Over-Regulated and Under-Marketed: Smallholders and the Wood Economy in Isabela, The Philippines - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 156

that combine the trees with agricultural activities and other livelihood components
(sometimes including illegal logging).
The study area covers the northern Isabela watershed area under the jurisdiction
of the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) of the
Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Cabagan town,
province of Isabela in northern Luzon. This area comprises the municipalities of
Cabagan, San Pablo and Tumauini. The smallholders of the study are to be found
within a long stretch of geographically distant communities located at the western
foot-slopes of the Sierra Madre Mountain Range at 17°25'34” to 17°48'28” north
latitudes and 121°45'45” to 121°48'28” east longitudes. Providing a mixture of
grassland, arable lands and secondary forest remnants on often moderate slopes,
their landscape is intermediary between the forested mountains of the Sierra Madre
in the east and the flat and rice-growing valley lands of the Cagayan River basin in
the west. The tree-growing sites are typically at distances of 15-23 km to the high-
way that runs along the Cagayan River and where the (small-town) capitals of the
municipalities are situated.
7.3 Methodology
The study area has been covered by many interdisciplinary research activities under
the Cagayan Valley Programme on Environment and Development (CVPED), a
partnership institution of the Isabela and Leiden universities (Snelder and
Masipiqueña 2003). Data from these studies were used as a general background.
Specific data gathering for the present study was conducted in 2006, visiting actors
along the product chain between producers and consumers, and the (re)visit of
smallholder tree plantings that have been established since the implementation of
two community-based forest management programs (see next section).
A purposive two-stage sampling procedure was used. The first step focused on
the tree-based enterprise activity (retailing, wholesale, furniture making) and
involved some interviews of key informants for overview purposes and interviews
of 14 shop-owners and eight furniture makers to gather the detailed data. These
respondents were situated in the towns of Cabagan and Tumauini, where trade and
manufacture are concentrated. The second step consisted of semi-structured inter-
views of 42 smallholder tree growers who were pointed out by the first respondent
group as suppliers in the wood market. This sampling process was blind; we
stopped listing smallholder respondents when we had reached the number we could
handle within our time and budgetary constraints.
Note that this procedure assures that we have gathered data only of smallholders
that are already connected to the market one way or another and excludes tree
growers that are not connected yet. Within the smallholder group, we found a rich
variety of livelihoods, ranging between farmers who grow trees as additional source
of income to full-time fuelwood gatherers and retailers (see Table 7.1).