Benefits accruing from the adoption of the Palayamanan Program

The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), Batac Station started its Palayamanan Program in 2001 to alleviate the plight of Ilocos and Cagayan farmers most of whom are tenants tilling small farms. The program is a holistic approach to a highly diversified and integrated rice-based farming systems. It assures the farmers with more income sources and opportunity to save on production cost while maintaining the sustainability of the farm environment. It assures the farmers with more income sources and opportunity to save on production cost while maintaining the sustainability of the farm environment. A component of the program is the technology demonstration farm where the farmer partners (FPs) put into practice what they learned from participatory capability enhancement component called the palayaralan. To quantify the economic benefits that occurred to the FPs, an assessment was conducted by Abrogena et al. (PhilRice Batac) from October 2004 to March 2005. Benefits were evaluated in terms of yield increases, costs savings, and net income advantage received by FPs as compared with adjacent farmers (AFs) who used traditional farm practices and were nonparticipants of the Palayamanan Program. The 2-year average production in 11 sites showed that the FPs attained yield advantage ranging from 14 percent to 170 percent over their AFs counterparts. Yield per cropping ranged from 2.9 t/ha to 6.0 t/ha among FPs as against 2.6 t/ha to 5.1 t/ha among AFs. The use of appropriate varieties and certified seeds, transplanting seedlings at the right age, application of proper nutrient, irrigation management, and employment of appropriate harvest and postharvest technologies were mainly contributory to the increase in yield among the FPs. The FPs spent from P15,386/ha to P26,792/ha per season. FPs in 5 of the 11 sites spent up to 27 percent less per hectare than the AFs. The reduction in expenses was largely due to lower seeding rate, use of leaf color chart (LCC) to detect when the plants need nitrogen fertilizer, and the use of minus one element technique (MOET) to determine soil nutrient deficiency. The cost of producing a kilogram of dry season rice ranged from P3.32 to P4.31 among the FPs and from P3.98 to P10.32 among the AFs. Accordingly, the FPs obtained a net income ranging from P16,366/ha to P44,920/ha per cropping. The highest net income realized by the AFs was only up to P17,495/ha per cropping. Income improvement was also realized by the FPs through farm diversification and intensification by growing other crops such as corn, peanut, mungbean, tomato, garlic, onion, watermelon, sweetpotato, and others. The above findings indicate the initial success of the Palayamanan Program in enhancing the productivity and income of small rice farmers in Northwestern Luzon. More small farmers will be benefitted if the program can be expanded to a wider coverage. Periodic monitoring and evaluation of the program should be carried out to determine its sustainability, to adequately measure the extent of program success and to quantify its impact not only on the individual farming households but on the rice farming communities and the consuming public as well.