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 77

3.3 Results

3.3.1 Household and Field Characteristics

Tree growing in farm fields is a relatively common phenomenon in the research
area, with 47 percent of all households interviewed having integrated trees in at least
one of their fields. Since, each household tends to have several fields, 32 percent of
the farm fields in the study sample contained a tree component. Table 3.1 presents
some key characteristics for households and farm fields of tree and non-tree grow-
ers. At the household level, no significant differences can be observed in education
level, membership of local organization, time spent on non-farm activities, availa-
ble capital and number of household members contributing to income and farm
work. For the other socio-economic factors the differences are manifest. As
opposed to non-tree growers, tree growers are somewhat older in age on average
and a higher percentage has been able to make use of extension services. Tree
growers mostly reside in upland areas (66 percent) and have large farms, i.e., being
1.75 times larger than the average total farm area of non-tree growers who mostly
(64 percent) reside in lowland areas. The latter strengthens the assumption that the
pressure on land and - related to this - land use intensity are lower in upland areas.
Most non-Ilocano households (i.e., largely the upland ethnic group “Ifugao”) are
tree growers, but this group is a minority compared to the large group of Ilocano's
that forms the other part of the tree-growers category. The Ilocano's constitute,
however, also the largest group among the non-tree growers. Most households
among non-tree growers have an outstanding debt to a trader but this is not reflected
in less capital (difference in available capital between groups is not significant).
Fields with trees prove at least twice the average size of those lacking trees and
are more often located on sloping land. Yet, their formal tenure is more often inse-
cure. Trees are further relatively seldom grown on coarse textured soils, fine- and
particularly medium-textured soils being preferred by most farmers. There is fur-
ther no evidence that the distances between tree fields and farm house are signifi-
cantly longer in terms of travel time than those between farm house and fields
without trees
Table 3.2 shows the results of the logistic regression analyses. At the household
level, AGE and AGRO-ECOZONE (for lowland and upland) are the sole explana-
tory variables with significance levels of 0.01. AGRO-ECOZONE correlates with a
number of other variables; if AGRO-ECOZONE is excluded as independent varia-
ble, eight out of ten variables turn out to be explanatory for the decision to grow
trees in at least one of the households' fields. Age (AGE) and lack of extension
(EXTENSION no ) are, respectively, positively and negatively related to tree growing
(significant at the 0.01 level). Likewise total farm area (TOTLAND), that is either
under ownership or only under cultivation, no or low available capital (CAPTALAV low )
and the amount of time spent in non-farm labor (NFLABOR) have a positive rela-
tionship with on-farm tree growing (significant at 0.05 level).