Agricultural Intensification in a Philippine Frontier Community: Impact on Labor Efficiency and Farm Diversity

Abstract

There has been little research directed specifically at the point of transition between extensive and intensive cultivation, whereby farmers decide or are forced to change techniques in order to maximize outputs through greater investment of human labor. Conelly went to the west coast of Palawan Island (the same island where James Eder studied the Batak) to investigate the transition underway from traditional swidden agriculture to irrigated rice production. On the basis of Boserup’s widely accepted theory, he assumed that such a change would be resisted because the farmer has to invest much more labor. With permanent irrigated production the soil is no longer left fallow, forcing cultivators to adopt labor-intensive methods of cultivation to maintain yields. Another widely accepted parallel argument is that because extended agriculture involves a very diverse range of crops through interplanting a number of species in each plot, with intensification the quality and reliability of the food supply will decline. What Conelly found was that while the long-term consequences of intensification may conform to these theories, in the short-term, which is what people take most seriously, standards of living improve. The reason for this is that farmers do not make the transition to irrigation directly from long fallow swidden cultivation. Rather, they make the transition from a short-fallow form of horticulture in which fields are allowed only 2–4 years in which to recover their fertility—which they do poorly. Thus, farmers no longer reap the benefits associated with traditional, highly diversified cropping. At this point, irrigation, even with its high labor requirements, looks attractive.