4    Application

The model and estimation algorisms, obtained from a household survey that was conducted in Don Montano, the study site of the Crop–Animal Systems Research Project (CASREN), were applied to data from a crop–livestock producing village in The Philippines.¹ The CASREN project is aimed at generating technology and policy options to increase the productivity and economic viability of smallholder crop–animal systems in rainfed areas. The study of policy options has focused on identifying ways to improve the market participation of smallholder livestock producers in the area.

1. This study is one component of the project that is being funded by the Asian Development Bank under a Regional Technical Assistance (RETA) grant.

Don Montano is one of 58 Barangays² in the Municipality of Umingan in the province of Pangasinan, within the northern Luzon island of The Philippine archipelago. It used to be a wide tract of land owned by a Spanish Haciendero,³ named Don Montano Castillo, who donated part of his land to the municipality to become what is presently the Barangay named after him. Don Montano is characterised by farmlands situated at the foot of the partly denuded Caraballo Mountain. It has a total land area of 297 ha, two-thirds of which is rainfed lowland. It has a Type I climate with distinct wet and dry seasons (wet from May to October, and dry from November to April) and sandy loam soil. There are 329 households in Don Montano consisting of a total population of 1738 persons, or an average household size of 5–6 members. Ninety per cent of the residents are farmers with an average land holding of 1.5 ha. The major crops grown in the area are rice, corn, onion, peanut, mungbean and vegetables. The animal species that are commonly raised by smallholder farmers include beef cattle, buffalo, goat, pig and poultry.

2. A Barangay is the smallest political unit in The Philippines.
3. A Spanish term for a rich-landed farmer.

Structured questionnaires were designed to collect primary data from a sample of smallholder livestock producers and non-producers. These include both combined and separate questionnaires for producers and non-producers, a questionnaire on technology adoption, and a survey form recording daily food consumption during a one-week period.⁴ A total of 110 households (consisting of 75 smallholder/backyard livestock producers and 35 non-producers) were interviewed by a team of hired enumerators from Central Luzon State University under the supervision of International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) staff. The respondents were randomly picked from a list of households that was generated from a census to determine the sample population. The complete interview was executed in two rounds. This allowed the collection of information for two time periods. The first round took place in April–May 2001, covering information about livestock production and sales activities for the year 2000 and the second round took place in August 2001, covering information about the same items for the first six months of year 2001. The survey primarily aimed at generating information on general household characteristics, production, consumption, sales, transactions costs, credit, technology adoption and perceptions about livestock production.

4. The survey forms on consumption and technology adoption were administered during the second round of data collection.

Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of variables that characterised the sample households in the study site. It is shown that livestock producers are slightly older, more educated, have access to more family labour, have higher household income, have more assets (including residential buildings, vehicles, farm equipment, furniture, household appliances), and have larger farm size than non-producers. Livestock producers are also predominantly farmers producing rice and onion. Both livestock producers and non-producers obtain at least half of their household income from non-farm sources, with non-producers having a larger share than livestock producers. Among livestock producers, slightly less than half sold livestock in 2000, and slightly less than one-fourth did during the first half of 2001.

Table 1. Characteristics of livestock producers and non-producers in Barangay Don Montano, Umingan, Pangasinan, The Philippines.