boost long-term productivity.

Public expenditure programs should focus on improving rural infrastructure, such as roads, irrigation, and storage facilities. In addition, they should promote research and development activities aimed at improving agricultural productivity.

Improving rural infrastructure and promoting agricultural productivity research and development will require significant financial resources. However, these investments are essential if the government is to achieve its goal of boosting agricultural productivity and ensuring food security for the country’s population.

The Philippines is an archipelago located in Southeast Asia, consisting of over 7,000 islands. The country is prone to typhoons and other extreme weather conditions, which makes agriculture a difficult industry. In recent years, climate change has only made farming more difficult, with crops being threatened by floods and landslides. Despite these challenges, the Philippinesgovernment has made boosting agriculture one of its top priorities. In order to do this, the government has implemented a number of measures, including providing subsidies to farmers, investing in agricultural research, and increasing access to financing. The government is also working to improve infrastructure in rural areas and to promote sustainable farming practices. While there are still many challenges ahead, the Philippines government is committed to supporting the agricultural industry and ensuring that farmers can continue to provide for the country.

What is the main source of economy in Philippines?

The Philippine economy is driven by the service, industry, and agriculture sectors. Food processing, cement, iron, and steel production, and telecommunications are among the country’s most significant contributors. The service sector accounts for the largest share of GDP, followed by industry and agriculture. The Philippines is a major producer of food, and the food processing industry is a major contributor to the economy. The country is also a major producer of cement, iron, and steel. The telecommunications sector is another major contributor to the economy.

The Philippines’ agriculture sector is a critical part of the country’s development agenda. The sector remains the backbone of the economy, accounting for 10.3% of GDP in 2017 and employing over 11 million people. The Philippines is a major producer of rice, corn, coconuts, and sugarcane, and the country is also a major exporter of agricultural products. Agriculture is an important driver of rural development and poverty reduction, and the government is committed to supporting the sector through initiatives like the National Agricultural and Fisheries Development Plan. The government is also working to improve the sector’s competitiveness through reforms like the Rice Tariffication Act and the National Food Security Act.

Is agriculture neglected in the Philippines

The Government’s long-time neglect of the country’s agriculture sector has been disastrous to small producers. The recent series of super-typhoons – Quinta, Rolly and Ulysses – has highlighted this. The country’s geophysical characteristics as well as geographic location make it exposed to natural hazards. The lack of support from the government has made it difficult for small producers to recover from these disasters.

The value of production in agriculture and fisheries declined by -06 percent in the second quarter of 2022, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. The decline was driven by lower production in crops and livestock.

The Philippines is an agricultural country. Agriculture is the main source of income for many Filipino families. Agriculture accounts for about 10% of the country’s GDP.

The agriculture sector is a vital part of the Philippine economy, accounting for 10.3% of the country’s GDP in 2018. The sector employs around 11.5% of the workforce and is a major source of export earnings. The Philippines is a key producer of rice, coconuts, sugar, coffee, and tobacco, among other agricultural commodities. Agriculture is also an important driver of rural development, which can help to reduce poverty and improve economic opportunity in rural areas.

Claudia Adams

Claudia is passionate about agriculture and plants. She has dedicated her life to understanding the science behind growing plants, and she is always looking for new ways to make the process more efficient. She loves experimenting with different techniques and technologies, and she is always striving to make the world a better place through agriculture.

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“Not all the solutions involve rocket science. Some relate to simple water management systems and irrigation techniques.”

Agriculture is one sector that has plenty of promises in the Philippines. Yet, it has failed to live up to expectations decades after decades and even with changes in leadership.

Those who had been at the helm of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the current one knew what ails the sector and the practical solutions to it. But the farm sector remains a conundrum to this day.

There is nothing earthshaking in the recent policy statement of Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. , who considers technology as the key to revitalizing Philippine agriculture to unlock its full potential.

Modernizing agriculture is critical to increased productivity and empowerment of the rural sector. It employs a significant portion of the workforce, but contributes less than 10 percent to the gross domestic product.

