Changes in Rice Farming in the Philippines: Insights from Five Decades of a Household-Level Survey

Abstract

This book centers around the structural and economic changes in rice farming that have occurred in the Philippines during the past five decades. As a researcher at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for more than 30 years, I have been a witness to these changes through my involvement and encounters with farmers. This experience has given me a first-hand knowledge of what is actually happening in farmers’ fields and with their family. Five years ago, Samarendu Mohanty, the head of the Social Sciences Division (SSD), gave me the responsibility to establish the social science database that involved the organization and consolidation of numerous farm-level data sets that SSD had accumulated over the years. The book consists of three major parts: (1) the main text that consists of eight chapters that deal with the quantitative data on rice production systems that present the trends and changes in yield, input use, and profitability of rice production over the years; (2) the last chapter consists of six case studies that focus on how the farm household and its family have changed over time; and (3) substantive Appendices that contain not only detailed tables mentioned in the text, but detailed survey data per observation that were processed on a per hectare basis for use by other researchers or anybody who would be interested in doing a more in-depth analysis.