This article is a product of a nine-month training and application program implemented by the micro component of the Economic and Social Impact Analysis/Women in Development (ESIA/WID) and the Food Systems Program of the East-West Center Resource Systems Institute (RSI). It focuses on Kabusugan sa Kaumhan (KABSAKA) project launched in Santa Barbara, Iloilo. In particular, it discusses the level and extent of component technologies vis-a-vis land-use intensity, cropping pattern and input usage adoption by the farmers. Examination of socioeconomic, institutional and other perceived benefits accruing to beneficiaries is conducted.land management, agriculture sector, utilization, rural sector, crop production, farm lands, impact analysis

Valenciano, Alexander Q.

English

Research Papers in Economics

Journal of Philippine Development S Number Nineteen, Volume Xl, No, 1, 1984
AN IMPACT ASSESSMENT REPORT
ON THE MULTIPLE-CROPPING PROJECT (KABSAKA)
STA. BARBARA, ILOI LO
Alexander Q. Valenciano
INTRODUCTION
Traditional agricultural practices coupled with small landholdings
have limited the production and earning capacities of farms because
of the scarcity and high cost of irrigation facilities. A promising al-
ternative towards the solution of this problem is multiple cropping
on rainfed lowland farms. Multiple cropping is the intensification of
land use by increasing the number of crops grown on the same piece
of land through efficient and timely utilization of farm resources
and inputs such as fertilizers, chemicals, new technology (including
credit), and farm household labor.
II. PROJ ECT BACKGROUND
The idea of multiple cropping as a means of increasing farm
productivity was initiated by the National Food and Agricultural
Council (NFAC) in 1971. In 1974 the Bureau of Agricultural Ex-
tension (BAEx) in collabroation with the International Rice Research
Institute (IRRI) and the Philippine Council for Agricultural and Re-
sources Research (PCARR) started a series of pilot test sites in Sta.
Barbara, Iloilo, with the aim of establishing a pattern of multiple
cropping technology in rice areas which depend on rain for water re-
quirements. T.he pattern that was found satisfactory in terms of pro-
ductivity levels was in rice production with a rice-upland or vegetable
pattern. The first rice crop was dry-seeded before the onset of the
monsoon season in late April or early May, the second crop was a
wet-seeded rice in early September, and the third crop was a suitable
Economic Development Specialist, National Economic and Development Authority,
Region VI, Iloilo City.
146VALENCIANO: MULTIPLE-CROPPING PROJECT 147
upland crop of vegetable or vegetable (preferably mongo bean, egg-
plant, tomato, or watermelon) for planting in December or January
when the soil exhibits a sufficient amount of moisture to warrant
crop growth. Rice yields rosefrom 2 to 5 metric tons per hectarefor
the first two crops. The third crop wassomething that had not been
practicedbefore. It gavethe project farmer-cooperatorsextra income.
In November 1976, the Iloilo Pilot ExtensionProject,codenamed
KABSAKA (Kabusugan sa Kaumhan, an Ilongo phrase meaning
"bounty on the farm") was launched in Sta. Barbara, Iloilo with
fifty initial members covering 89 hectares through the auspicesof
IRRI and PCARR. In December 1976, twenty-one farm technicians,
farmer-leaders, and representativesof participating agenciesundertook
multiple-cropping training at the University of the Philippines at
Los Bafiosand IRRI. When this batch of trainees returned, a three-
day echo seminar-workshop wasconducted at the project site for the
other farmer cooperators, and this completed the trainiing scheme
for the project.
III. PROJECT CONCEPTUA L FRAM EWORK
To bring about an increase in production and income, the KAB-
SAKA farmer hasto make useof the multiple cropping technology
propounded by the project through the extension technician. It is
hypothesized that positivechangesin farm input usageand cropping
patterns and intensity will lead to changes in production and pro-
ductivity levelswhich, in turn, will bring about farm income growth.
The relationship between inputs, outputs, effects, and impacts hypo-
