Enhancing economic subsistence: diversiﬁcation activities and labor intensiﬁcation as economic setback mitigation in upland agriculture communities

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Introduction
Studies have shown that participation in rural nonfarm employment (RNFE) have contributed to income increase, wealth and even agricultural productivity (Barrett, Reardon, & Webb, 2001;Haggblade, Hazell, & Reardon, 2005).These findings suggest that the correlation between participation and higher income is a way out of poverty (Bezu, Barrett, & Holden, 2012).But, studies of determinants of participation suggested the opposite, that an unequitable access of remunerative nonfarm activities only favors the rich rather than the poor (Barrett et al., 2001;Corral & Reardon, 2001;Davis et al., 2010;Dercon, 2006;Meert, Van Huylenbroeck, Vernimmen, Bourgeois, & Van Hecke, 2005).Thus, there is a good reason to examine the positive trajectories of the correlation.
Studies on economic activities of poor households in the rural areas showed positive trajectories on the contribution of livelihood activities to the well-being of rural household (Avila-Foucat & Rodríguez-Robayo, 2018;Kassie, Kim, & Fellizar, 2017;Mentamo & Geda, 2016;Saha & Bahal, 2015).These studies demonstrated that the ultimate outcome of pluriactivities was for the improvement of the well-being of household through increase of income and high productivity.Households engaged in numerous activities like trade, handicrafts, services to meet their daily needs (Srisopaporn, Jourdain, Perret, & Shivakoti, 2015).To measure affluence, accumulation of assets became the gauge (Barrett et al., 2001;Ellis & Freeman, 2004;Saha & Bahal, 2016).
Farmers' economic activities have not only improved their financial capacity but also the ecological outcomes associated with the activities.Studies have shown that crop diversification, for instance, have improved soil condition through the cultivation of nitrogen-fixing crops, reduced pest infestation through effective pest management control, and lessened soil run-off or soil erosion (Gaba et al., 2015;Kidane & Zegeye, 2018).Moreover, going beyond the carrying capacity of the natural resource could be prevented by liberalizing access to the different livelihood resources (Kamanga, Vedeld, & Sjaastad, 2009).
However, quantification of farmers' labor expenditures in relation to agricultural phases and their contribution to agricultural productivity was rarely reported in the literature.This is the gap of research that this paper addresses.Most of the discussions on farmers' labor use were placed in broad headlines, leaving out the specific value of time use and their allocation of it in cognizance of their economic activities.This method of inquiry is directed at the understanding farmers' values and needs for time use is expressive of prioritization of needs (Chambers, 1995;Rhoades & Booth, 1982).
The main objective of this paper then is to demonstrate that pluriactivities can contribute to the economic condition of the upland farmers.This paper used the diversification activities of farmers and the utilization of their available labor pool as means of improving their economic condition.

Livelihood diversification
Livelihood diversification is the use of non-specific household assets for non-agriculture activities unconnected to the farm business (Meert et al., 2005) and is associated with increased income (Makate, Wang, Makate, & Mango, 2016).Rural poor farmers diversify by adopting a range of activities, e.g.trade, handicrafts, services, and rents like plow animal rentals, to improve economic condition (Haggblade et al., 2005;Saha & Bahal, 2016;Srisopaporn et al., 2015).Assets accumulated coming from different sources become the measure of wealth and well-being (Barrett et al., 2001;Ellis & Freeman, 2004;Saha & Bahal, 2016).
To understand rural small farmholders' income seeking-behavior, myriads of variables were drawn-out from various econometric models (Avila-Foucat & Rodríguez-Robayo, 2018;Kassie et al., 2017;Mentamo & Geda, 2016;Saha & Bahal, 2016).Among these were household age, environmental consciousness, government regulatory requirements and subsidies, civic engagements, education level, access to credit and other financial resources, perceptions on land tenure, possessions of livestock, and dependency ratio.These studies argued that these variables need to be incorporated into the development plans to ensure farmers' chances of survival and well-being.
Livelihood diversification protects the overutilization of the natural resources, such as the forestland.Forestland resource was one of the sources of farmers' alternative livelihood (Kamanga et al., 2009).In this study, authors demonstrated that households of economically poor farmers constituted the vast majority of forest consumers, implying that limiting the poor households' access to the forest resources could contribute to disparity in income inequalities.But in granting them liberal access to forest resources, pressure on forest resource is inevitable (Vadez, Reyes-García, Huanca, & Leonard, 2008).Hence to lessen the reliance on the use of forest resources, lucrative enterprises should be made available to the rural poor farmers (Nguyen & Tran, 2018;Wei, Chao, & Yali, 2016).In this study, the authors argued that extremely poor households consumed and utilized forest resource more than their well-off counterparts implying that access to forestlands leads to increase in household per capita income, thereby contributing to the reduction of poverty incidence.

