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Asian Journal of Agriculture and Development (AJAD) - Call for papers!

Structural Changes in Rice Supply of Farmers in the Philippines

(Philippines), Master of Science (University of the Philippines Los Baños)

Thesis Abstract:

The study aimed to test for possible changes in the response patterns of rice farmers to price fluctuations resulting from the closing of available frontier areas, together with rice technology improvements during the recent years.

Statistical analysis was done for the whole country and for two selected regions, Central Luzon and Southwestern Mindanao. to test for structural changes in the supply relation for rice, regression equatoins were estimared for two seperate periods (1950-1960 and 1961-1974). Furthermore, the observations of the whole period 1950-1974 were combined in estimating the regression coefficiencts with the use of the dummy variable technique.

The major findings of this study were: (1) the price elasticity of rice area declined from the first to the second period; and (2) the price elasticity of yield increased from the 1960s to the 1970s. These findings were consistent with the hyphotheses of the study namely ; (1) the price response of rice area will tend decline as a result of a "closing cultivation frontier" which has made more difficult the shift of land to and from production; and (2) the development of the new rice technology and the growing scarcity of land may have change the structure of the aggregate supply of rice output.

It was also found that the major factors that significally influenced rice area and yield during the recent years were the prevailing irrigation infrastructure and tje improvement in rice technology in relation to other crops.