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 73

example on how the West-African forest-savanna mosaic landscape has been cre-
ated by local farmers through tee growing and gradual development, rather than
destruction, of forests around villages and towns. Land use intensification is,
according to Arnold and Dewees (1995), coupled with increasing sophistication of
tree management strategies. For example, extensive Imperata grasslands consid-
ered infertile and unsuitable for cultivation in the past are increasingly being used
for the production of annual and perennial crops through specifically designed tree-
based strategies (e.g., Van Noordwijk et al. 1997). Trees gain in market value and
start playing a role as cash crop.
The objectives of this study are (1) to examine household and field characteris-
tics of smallholder tree growers and investigate which of these characteristics are
crucial determinants for tree growing, (2) to investigate farmers' motivations for
growing trees on their farm fields and (3) to study trends in the integration of trees
on farm fields among smallholder farmers under current conditions of land-
use change in the Cagayan Valley, Northeast Luzon, Philippines. In this study,
land-use changes concern a transition from subsistence-oriented farming systems
towards systems with a high degree of intensification and integration of market-
oriented crops in response to mounting population and associated demand. The
market integration creates new and different conditions in which tree-based farming
systems can flourish (Snelder et al. 2007). The research area covers three agro-eco-
zones, i.e., an upland, an intermediate and a lowland zone (the former or second
zone hereafter mentioned as hilly lowland), a set up that corresponds to a transect
of increasing land-use intensification to examine tree integration dynamics at dif-
ferent levels of intensification. The term tree growing refers to trees that are either
actively planted or naturally growing, i.e., after sprouting spontaneously they are
retained in smallholders' farm fields.

3.2 Methodology

3.2.1 The Study Area

The Cagayan Valley in Northeast Luzon is a predominantly agricultural area. The
lowland areas adjacent to the river are mainly used for the cultivation of seasonal
cash crops, with yellow corn, tobacco and rice forming the major sources of liveli-
hood. At the somewhat higher and hilly locations, a vast area of Imperata-Themeda
grassland stretches out in North-South direction. However with the integration of
high-yielding crop varieties over past three decades (i.e., hybrid rice and corn varie-
ties in the 1970s and mid-1980s respectively), land use at these locations has
changed. Large tracks of grassland have been converted into farm fields with
monocultures of rice along flat intersections, corn on sloping fields, and banana
along creeks, field boundaries or other steep slope sections. In the uplands, logging has
been an important economic activity from the early 1960s onwards when large-scale