Natural Capital

Access to Land

Over half the selected households reported having some kind of access to land (60%), with proportions ranging from 50 percent in Lanaodel Norte to 68 percent in Maguindanao. The only exception was the urban area of Cotabato City, where 2 percent reported access to land. Most households had acquired the land through inheritance (55%), with 15 percent renting the land, and 19 percent using it in sharecropping. Sharecropping was least frequent in North Cotabato (6%), while renting land was most frequent in Lanao del Sur (36%) compared to 10 percentor less of the households elsewhere.Among the households who had access to land, half (55%) indicated having supporting documents. One third (32%) simply said “the clan knows”. The proportion with documented access to land was lowest in Lanao del Sur (19%) compared to over half of households elsewhere. When asked to rank their access to land, 24 percent of all the households reported it as good or very good, 43 percent were neutral, and 33 percent were negative.

Figure 20: Rating of access to land

Displaced households reported having access to land as frequently as, or even more frequently than, other settlement groups. However, they ranked their level of access to land significantly worse than others, with 61 percent judging their access to land as bad or very bad, compared to 33 percent or else among other groups. This possibly reflects the long distance between the farm plot and current place of residence among those who were displaced at the time of survey.

The main source of land access among the displaced households was through inheritance(59%). About one in four indicated accessing the land as part of a sharecropping agreement (24%), 9 percent indicated renting the land, and 9 percent indicated having been granted a temporary use. The results suggest that most households that identified themselves as being displaced continuedto access land at their place of origin. This is consistent with the finding that most displaced households are located within the same barangay as their place of origin, but within a different sitio or purok. 

Agricultural Production

Several questions were asked so as to assess the main agricultural items produced by households and their use. Among the 62 percent of households who reported engaging in agricultural production, cereals were the main products, including rice (30%) and corn (28%). Vegetables were produced by 22 percent of the farming households, and 11 percent produced coconut. Roots and tubers were not frequently mentioned, with 6 percent producing cassava, and 1 percent producing potatoes. Commercial crops, including coffee (3%), rubber (2%), and sugarcane (1%), were not commonly produced. The productions of rice and corn were most frequent in Maguindanao (55% and 40% of the farming households, respectively). Most crops had a mixed use (consumption and sale), with the exception of mung beans and coconut, which were mainly sold, along with commercial crops such as rubber and sugarcane.

Table 3: Agricultural products

Animal ownership

The majority of the respondents reported owning animals. Over half the households (54%) said they had some sort of poultry birds (chicken, ducks, geese). Ownership of larger farm animals, including cows and bullocks (10%), buffaloes/carabaos (14%), and goats (12%), was less reported. Disaggregated by settlement status, the ownership of farm animals was least common among households who were displaced at the time of the survey, with 38 percent reporting to own poultry compared to 50 percent or more among the other groups. Ownership of cows, bullocks, buffaloes and goats was also lowest among displaced households.