Smallholder Tree Growing in Philippine Back Yards: Homegarden Characteristics in Different Environmental Settings - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 64

hectare, whereas densities of over 1,100 trees per hectare are recorded for similar-
sized homegardens elsewhere (e.g., Peyre et al. 2006).
Whether or not farmers will opt for more diversified homegardens also depends
on the total area of farmland available to a household. Households with small
homegardens tend to have the highest species diversity (e.g., Kumar et al. 1994),
yet if the total area of farmland is limited as well, the gardens may be dominated
by a small number of food crop species (Wiersum 1982) planted at relatively high
density and, hence, resulting in lower species diversity. In Namnama, where the
homegardens are smallest in size and function as so-called subsistence gardens
(Wiersum 2006), both species diversity and plant density are not the highest or sig-
nificantly different from those recorded for Moldero and Malibabag. Contrary to
the latter villages, at least 50 percent of the farmers in Namnama have sufficient
farmland outside their village where, in addition to cash crops, a variety of food
crops for home consumption is cultivated. Hence, the lower-than-expected species
diversity is not so much attributed to the domination of food crops in the small
homegardens but more to the higher-than-expected diversity of food crops for home
consumption on cash crop farms.
The tendency towards food crop domination in gardens of households with lim-
ited farmland is, however, observed in the lowland villages Moldero and Malibabag.
Both the tree and non-tree crop combinations are predominated by food species,
i.e., the key species mango, guava, papaya, horse raddish, eggplant, cocoyam and
sweet potato, rather than timber or medicinal species. Whereas these food crops are
cultivated primarily for home consumption, they are planted at densities higher than
needed for solely home consumption in order to have some excess for marketing
purposes. This is particularly true for Moldero where farmers suffer from unfavo-
rable land tenure and other socio-economic conditions. According to the classifica-
tion of Wiersum (2006), these gardens are associated with survival rather than
market gardens. Although most farmers have been awarded land through the land
reform program, many farmers are still (or again) financially dependent from their
previous landowner or a money lender for paying off their land, buying their inputs
and covering other high (e.g., medical) unforeseen costs. In various cases, farmers'
ever-increasing debts resulted in the loss of ownership of the land and a return to a
“tenancy type” of conditions aimed at monocultures with prescribed commercial
crops rather than subsistence cropping. Furthermore, unlike in other villages, none
of the farmers in Moldero grow rice for home consumption and thus need cash to
buy their major staple food. In Malibabag, the conditions are different. Only 50
percent of the households earn their main income through farming (Table 2.2b), i.e.,
mainly livestock holding, the other 50 percent being engaged in off-farm activities
and having gardens comparable to the so-called budget gardens (Wiersum 2006).
The latter households usually lack time for planting sufficient food crops and often
have limited farmland at their disposal. Hence, they only plant part of their food
crop needs in gardens and buy food to supplement their daily diet.
Like in Namnama, predominance by certain crop species is less evident in
Baliuag and virtually absent in the upland village Dy Abra. On the whole, the
homegardens in Dy Abra, followed by those in Baliuag, are less developed, poorer
in structure and inefficient in space and light use compared to the gardens in the