Understanding the poor upland farmers' rationality in managing their agroforestry systems necessarily includes analyses of the complex socio-economic and ecological niche in which their local knowledge is embedded. Cost-effectiveness in agroforestry research and extension is maximised by building on what farmers know and making such knowledge readily available as input for program interventions. This study illustrates one of the alternative methods being tested in systematising the documentation on the local ecological knowledge by examining the benefits to farmers from tree growing in one of the pilot sites of the World Agroforestry Center (formerly the International Centre for Research on Agroforestry or ICRAF), Visayas, Philippines. The Local Ecological Knowledge-Knowledge-Based Systems (LEK-KBS) approach and computer software AKT5 has been used to identify and assess the importance of tree growing among upland farmers in Tabango, Leyte. Farmers were found to possess rich knowledge on their ecology and be utilising it for daily sustenance. Wood charcoal making provides the direct cash benefit from tree domestication. Other non-monetary benefits were manifested on the farmers' characterisation of the 34 indigenous species found in their locality. Poverty and infertile soil were the urgent socio-economic and ecological problems affecting farmers' activities and economic survival that came out from the LEK-generated database. While farmers generally preferred indigenous trees, for immediate cash returns they opted to plant fast-growing exotics on own farms, especially for charcoal. Short and long-term recommended intervention schemes include information and education campaign to induce farmers to adopt sustainable livelihood through charcoal and action cum research to rehabilitate and protect the Binaliw watershed
