Indigenous strategies of sustainable farming systems in the highlands of northern Philippines

Issue Date

5-2004

Abstract

Indigenous strategies have been practiced in the Philippine uplands and they have maintained the sustainability of upland farming systems for generations. A collaborative activity among researchers, extensionists and practitioners from UPLB, BSU, HARRDEC, ICRAF, DENR-CAR, DA-CHARM, and NCIP was carried out to document and understand the indigenous strategies of farming systems in Bayyo, Mt. Province. Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) activities including transect lines, resource mapping, key informant interviews, and mind mapping were conducted with selected participants from the community. Most households in Bayyo maintain three production systems: irrigated rice fields (payew), permanent swidden (katualle), and shifting cultivation (uma) plots. All three production systems are essential for their survival. Local people practice a variety of indigenous strategies to sustain productivity in these production systems. These include terracing, crop rotation, mixed cropping, soil fertility management, and the sweetpotato cropping system. Payew fields are flat terraces built a long the mountainsides with terrace sides fortified with stone walls. These fields are irrigated with water from nearby spring water to grow paddy rice. Terracing is also practiced in the katualle to reduce the steepness of the slope of the fields and to reduce soil erosion. Different systems of crop rotation and mixed cropping of rice, sweet potato, and peanuts are practiced in the three production systems to sustain crop productivity. Soil fertility in the payew fields is maintained by the application of the indigenous species Tithonia diversifolia. Laying removed weeds around sweetpotato plants as mulch is the main soil fertility management and weed control in the katualle fields. Fallowing is an important component of the shifting cultivation cycle in the uma fields. Sweet potato is the second staple food crop in Bayyo and farmers keep a collection of a diverse array of sweet potato varieties suited to different growing conditions and with varying characteristics of growing season length, herbage yield, drought tolerance and tuber storage longevity. PRA results have shown that indigenous practices kept the up land farms in Bayyo sustainable through the years. © 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

Source or Periodical Title

Journal of Sustainable Agriculture

ISSN

10440046

Volume

26

Issue

2

Page

117-138

Document Type

Article

Language

English

Subject

Crop rotation, Indigenous strategies, Mixed cropping, Shifting cultivation, Soil fertility management, Sustainable agriculture, Sweetpotato, Terracing

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1300/j064v26n02_09

Digital Copy

YES

Link to Full Text

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