Agricultural diversification
Agricultural or crop diversification increases household income (Dorsey, 1999) and household resiliency during lean periods (Singh, Kumar, & Woodhead, 2002).It is performed either by growing a variety of crops at one time or by growing different crops in different locations at the same time.Farmers diversify crops for numerous ends (Bosma, Udo, Verreth, Visser, & Nam, 2005).
Aside from financial necessity, crop diversification has non-finance advantage (Kidane & Zegeye, 2018;Makate et al., 2016).These studies reported the practical value of crop diversification e.g.improvement of soil fertility, efficiency of agro-ecological systems which reduces crop production risks, enhances production stability, yields, and improvement of the diversity of human diet, suppression of diseases and pests, weeds, and volunteer crops.Studies concluded that crop diversification promotes ecological balance, reduces farm input use such as fertilizers and pesticides through intraspecies management and mitigation of environmental impacts, reduces pest infestation by preventing their growth, reproduction, or dispersal, and minimizes soil erosion and the associated loss of nutrients by acting directly on soil fertility through nitrogen fixing species such as legumes (Gaba et al., 2015).In conclusion, crop diversification could be implemented for food production as well as ecosystem equilibrium.
Has diversification really improved the lives of the marginalized farm households?
As a response to curb poverty among the marginalized farmers in the rural areas, modernization of agrotechnology improves rural farmers lives and eliminate rural poverty (George, 2014).Lessons from Green Revolution proved that by adoption of new technologies, lives of farmers could be improved and the national production goals could be achieved as well (Gollin, Hansen, & Wingender, 2018;Horlings & Marsden, 2011;Pingali, 2012).However, there were reports in some few studies that farmers rejected the introduced technology of the risk involved in the adoption of modern technology, thus resulting to low income and productivity (Fermont & Benson, 2011;Garibaldi et al., 2017;Loos et al., 2014).

Allocation of human resources in diversified household
Diversification activities begin at the household (Koomson & Asongu, 2016).Levy (1985), and Zepeda (2006) reported on the economic value of children and their contribution to the agricultural production; Adewale, Oladejo, & Ogunniyi (2005) examined the attitudinal factors of children pertaining the drudgery of agricultural operation; Dinku, Fielding, & Genc (2018) examined the roles children played in the household.
The division of labor by gender has been extensively published in the literature and concluded that women has contributed to agricultural production (Haddad & Reardon, 1993;Matshe & Young, 2004;Neitzert, 1994;Saenz & Thompson, 2017;Shiferaw, Gebremedhin, & Zewdie, 2017;Udry, 1996;Udry, Hoddinott, Alderman, & Haddad, 1995).Saenz (2017) reported on the marketing and production involvement of women; Shiferaw (2017) documented women's access to credit services reporting that some government and nongovernment organizations preferred to extend credit and other financial services to women rather than men for the reason that women's economic activities were in consonance with government's programs.However, Matshe & Young (2004) claimed that some domestic concerns prevented women to fully participate in agricultural production like children's care, household care, and farm support Accounting of labor and its contribution to agricultural productivity is rarely reported in literature and is usually placed in broad headlines in ethnographic efforts (Boserup, 1966).The quantification of farm labor can lead researchers to the understanding of the working patterns of farmers both in on-farm and off-farm seasons (Stone, Netting, & Stone, 1990) as well as the prioritization of farmers' needs and the valuation of their resources in relation to their economic condition.

