3.1. Farm and household characteris

3.1. Farm and household characteristics
Most farmers in this study live below the poverty
threshold of US$200 income per year (Table 1). In Balete,
where income levels are lowest, 78.6 percent of the
interviewed farmers derive over 75 percent of their income
from farming. For the farmers closest to the highway, in
Magassi, dependence on farming as the main source of
income is also relatively high. However, these farmers use
intensified farming systems with elevated production levels
that contribute to higher income compared with Balete.
The principal crop is rice (Table 4), mainly high-yielding
varieties grown specifically for the market in irrigated or
rain-fed fields. The rice grown in Balete is dryland or
upland rice and is mainly for home consumption. In Balete,
bananas serve as a cash crop (as in Puerta), often forming
the only source of cash income. In Magassi and Masipi,
bananas are grown solely for home consumption.
Puerta differs from the other villages in having corn
instead of rice as the main crop. Two types of corn are
grown: the high-yielding hybrid corn often referred to as
yellow corn, a major cash crop since its introduction in the
region in the mid-1980s, and the white or glutinous corn
variety traditionally grown for home consumption. Yellow
corn is also cultivated in Magassi and Masipi, but hardly
any of the respondents outside Puerta grow white corn. In
Masipi East and Puerta, most farmers derive additional
income from sources other than farming, in particular
(illegal) logging, collection of non-timber forest products
and procurement of bush meat.
The average area cultivated with rice or corn is similar
across all the villages: about 1 ha (see Table 4; n ¼ 104).
However, total cultivated acreage varies slightly from village to village, with a tendency towards smaller areas—
for both rice and corn—when moving from the lowlands
(Magassi) to the uplands (Balete).
In general, it can be said that farming systems change
from cash-generating systems near the highway and close
to the market to subsistence-oriented systems in the
remoter upland areas. The average total income is lowest
in the more remote villages, as income from both farming
and non-agricultural activities decrease with increasing
distance from the highway.