“The big challenge we face is making farming profitable. The solution lies in embracing technology-based farming methods,” says Tiu Laurel in a recent forum with business owners.

Not all the solutions involve rocket science. Some relate to simple water management systems and irrigation techniques. Others require technology, like South Korea’s extensive use of greenhouses

Mr. Tiu Laurel nailed it when he bared a long-term plan about a shift in agricultural education. The goal seeks to move from traditional methods to comprehensive training in modern techniques, empowering landowners and tenants for success.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ’s vision of a modern farm sector and better lives for farmers and fishermen is actually doable and not an impossible task.

We can look at the Vietnam model and learn from it. The Philippines and Vietnam basically share the same topography and tropical climate. Both countries are also one of the most vulnerable to climate change.

Vietnam model

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) in a recent report noted the strides of Vietnam(s farm sector.

The value of its agriculture, forestry, and fishery exports has increased in recent years from $22.8 billion in 2012 to $33.8 billion in 2019.

Rice, according to the ADB report, dominates Vietnam’s agricultural exports with over 6.3 million tons shipped out in 2019. It is among the largest exporters of rice in the world, in addition to coffee, pepper, cashew nuts and green tea.

“Marine captured species together with fish and shrimp produced in manufactured ponds are an important domestic food source as well as generator of foreign exchange on export markets. Viet Nam has a diverse array of agro-ecosystems ranging from upland plateaus and mountainous areas to a relatively narrow coastal strip where the majority of rice is grown,” says the ADB report.

Vietnam, however, is paying the price for its agricultural success—an experience that the Philippines can learn from.

Considerable environmental damage, notes the ADB, has resulted from the removal of protective coastal mangrove forests to make way for shrimp farming ponds and salt production. In the upland areas, the poorer soils, uphill land, and widespread erosion resulting from extensive deforestation add additional development challenges.

The Philippines shares the same development problems of Vietnam. Excessive use of groundwater in Vietnam, especially for coffee and fruit tree crops, has resulted in unsustainable extraction rates and a lowering of the water table.

The ADB report says competition for water resources from downstream users, including urban areas and industry, has compounded the challenge in the agriculture and the natural resources sector. The constraints to the sector growth include climate change impacts, low productivity, underdeveloped rural infrastructure, low rates of agriculture land consolidation, weak market linkages, low access to credit and increased competition for water resource.

The Philippines may copy the agriculture model of Vietnam but must improve on it by making the farm sector sustainable to address the needs of  the current and future generations. Agriculture sustainability is a practice that preserves soil fertility, prevents water pollution and protects biodiversity.

The ADB is aware of the uneven development in Vietnam’s agricultural sector. Similar to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, the bank is now seeking to maintain a sustainable and inclusive growth of Vietnam’s farm sector by improving efficiency and competitiveness, and enhancing rural living standards and resilience to climate change and disasters.

The Philippines has a long way to go in modernizing its agriculture sector and achieving food security. But it must do so with sustainability at the core of the development goal.

E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

• Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr.
• Asian Development Bank
• Department of Agriculture

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Philippine Agriculture: Current State, Challenges, and Ways Forward

• Agriculture
• Briones, Roehlano M.
• agricultural productivity
• rural development
• Philippine agriculture
• agriculture financing
• public expenditure programs

Agriculture in the Philippines has receded in recent decades. This Policy Note traces the sector's weak growth to the slow expansion in the factors of production and total factor productivity. The study notes that the population growth in rural areas, declining farm sizes, and low incomes have pushed workers to shift out of agriculture. In addition, capital formation in agriculture is constrained by limited access to financing. Poor rural infrastructure and climate extremes also contribute to low agricultural productivity. To address these key challenges, this Note recommends that the government reorient its public expenditure programs and promote research and development to boost long-term productivity. It also underscores the need to improve the business climate for the agri-food system to raise agricultural investment and productivity.