Method
The data used in this paper were component data of the project "Farm Labor and the Agroecological Management of Upland Rice Farming in Eastern Visayas, Philippines".The research area is primarily agricultural with rice as the principal crop and others such as legumes, coconuts, rootcrops, and cash crops such as banana and vegetable as secondary crops.The area has limited flat lands, surrounded with high mountains with minor creeks flowing towards major creeks of three composing villages.This project detailed upland farmers farming practices.
Secondary data were used in this essay.The data were formal survey interview, personal interviews with upland farmers and key informant, and notes during the participant observation phase.Household units were used as sampling units because they could be conveniently compared with other cultural units (Gross, 1984).Furthermore, it was relatively easy to observe behavior directly in a household or to use a single informant to report on the activities of household members.A total of 57 household units were used in the analysis.Prior informed consent was sought from the research participants prior the conduct of the formal survey, and personal interview with upland farmers and key informant.Furthermore, ethics clearance was granted by the departmental ethics committee of the Provincial Agricultural Office, Province of Leyte, Philippines.
In this article, authors used the 1995 and 2015 data to compute two growth years.Data used in the analysis included among others: socioeconomic status of upland farmers, the different agricultural phases, the labor types used relative to the different agricultural phases, and the time expended on the use of labor types in relation to the different agricultural phases.
Socioeconomic status includes the demographic characteristics of the household units, their livelihood and agronomic activities.Agricultural phases are the different agricultural tasks such as field preparation/ repair (FP), planting/ transplanting/ replanting (PL), weeding and pest management (HR), fertilizer application/ manuring (MA), and harvesting (HA).Labor types are the labor used in the performance of the agricultural phases, and these are the self labor, unpaid family labor, collective or exchange labor, and hired labor.Time expenditure is the amount of time spent in the performance of a task.These were computed in terms of hours expended as estimated by the research participant through the recall method.

Analysis
In soliciting the time expenditure data, the approximation method, instead of the diary method, was adopted.Approximation method uses the recall method.The farmer research-participant approximates the number of hours or days in an agricultural task.Researchers were very much aware of the inherent weakness of this method but was considered to be a lesser demanding task compared to the diary method (Bernard & Killworth, 1993;Paolisso & Hames, 2010).Descriptive statistics e.g.frequency count, mean, and percentage were used in the analysis.For the computation of the percentage of change, the entry of the final year (t 2015 ) is subtracted with the entry of the beginning year (t 1995 ) divided by t 1995 and then is multiplied by the constant 100.

Results
Table 1 describes the demographic characteristics of upland farm households in terms of age of household heads, their educational attainment, household size, and number of household dependents.Majority of household heads were advanced in age (40-74 years) and have low educational attainment (2-9 years).Furthermore, household units have high population size (5-11 members) and have many dependents ranging from 5-14 dependents.Not to mention that these were factors of poverty (Jung & Smith, 2007), the data would point out that the farm household units had high overhead expenses like caring for children and the elderly, and household maintenance.Hence, capital requisites for agricultural endeavours were needed and household heads have to source out the much need capital for agricultural use.

Labor management of upland farm household
Farmers allocated a labor type in relation to the agricultural phases.Households utilized four labor types, to wit: the unpaid family labor, self-labor, collaborative/exchange labor, and the hired labor.Self-labor is the type of labor performed by the household heads.In this study, household heads were the research participants.Unpaid family labor is the type of labor performed by every able-bodied member of the household; collective or exchange labor is the labor type extended to the members of the exchange group where reciprocity is the norm of the group, and; hired labor is a form of a contract labor paid by the households.No. of years in school of household head 0-1 2-3 4-5 6-7 8-9 Total 4 12 16 20 5 57 7 21 28 35 9 100 4.9 (years) Households utilized the self-labor and the unpaid family labor for the field preparations and paddy repair (FP), weeding and pest management (HR), and fertilizer application (MA) works while the hired labor and unpaid family labor were used during the planting/ re-planting/ transplanting (PL) and harvesting (HA) phases (Table 2).The collective/exchange labor was used as a support labor pool for the FP and PL works.Quantifying labor expended for a cropping season would elucidate how much time farmers would spend in a cropping season.Data showed that most of the time were spent on field preparation and paddy repair.
In general, a growth trend of the percentage of change in time expenditure in all agriculture phases was observed.In particular, self-labor has an increase of 33.70% of time input in the FP phase alone and more than 50% of it was used in all phases.Self-labor was used primarily in FP and HR phases, and it was supported by the unpaid family labor.For the whole cropping season, unpaid family labor has almost 20% of time input and was used during the FP (3.68%), HR (5.75%), and HA (7.71) phases.The hired labor was used primarily in the HA (6.23%), PL (5.60%), and FP (4.43%) phases.For a cropping season, an increase of 18.47% time input was incurred using the hired labor.Exchange/ Cooperative labor was the least labor type (4.58%) used by farmers.
Productivity of land units is biased towards capital intensification arguing that productivity cannot be achieved through the use of traditional method of cultivation.Boserup's model of productivity demonstrated that through labor intensification, agricultural production could be achieved.Using this theory to explain farmers' time use and agricultural production, farmers' efforts were concentrated on paddy repair indicating the instability of the paddy system.The data showed a 33.70% increase of time input on the use of the self-labor, implying that instead of hiring labor to do the repair task, farmers did the task themselves.This high increase of self-labor in the repair task was attributed to the numerous weather disturbances that visited the country.A total of 24-26 tropical depressions/ typhoons entered the Philippine area of responsibility (PAR) and Eastern Visayas is a typhoon path.
Other phase where self-labor was primarily utilized was on weeding/harrowing/ pest management phase incurring an 11.65% change of time input.Weeding was done manually, hence this task requires a number of workers.On pest management, farmers avoided the use of pesticides and other chemicals for they were already aware on the disadvantages of using agricultural chemicals.In these tasks, farmers were aided by unpaid family labor.
Exchange labor was the least labor type utilized by upland farmers with approximately 5% increase of time input for the whole cropping cycle.In situation that financial resource is quite scarce, farmers or upland communities need to be aware of the importance of collaborative efforts in the promotion of their goals and objectives.Exchange labor would be of help during labor scarcity, in the performance of multi-worker tasks, and in tasks perceived as being drudgerous.For instance, cooperative labor could be utilized during paddy repair, planting, weeding/ harrowing, fertilizer application, and harvesting seasons.In this manner, the needed cash intended to hire additional labor in the performance of other tasks could be used from some other purposes.