thesizedby the KABSAKA project aresummarized in Figure 1.
IV. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
This evaluation of the multiple-cropping project in Sta. Barbara,
lloilo, focuses on assessingthe attainment of the project objectives
and describes the impact of the project on the respective participants
within the project area, specifically: (I) the level and extent of com-
ponent technologies vis-a-visland-use intensity, cropping pattern, and
input usageadoption by the farmers; (2) the production and income
changesof the farmer cooperators before and after the project; and
(3) an examination of the socioeconomic, institutional, and other
perceived benefits accrued asa result of the program.148 JOURNAL OF PHILIPPINE DEVELOPMENT
FIGURE 1
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK DIAGRAM, KABSAKA PROJECT
STA. BARBARA, ILOILO
OBJECTIVES INPUTS
1. To increaseincome 1. Labor force level
2. To increaseproduction 2, Credit availability
3. To effect maximum land use 3. Delivery of other
production inputs
4. Technology dissemination
I
I
I
I
I
I
OUTPUTS
I 1. Farmerstrained and organized
2. Credit availedof and used
3. Multiple cropping technology adopted
I
I
EFFECT
1. Increased farm income
2. Improvedquality of life
V. PROCEDURE AND METHODOLOGY
A key-informant survey was undertaken which focused on the
perceived benefits accruing from the project. In addition, secondary
data on input usage, including credit and technical assistance, were
gathered from the KABSAKA Office, Iloilo, and other appropriate
sources.
VI. FINDINGS
Profile of Sta.Barbara
Sta Barbara is located in the centermost part of the province of
Iloilo. It is bounded on the north by the municipality of New Lucena,
on the northeast by the municipality of Zarraga, on the southeast byVALENCIANO: MULTIPLE-CROPPING PROJECT 149
the municipality of Leganes,on the south by the municipality of
Pavia,on the southwest by the municipality of San Miguel,and on the
northeastby the municipality of Cabatuan. It is12 kilometers or 20
minutes' drive north of the city of Iloilo, and accessible by both land
and rail transportation. Basedon a survey conducted by the munic-
ipal developmentstaff in December1976, it hasa total road network
of 80.48 km and transportation facilities are adequate for motor
vehicles and railways. The municipality of Sta. Barbara comprises
sixty barangaysand hasa total land area of 7,750 ha. It hasa total
population of 30,662 (1975 census),with an averageannual growth
rate of 1.92 percent and a population density of 395.63 personsper
squarekilometer.
The municipal topography of Sta. Barbara varies from slightly
rolling hills to almost flat or gradually inclined plains,slicedby the
Tigum River at the center which flows from northwest to south-
east, and by the Aganan River in the southernsectionflowing in the
samedirection.
This municipality is not within the country's typhoon belt,
although tropical stormsand typhoons do passthrough the munici-
pality occasionally.The climate is wet from June to November and
dry from January to April. Heavy rain beginsto fall by mid-May,
enablingrice farmersto preparerice bedsand plant upland rice.
Generally, Sta. Barbara's soil is thick, fertile, and suitable for
raising many kinds of agricultural products. For productive yield
only minimum quantities of fertilizer are needed. There are no
commercial forest, brushland, open land, marsh, or swampswithin
the municipality. Ninety-five percentof the town's land iscultivated.
Sta. Barbara hasconsistently maintained its position asthe premier
food-producing center in the province, ranking first in vegetable
production, third in coconut and mango production, and amongthe
top ten in rice, corn, mongo, sorghum;tobacco, fruit, root crops,
livestock, and other food commodities.
Project organization set-up. As afarmer's organization, KABSAKA
is composed of fifteen officers. All nine barangay leaderscovered by
the project are automatically appointed as members of the board of
directors. Representatives from the Sangguniang Bayan and the
Farmer's Cooperative Marketing Association (FACOMA) are also
allotted a slot in the board. Lending support to the project is a
