AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION IN A PHILIPPINE FRONTIER COMMUNITY - IMPACT ON LABOR EFFICIENCY AND FARM DIVERSITY

There continues to be much debate in anthropology concerning the mecha nism by which agricultural intensification takes place and its impact on labor efficiency, farm diversity, and quality of diet. A major reas on for this lack of consensus is the paucity of data from case studies that focus on specific agricultural systems at the point of transitio n from extensive to intensive methods of cultivation. Research in a fr ontier community in the Philippines, where farmers are making the shif t from swidden cultivation to small-scale irrigated rice production, i ndicates that intensification does not necessarily result in lower eff iciency or a decline in dietary standards. Rather, farmers faced with growing population pressure and an unproductive short fallow swidden s ystem have been motivated to adopt irrigation because it increases the efficiency of their labor while maintaining a reliable and diverse fa rming system.