Diversification activities of upland farmers
Household units did engage in at least one type of livelihood options or a combination thereof to augment income for the support of the agricultural enterprise and sustenance of the household (Table 3).Livestockraising, vegetable-raising, and tuba gathering -a local wine from coconut juice -were amongst the most favoured livelihood options undertaken by the households.Produce was sold either within or outside the locality.On the other hand, some household members sought temporary employment either as construction workers or doing some menial jobs as daily wage earners.Income generated from these endeavours was used as added capital for both farm needs and household subsistence.Farmers also employed multiple activities like fishing-vegetable raising and fishing-livestock-vegetable raising which were mostly practiced by farmers.Aside from agriculture-based activities, fishing is the secondary form of livelihood for the catch of the day could be easily converted to cash.However, earnings of the daily wage workers could not be higher than the mandated daily minimum wage because the level of education is one of the factors for getting high paying and gainful employment (Barrett et al., 2001;Ellis & Freeman, 2004;Meert et al., 2005).At the time of this report, the daily minimum wage was pegged at Php 386.00 or US $7.36 in the global standards.This number is much lower for the agricultural sector.
With rice as the main crop, households cultivated other crops for income augmentation to support both the farm and household needs.In this instance, the cultivation of crops was primarily a combination of perennial and annual crops while in some cases with the introduction of short-term crops or cash crops.For example, majority of the household maintained the banana-coconut combination i.e. an annual crop-perennial crop combination.Similar to other annual and perennial crops, time input requirement is minimal and will not eat up much time allotted for some other activities.Other combinations would include perennial-annualshort term crops.The short-term crops would be the source for immediate cash.In general, this mode of multi-cropping systems has been a product of experience and transmitted knowledge which proved to pay-off efforts of the upland farmers (Kidane & Zegeye, 2018).
Crop diversification served other purposes aside from financial ends like soil erosion or soil run-off.Upland farmers cultivated vegetations like lantana (Lantana camara ) and mura (Vetiveria zizanoides ) to minimize soil erosion and improved soil fertility.Farmers explained that when hedgerows are fully established, murahas a high-water holding capacity, hence controlling soil run-off.