management staff headed by a regional director under whom is a
regional coordinator who, in turn, supervisesa provincial in-charge.
The project area is served directly by trained production technicians150 JOURNAL OF PHILIPPINE DEVELOPMENT
who are jurisdictionally supervised by a municipal in-charge or a
supervisor.
Major project outputs. (1) Manpower and credit assistance. In
the pre-KABSAKA period there was only one technician that covered
the nine barangays including other nearby barangays, and the farmers
were visited on a regular monthly basis except during period of insect
or disease infestation of epidemic proportions.
At project initiation (!976) there were six farm management
technicians (FMT's) and one municipal program officer (MPO)
assigned in the nine pilot barangays of Sta. Barbara, with an average
workload of thirty-four farmers per technician covering a mean area
of 77 hectares. Most of the technicians were casual employees and
the number per year fluctuated on the basis of availability of funds
for salaries, per diems, and the transportation expenses estimated at
around "P50,OOO-'P60,O00 per annum.
Table 1 shows the different activities of the KABSAKA man-
power support organization, it indicates that the most common
means of technology transfer method were practical farming classes
while the least common were field tours and individual instruction.
In terms of financing, the Development Bank of the Philippines
(DBP), Rural Banks, Philippine National Bank (PNB), and the Land
Bank of the Philippines (LBP) assisted the farmers. Of those insti-
tutions, the PNB was the major source of financing, accomodating
TABLE 1
DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTSBY TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
METHOD
(92 Farmers,Sta. Barbara,Iloilo, 1981)
Technology transferact/v/ties Number Percent
Practical farming classes 79 86
Farm visits 47 51
Individual instruction 12 13
Farmer'sclasses on radio 55 58
Preparationof farm plan 20 22
Disseminationof brochuresand pamphlets 31 34
Field tours 9 10
Demonstration 16 17
Source; Ardales, Calubiran, and David (1981_ p. 26).VALENCIANO: MULTIPLE.CROPPING PROJECT 151
about 77 percent of farmers seeking financial assistance (Nicolas
at. al. 1980). Data collected from the KABSAKA office indicate
about 50 percent of the farmers made use of their own savings to
finance farm operations. After the project, this rose to 55 percent
as against 48 percent who availed themselves of credit (Ardales,
Calubiran, and David 1981).
(2) Trained farmers. All 168 baseline farmers were trained in
the manner described earlier. Periodic reorientation activities were
provided through farm visits, practical farming classes, and other
farm extension methods noted in Table 1.
Indicators of change and component technologies adoption: effect.
(1) Cropping pattern. The major cropping pattern usedby farmers
before the project was rice-upland crop (60 percent) and rice-fallow
(30 percent). A rice-rice pattern was practiced by a few farmers
(10 percent) whose farms were traversed by a creek. With the intro-
duction of KABSAKA technology, which recommends a rice-rice
upland crop pattern, the crop patterns adopted by the farmers
during the crop year 1978-79 were rice-rice (50 percent), rice-rice
upland (47 percent), and rice-rice-rice (3 percent). A parallel in-
vestigation by Ardales, Calubiran, and David in October 1981 found
that most KABSAKA farmers in the areafollowed a rice-rice-mongo
(mungbean) cropping pattern. They reported that 100 percent of
the respondents planted only rice during the first cropping, and
a significant proportion (37 percent) planted mungbean for the third
cropping.
(2) Cropping intensity. This is an index which measures the
number of times per year that a piece of land is utilized for crop
production. Before the project, 104 of 168 farmers surveyed in the
nine barangays covered by KABSAKA planted only one crop per
year, 51 farmers planted two crops in the same year, and 9 farmers
planted three crops. The overall cropping intensity was 1.39 (Quifion
and Lesondra 1980). With the KABSAKA project, however, of the
92 farmers interviewed, 41 planted three crops in one year, the same
