Socio-economic evaluation of soil conservation technologies for upland farming systems in the Philippines

• SEAMEO Regional Centre for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture, Philippines

Soil erosion is a major environmental and socioeconomic problem in the Philippine uplands (which account for about 15 million hectares or half the total area of the country). It is related to the physical environment, increasing agricultural pressure on the uplands at the expense of forests and grasslands, the high incidence of rural poverty and the prevalence of social and economic structures unfavourable to small farmers.

Although there has been much research effort directed towards the development of new soil conservation technologies for the area, the adoption of such technologies by farmers has been limited. This has been attributed to the promotion of inappropriate technologies and socioeconomic factors such as the lack of tenure or credit.

The objective of this project is to improve the flow of appropriate soil conservation technology to upland farmers by providing feedback from farmers to researchers and policymakers regarding factors likely to promote technology adoption. This farming systems approach will start by defining the goals and circumstances of farmers in specific physical and socioeconomic environments.

It also has an ecological focus, examining not only whole-farm systems but agroecological systems, including agroforestry systems and land-use systems. A general hypothesis which will guide the research is that upland farmers choose technology in order to further their goals, subject to the constraints imposed by resource availability and environmental conditions.

Researchers will review literature and data to select eight research sites in the Philippines representing the following features: important upland agroecological zones; resource poor farming populations with serious soil erosion problems; a mixture of indigenous and immigrant farmers to capture differences in farming practice; differences of tenure types and population pressures; and varying access to markets and degrees of commercialisation. Each site will have had a previous attempt to induce some form of soil erosion technology.

Assessment will be by interviews, informal and formal surveys of farmers and fields and will take about 8-10 weeks per site. The data will be analysed in the field using a spreadsheet program with simple cross-tabulations combined with intuitive judgment and local expert opinion to develop location-specific conclusions and recommendations. On-going monitoring and evaluation will be carried out at sites already involved in ACIAR projects 9201 and 9220.

Further analysis of the data will be carried out at UQ including construction of detailed farm budgets for linear programming analyses to model farmers' responses to alternative farm activities including the introduction of new soil conservation practices; and benefit:cost analysis to assess the net social returns for the adoption of specific soil conservation practices.