Tree Growing on Farms in Northeast Luzon (The Philippines): Smallholders’ Motivations and Other Determinants for Adopting Agroforestry Systems - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 87

trees (push). The latter is confirmed by another study in the Philippines showing
that tree adoption is related to rising prices for tree products (i.e. mango) and
decreasing prices for non-tree, seasonal cash products (i.e. corn and rice; Shively
1999). Trees are increasingly part of rural livelihood strategies; they are planted or
retained as a means of savings, income diversification and pension provision.
Farmers' perception of trees as income-generating crop may well be associated
with extension efforts promoting trees as cash crops. Moreover, according to farm-
ers, tree cultivation has some comparative advantages over seasonal crops, such as,
low labor and capital requirements (specifically timber trees). Yet, most on-farm
tree growing activities take place out of subsistence considerations, i.e. trees are
grown to meet household needs.
A main question in the literature refers to whether agricultural intensification
necessarily leads to the disappearance of tree cover to make room for intensive sea-
sonal crop production, or whether intensification in itself create a need for sustain-
able tree-based production systems in order to keep up productivity levels? On the
basis of this study, the following observations can be made. Firstly, in the inten-
sively cultivated lowland zone, both the level of tree adoption and planned tree
growing are lowest. Similarly, natural tree stocks have almost disappeared while in
the upland zone still a reasonable amount of naturally growing trees occur.
However, tree growing in the lowlands is more often related to the need for a tree
product that cannot be satisfied with naturally growing trees at a reasonable labor
and financial investment whereas tree growing in the uplands is more market-
oriented. In addition, trees are increasingly grown to counter soil degradation in
sloping areas; a role that is valued highly. This indicates that after two decades of
progressively more intensive cultivation of seasonal crops, degradation processes
are becoming a familiar phenomenon to farm households in sloping or hilly areas.
Related to this, the awareness of reduced yields through soil degradation leads in
various cases to greater interest in trees rather than seasonal cash crops. These
developments coincide with a rising market demand for tree products among both
rural and urban communities. Markets that cater the growing urban populations can
absorb higher quantities of fruits and fruit products from the agricultural hinterland
communities, while also the demand for timber and construction materials increase
with the standards of living of parts of the rural and urban populations. Because it
is becoming gradually more time-consuming and expensive to harvest trees from
the forest, a market for farm-grown trees has come to exist. Timber is increasingly
produced from farm fields rather than gathered from surrounding woody patches
and nearby forests, as was common in the past. Similar trends in on-farm tree grow-
ing are also observed elsewhere in the Philippines. For example, Bertomeu (chapter 8,
this volume) refers to land use intensification associated with farm-grown trees in
Mindanao in Southern Philippines. Thus, land use intensification produces two
opposing trends in tree integration that at the same time contributes to regional
specialization: the uplands with lower land-use intensity where trees are preferably
grown at increasing densities for both home and market purposes and the lowlands
with high land-use intensity where tree integration is limited and usually subsist-
ence oriented.