number planted two crops during the year, and only 10 planted one
crop. This presented a cropping intensity of 2.34. Table 2 presents
comparative data on cropping intensity before and after the project.
(3) Input usage. In the pre-KABSAKA period 87 percent of the
farmers used traditional rice varieties (e.g., BE3 and Binato) and only
13 percent usedhigh-yieldingvarieties (HYV). In the post-KABSAKA
period, 100 percent of the farmers used modern varieties (IR 36)
for the first crop and 97 percent for the second crop (Nicolas 1980).152 JOURNAL OF PHILIPPINE DEVELOPMENT
TABLE2
COMPARATIVECROPPING INTENSITYBEFOREANDAFTERKABSAKA
Numberof farmers
Numberof Croppings Before After
0 4 0
1 104 10
2 51 41
3 9 41
Total 168 92
Cropping intensity 1.39 2,34
Source: Ardales, Calubiran _,and David (1981, p.17).
This finding is also corroborated by baseline studies indicating that
about 80 percent of the pre-KABSAKA farmers utilized traditional
rice varieties (Quifion and Lesandra 1980) and shifted to the useof
HYV's at post-KABSAKA (Ardales, Calubiran, and David 1981).
The KABSAKA-recommended seeding rate for dry-seeded rice
(DSR) and wet-seeded rice (WSR) was between 88 and 110 kg/ha.
Farmers in the area applied more - 144 kg/ha, for DSR and 138
kg/ha, for WSR. Reasons given for broadcasting more seed were
allowance for dead seedlings, birds, insects, and uprooted plants
when weeding.
During the pre-KABSAKA period, 67 perceht of the farms used
fertilizer for their first rice crop and 12 percent used fertilizer for
their second rice crop. Post-KABSAKA proportions were considerably
higher - 100 percent using fertilizer for the first crop and 85 percent
using fertilizer for the second crop. Post-KABSAKA average levels of
fertilizer use were also higher, especially for phosphorous and
potassium.
For insecticide application, all farmers for the first crop after
KABSAKA applied insecticide, representing a 35 percent increase
in the number of farmer-users before KABSAKA. Post-KABSAKA
farmers utilized on the average about 0.38 kg. active ingredient/
ha. compared to 0.20 kg. active ingredient/ha, before the project.
The same trend holds true for the second crop.
A great number of farmers (90 percent of the respondents)
applied herbicides on the first crop, dry seeded (post-KABSAKA).VALENCIANO: MULTIPLE-CROPPING PROJECT 153
Some farmers, however, did not apply herbicides due to puddling
of the soil. The average application rangedfrom 0.24 to 0.69 kg.
active ingredient/ha, for the secondand first croppings, respectively.
Before the KABSAKA period, however, 13 percent of the farmers I
indicatedusingherbicidesin very insignificantamounts.
Indicator on farmer's production/productivity levels, income and
other perceived benefits: project effect/impact.
(1) Yield. Before the project, the average yield per hectare of
palay for the first crop was 37.5 cavans. With the project, the average
yield rose to 67.7 cavans. For the second crop (rice) the yield before
the project was 17.72 cavans, while with the project, the average
yield was 51.96 cavans. In the work of Cocjin et al. (1978) the overall
average yield per hectare in KABSAKA areas was reported to be
60.32 cavans - a yield which is higher than the national average and
which approaches the average yield of irrigated farms in Region VI.
About eight farmers at post-KABSAKA planted for crop year
1979-80 mongo and cowpeas with yields of 5.03 and 3.46 cavans per
hectare, respectively. Various upland crops were planted for the third
crop under KABSAKA. Third crop plantings before the project, how-
ever, indicate mostly grains with yields below 20 cavans/ha.
(2) Farm income. Table 3 shows the cost and return analysis
for thirty farmers before and after KABSAKA. All cash items were
revalued at crop-year 1978-79 constant prices. The returns over cost
indicate a regressing amount from the first to the third cropping
both before and after KABSAKA. Total net income for three crops
under KABSAKA amounted to @L6,311 versus _2,935 for two
crops without (before) KABSAKA. Other studies indicate a progres-
sive differentiation for KABSAKA cooperators in terms of income
from farming. Before the project, the average monthly income of the
