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not be captured if the criteria for farm groupings was based strictly on component-
technology recommendations.
Study area
The studv area covered two villages in Isabela Province. The province is located in
the northeastern part of the Philippines, a region with high agricultural potential.
This area has a unimodal rainfall pattern with an average annual rainfall of about
2,200 mm. The area is situated along the typhoon belt. It experienced seven
typhoons during crop years 1989-90 and three typhoons the following year. The
region as a whole is usually isolated from the rest of the country for a few weeks
when a strong typhoon hits the area. Prices of agricultural commodities are reduced
when the area becomes isolated. Two land types exist in the study area: the river
floodplains (uplands). lvhich are traditionally cultivated for maizs and upland crops,
and the rainfed lowlands. which are traditionally culti\lated for rice.
An average farming houlehold of six people cultivates about -7 ha, which are
almost equally d~vided between the two land types (Table 1). It is uncommon to find
farming households specializing in the cultivation of either the rairlfed lowlands or
the floodplains. The area is flood-prone during the monsoon and drought-prone
during the dry season. In addition to upland crops and rice, farming households
raise several head of water buffalo and cattle.
Rainfed lowland area
TRADITIONAL AYD INTRODUCED TECHKOLOGIES
The traditional cropping pattern in the rainfed lowlands is fallow - rice. Rice is
transplanted in August-September. The thrust of the now defunct RIARS of the
Department of Agriculture in Cagayan Valley was to establish two crop patterns.
These patterns were designed to take advantage of the traditionally long f,
cl 11 ow
period before rice and the rainfall available during this period. To achieve this
objective. RIARS introduced a short-duration upland crop (rnungbean) and dry
seeded rice (DSR) before transplanted rice (TPR) in the wet season. Either
mungbean or DSR must be established during the onset of rainfall sonletime in rilid-
April. This is followed by TPR in August-September. Table 2 shows the distribution
of the present cropping patterns in the rainfed area. It suggests that the f~llow - rice
pattern still predominates. The introduced patterns (mungbean - TPK and DSR -
TPR) command a smaller share of the area. The sudden decline in area of these two
patterns in crop year 1990-91 can be attributed to the extended drought that
affected the whole region. This indicates the instability of the introcluced
technolosy.
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On average, component technologies as implemented by the farmers were
within the recommendation domain of RIARS (Table 3). In some cases, input levels
exceeded the recomnlendations. The high seeding rate, particularly of mungbean, is