Discussion
Unlike the industrial sector who used time to measure one's productivity, the same cannot be used in a farming community where traditional know-how was still persistent in every phase of agricultural task (Stone et al., 1990).Traditional agriculture is equated with experience and the perpetuation of experience is verified through practice over time.Hence, an introduction of something new to the existing practice would entail a high-order of acceptance.The challenge that Philippine agriculturists must face is to interface traditional farming systems with the demands of the new crop varieties.The authors maintained that traditional farming practice could give farmers' an assurance of success for they were familiar with the system that they relied for years and could calculate the risks involved rather than imbibed on something that promises heaven which were full of uncertainties and uncalculated risks (Chambers, 1995;Rhoades & Booth, 1982).Traditional agriculture is characterized by low education and a high economic dependency ratio which further made them adhere to the usual way of doing a task.The only competitive advantage that Philippine farmers have is farming experience.If experience is not taken into account, rejection or modification of introduced technology is possible to happen.For development agents, acceptance, modification, rejection of technology are measures of success of developmental activities (Fujisaka, 1987).The reasons why projects fail because these projects are socially naïve (Dove, 1986;Peluso, 1993), and the naivete lies on the approach of analyzing human behavior.
To beat economic challenges, farmers found it fit to diversify their activities to sustain both the household and farm enterprises.Instead of specializing on rice cultivation, farmers decided to undertake diverse activities like livelihood activities and vegetation cultivation options.This strategy was learned from previous generation.For these farmers, their decisions to diversify have paid-off their efforts which are always accompanied by a rational apportionment of time and resources for the attainment of the desired goals, and these decisions are reflective of values and needs of household members (De Buck, Van Rijn, Roling, & Wossink, 2001;Gladwin, 1980;Greiner, Patterson, & Miller, 2009).For instance, the use of the slash-and-burn method, the tilling of the sloppy areas, the preference on the diversified systems over the specialized systems or the generalized ecosystem manifests cultivators' values, needs, and rationality (Casiño & Casiño, 1976;Eder, 2003Eder, , 2010)).
Off-farm employment was considered by upland farmers as a buffer resource to augment capital needed for specific agricultural tasks.Employment and other alternative livelihood options assured farmers of steady cash inflow.Income earned from this activity is used to finance some agricultural activities and needs like the needed labor force and farm inputs e.g.seeds and fertilizers.
To minimize overhead expenditures, upland farmers used three labor types that did not cause them financial obligations e.g.self labor, unpaid family labor, and the collective or communal labor.Upland farmers utilized their own labor and the unpaid family labor in all phases of the agricultural cycle although with minimal participation in the planting phase.Collective labor, on the other hand, was only used minimally for upland farmers resorted to its use when there is scarcity of labor or during labor bottlenecks.In synchronized rice farming system, it is expected that synchronization of agricultural tasks is inevitable.Hired labor was used for the field preparation (plowing), planting, and harvesting tasks.With very limited financial resource, livelihood diversification activities were resorted to assure the continuance of the tasks.
By experience, upland farm households have asserted that they were able to improve and meet their needs through the different economic activities.Through their traditional way of farming, they were able to sell some of their produce to the nearby markets and acquired some farm implements for the next cropping cycle.

Conclusion and Recommendation
It is evident from the discussion that upland farmers' management of land, labor, and capital and the natural resources is a result of a complex interaction among a number of interdependent components of which a cultivator has access to his resources -both human and non-human -to maximize the attainment of goals according to the knowledge he possesses.From this premise, development of relevant and viable technology for marginalized farmers should be grounded in full knowledge of existing farming systems.Evaluation of the program or technology used should also be made on the conformity of the program or technology to the goals, needs, aspirations, and socioeconomic circumstances of the target beneficiaries not solely on the technical performance of technology.
We have to be reminded time and again that the failure of induced development was not factored on the technical aspect of the programs but was placed on the inability of the development planners to understand the cultural behavior of a society.Farmers' environment was formed according to their goals, aspirations, perceived needs and expected benefits.Goals, aspirations, and perceived needs underlie practices, and practices imply decision-making strategies.All these strategies and other similar plans were developed as anti-poverty alleviation solutions.
As a response against poverty, upland farmers resorted to primarily use their traditional way of farming as an adaptive response.The reliance of self-labor, unpaid family labor, and cooperative labor ensured upland farmers' labor needs and facilitated the performance of agricultural tasks.Therefore, labor and farm scheduling would help diminish labor shortage in the case of labor bottlenecks.
Multiple cropping, as wont by the upland farmers, needs more push from government agriculture extension workers for farmers perceived this as buffer resource in times of weather disturbances.Furthermore, adoption of the local way of multiple cropping into the local agricultural pattern is a form of mainstreaming culture in development plans which could ensure farmers' cooperation and thus helped alleviate poverty.

Table 1 .
Demographic profile of upland farm household in a rural village in Eastern Visayas, Philippines

Table 2 .
Percentage of change of average labor time input (man/hours) expended by upland households in an agricultural cropping cycle

Table 3 .
Economic profile of the upland farm household other than rice farmingVariableLivelihood options other than rice farming Livestock-raising Vegetable raising Wine (tuba) gathering Carpentry Fishi Livelihood options combinations Fishing-vegetable raising Fishing-livestock-vegetable raising Fishing-livestock raising L Vegetation cultivated other than rice Banana-coconut Banana-coconut-legumes Coconut-legumes Banana-coconut-root