farmer cooperators was _752 (Quifion and Lesondra 1980, p. 18).
With the project, it increased to t_893.23 (Ardales, Calubiran, and
David 1981, p. 35).
(3) Perceived benefits. For better assessment for the perceived
benefits from the project, 10 key informants were interviewed. They
were barangay leaders, municipal workers and other farmers who
have enough information about the project. The informants unan-
imously agreed that they felt an increase in production considering
the more numerous transactions in the sale and stocking of palay
in local warehouses. As mentioned in the credit portion of this
report, more farmers availed themselves for credit. Technicians
were busy helping farmers make farm plans and budgets. Several154 JOURNAL OF PHI LIPPINE DEVELOPMENT
TABLE 3
COST AND RETURN ANALYSIS OF RICE AND UPLAND CROPS
BEFORE AND AFTER KABSAKA
(23 Financedfarmers,Sta.Barbara,Iloilo, 1978-79, pesos/ha.)
Before KABSAKA After KABSAKA
Item
First Second First Second Third
cropa cropb Total cropa cropc cropd Total
Grossreturn 2,427 971 3,398 3,961 3,048 1,085 8,094
Materialcosts 323 140 463 832 713 238 1,783
Seeds 123 124 247 294 286 200 780
Fertilizer 175 12 187 385 336 35 756
Insecticide 23 4 27 73 74 3 150
Herbicide 2 - 2 80 17 - 97
Return over
material cost 2,104 831 2,935 3,129 2,335 847 6,311
Source: Nicolas et al. (1980, p. 41).
a. Rice.
b. Rice and mungbean.
c. Rice.
d. Upland crops (e.g., mungbean, cowpea, peanut, watermelon, field corn, sweet
potato, sorghum, squash, and eggplant).
key informants reported that there was an increase of employ-
ment in the community. More people were being hired and self-
employment increased. There were references from most of the
informants to some negative effects as well. These included palay
price manipulations by private traders in the area.
(4) Distributive benefits. In terms of technology and instruction
received by farmer cooperators by tenurial status, more farm instruc-
tional contact has been received by landowner when it comes to
individualized instruction, field tenure, and demonstration. Leases
have been serviced more through practical farming classes and
farmer's classes on the air. Tenants have been serviced primarily
by practical farming classes, brochures and pamphlets and farm
visits.VA/ENCIANO:MULTIPLE-CROPPING PROJECT 155
VII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
With the operationalization of the project after five years, the
adoption of KABSAKA technology was accompanied by an in-
crease in crop yield, higher crop intensity (via a better cropping
pattern), and higher income. The benefits as perceived from the
project were very apparent as indicated by people within and out-
side the community. The distributive effects per tenurial status of
the farmer cooperators were found to be positive and do not lean in
favor of one tenure class.
REFERENCES
Ardales, Venancio B.; Calubiran, R.D.; and David, Felix. An Impact Study of
the KABSAKA Multiple Cropping Project in Iloilo, 1981. PanayIntegrated
Consortium for Rural and Agricultural Development (PICRAD), 1981.
Cocjin, B. et al. A Survey of KABSAKA Barrios, Sta. Barbara,Iloilo. Bureauof
Agricultural Extension and West Visayas State College, School of Agri-
culture, Iloilo City, 1978.
Nicolas, J. S. et al. An Evaluation of the Ilollo Province KABSAKA Programfor
1978-1979, Office of Rice Production Training and Research,International
Rice ResearchInstitute, Los Baffos, Laguna,1980.
Quiffon, A., and Lesonda, R., BaselineStudy on the Multiple Cropping Project
in Sta. Barbara, Iloilo, Ministry of Agriculture, Region VI, and NEDA
ESIA/WlD Agriculture Sector Staff, RegionVI, 1980.

A Survey of KABSAKA Barrios, Sta. Barbara,Iloilo. Bureauof Agricultural Extension and West Visayas State College, School of Agriculture,

An Impact Study of the KABSAKA Multiple Cropping Project in Iloilo,

BaselineStudy on the Multiple Cropping Project

An Impact Assessment Report on the Multiple-Cropping Project (KABSAKA), Sta. Barbara, Iloilo

http://dirp4.pids.gov.ph/ris/pjd/pidsjpd84-1multicrop.pdf

An Impact Assessment Report on the Multiple-Cropping Project (KABSAKA), Sta. Barbara, Iloilo

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