This publication has been cited 6 times

• Cervantes, Filane Mikee. 2023. Bill on agri pension fund to benefit 9.7M farmers, fisherfolk . Philippine News Agency.
• Cruz, Maricel. 2023. Yamsuan urges support for farmers’ pension . Manila Standard.
• de la Cruz, Jovee Marie. 2023. House bill seeks to create Agricultural Pension Fund . BusinessMirror.
• Lagare, Jordeene B.. 2021. PIDS: agri growth stunted by shrinking farm size, low productivity . Inquirer.net.
• Quismorio, Ellson. 2023. Bicol solons want lifetime pension for almost 10M poor farmers, fisherfolks . Manila Bulletin.
• Reganit, Jose Cielito. 2023. Agri scholarships, incentives for farmers’ dependents pushed . Philippine News Agency.

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Home — Essay Samples — Geography & Travel — Philippines — Effects Of Rice Import Dependence On Agriculture In The Philippines

Effects of Rice Import Dependence on Agriculture in The Philippines

• Categories: Philippines

About this sample

Words: 1327 |

Published: Jan 28, 2021

Words: 1327 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, main claims, definition of terms, methodology.

• Food security: is the marginal balance stock of food to be maintained by the National Food Authority in cases of emergency to be used as buffer stock to avoid shortage on the market
• Buffer stock: is the amount of food products kept by the National Food Authority to be used to circulate in the market.
• Diminishing value: is the depreciation of actual price of a good from the base of production due to certain factors.
• Palay: is a base product which rice is the byproduct.
• Tariff: is the tax implied to the goods imported from another country instead of restrictive quotas as defined in the R.A no. 11203
• Quantitative restriction: are measures such as quotas, bans, and licensing requirements imposed by the government to limit the volume of particular commodity that enters the country
• Trade deficit: is the difference between the import and export which is deterrent to the importing country.
• Performance of Philippine Agriculture January to March 2019 (2019). Published in world wide web thru link: https://psa.gov.ph/system/files/PAR_January%20to%20March%202019.pdf
• Rice Tariffication Law(2019). Published in world wide web thru link: https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph › 20190214-RA-11203-RRD
• Simeon, Louise Maureen (2019) Philippines to import more rice despite higher production. Published in world wide web thru link: https://www.philstar.com/business/2019/05/13/1917282/philippines-import-more-rice-despite-higher-production#jrOZjhfYsjcivddb.99
• Briones, Roehlano M. (2019) Competition in the Rice Industry: An Issues Paper. Published in world wide web thru link: https://phcc.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Issues-Paper-Rice-030819-cover-1.pdf
• Customs Memorandum Circular No.135-2019 (2019) Implementing Rules and Regulation of R.A 11203. Published in world wide web thru link: http://customs.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/CMC-135-2019 Implementing_Rules_and_Regulation_of_RA_11203.pdf
• List of Importers of Rice (2018). Published in world wide web thru link: https://www.trademap.org/Country_SelProduct.aspx?nvpm=1
• Farmer’s Guide Map (2017). Published in world wide web thru link: https//rfo3.da.gov.ph/farmers-guide-map/
• Proceedings of the Policy Seminar on Philippine Rice Trade Policy and Rice Security: Future Directions (2012). Published in world wide web thru link: https://www.philrice.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Proceedings_TradeLibSeminar_2015.pdf
• Dawe, David C.: Moya, Piedad F. and Casiwan, Cheryll B. (2004) Why Does the Philippines Import Rice?”: Meeting the challenge of trade liberalization. Published in world wide web thru link: http://books.irri.org/9712202097_content.pdf
• Ùruguay Round of the World Trade Organization (1995). Published in world wide web thru link: (https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact5_e.htm

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Total volume of lumber produced in the Philippines from 2013 to 2022 (in 1,000 cubic meters)

Volume of veneers produced Philippines 2013-2022

Total volume of veneers produced in the Philippines from 2013 to 2022 (in 1,000 cubic meters)

Volume of plywood produced Philippines 2013-2022

Total volume of plywood produced in the Philippines from 2013 to 2022 (in 1,000 cubic meters)

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Philippines: Philippines Issued EO 62 Modifying Import Duty Rates

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