Rural development in the Philippines has undergone paradigm shifts over time. In the 1960s, the paradigm was modernization, focusing on increasing small farm efficiency. In the 1970s it shifted to state intervention. In the 1980s, the paradigm emphasized market liberalization. In the 1990s, it moved to participation and incorporating grassroots, bottom-up approaches. Key shifts included recognizing indigenous knowledge, participatory methods, actor-oriented perspectives, and the rise of NGOs alongside reduced government involvement. The document discusses the evolution of thinking and approaches to rural development in the Philippines from the 1960s to present.

1. RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND
THE EVOLUTION OF ITS PARADIGM
IN THE PHILIPPINES
SHERWIN B.
MANUAL

2. Outline Of Presentation
- Introduction
- Definition of Terms
- Paradigm Shifts in Rural Development
- Key Strands and Rural Dev‟t School of Thoughts
- Government Policies

3. INTRODUCTI
INTRODUCTION ON
Rural development as field of study and
economic activity can be traced during the
feudal system. In this system agriculture
was the main economic activity whereby the
feudal lords owned lands and serfs worked
for the feudal lords. Its this system state
emerged in Europe and it brought about the
state self substance in terms of major
provision such food health education and so
on. (Ismail)
In the books of economic and development
guru, Todaro, he has cited the numerous
rural activity that fueled many great
economies in the world.
In the Philippines, rural development concept
can be traced back as far as the Spanish
time but more strikingly after the World War
2 ended.
Roughly in the Philippines, rural development
can be characterized in the following phases
as it evolves through time: 1960‟s as
modernization, the 1970‟s as state of
intervention, the 1980‟s as market liberation
and the 1990‟s as participation and

4. DEFINITION OF TERMS
 Rural – is usually areas which are
sparsely settled places away from the
influence of large cities and towns.
People in rural areas live in villages,
on farms and in other isolated
houses, as in pre-industrial societies.
Rural areas usually have agriculture
character though many areas are
characterized by an economy based
on logging, mining, petroleum and
natural gas exploration, or tourism.

5. DEFINITION OF TERMS
Development - is a process of
continues rise in the capability
of the people to control their
present and future well being
(Cuyno, et al., 1982). The
definition embraces three basic
concepts.
1. It is a process suggesting
change in people‟s outlook,
capabilities and way of life;
2. Man‟s capability to
accomplish work by him or
with minimum assistance;
3. Control of oneself.
Therefore, development as a
process involves both
economic growth and social
development.

6. Development includes:
The people (self esteem, dignity, security,
potential); the economy; technology;
Culture; Moral values; Environmental
preservation; Social justice; Literacy
and education; Change in social
structure; Equal distribution of
wealth; Organization; Discipline;
Freedom (from servitude, debt, etc.);
Control over political destiny; Peace
and order

7. DEFINITION OF TERMS
 Rural Development – As a concept,
it connotes overall development in
the rural areas with a view to
improve the quality of life of the rural
people. In this sense, it is a
comprehensive and
multidimensional concept and
encompasses the development of
agriculture and allied activities –
village and cottage industries and
crafts, socio-economic,
infrastructure, community services
and facilities, and above all, the
human resources in rural areas.

8. DEFINITION OF TERMS
 Rural Development – As a
phenomenon, it is the result of
interactions between various physical,
technological, economic, socio-cultural,
institutional factors.
 Rural Development – As a strategy, it is
designed to improve the economic and
social well-being of a specific group of
people – the rural poor. As a
discipline, it is multidisciplinary in
nature representing an intersection of
agricultural, social, behavioral, engineer
ing, and management sciences.

9. DEFINITION OF TERMS
 Rural Development, ergo, is
defined as a process of
developing and utilizing natural
and human resources,
technologies, infrastructural
facilities, institutions and
organizations, and government
policies and programmes to
encourage and speed up
economic growth in rural areas,
to provide jobs and to improve
the quality of rural life towards
self-sustenance (Singh, 1986).

10. PARADIGM SHIFT IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT

11. RURAL DEV’T PARADIGM SHIFT

12. STRANDS AND SWITCHES
IN RURAL DEV’T THINKING

13. SMALL FARM FOCUS
This is the “agricultural growth
based on small-farm efficiency‟
paradigm.
The decisive contribution resulting
in the widespread acceptance of
this narrative was the publication
in 1964 of Schultz‟s
Transforming Traditional
Agriculture, in which the rational
allocation of resources by
“traditional” small farmers was a
central proposition.
The idea that the great bulk of what
were then called „traditional‟ or
„subsistence‟ agriculturalists in
low-income countries could form
the basis of agriculture-led
processes of economic
development was a significant
break from the received wisdom
of the 1950s, embodied in the
dual-economy theories of

14. SMALL FARM FOCUS
Small farmers are rational economic
agents making efficient farm
decisions (Schultz, 1964);
Small farmers are just as capable as
big farmers of taking advantage
of high- yielding crop varieties
because the input combinations
(seed, fertilizer, water) required
for successful cultivation are
„neutral to scale‟ (Lipton and
Longhurst, 1989);
The substitution of labour for
scarce land involved in small-
farm HYV cultivation is an
„induced innovation‟ that
accurately reflects relative
resource scarcities and factor
prices in labor-abundant

15. There exists an „inverse relationship‟
between farm size and economic
efficiency, such that small farmers are
more efficient than large farmers
because of the intensity of their use of
abundant labor in combination with
small land holdings and low
requirements for scarce capital (Berry
and Cline, 1979);
These factors lead in the direction of a
„unimodal‟ agricultural strategy
favouring small family farms rather than
a „bimodal‟ strategy that bets on the
strength of a modern farm sector
composed of large farms and estates
(Johnston and Kilby, 1975: Ch.4);
Rising agricultural output in the small-farm
sector results in „rural growth linkages‟
that spur the growth of labour-intensive
non-farm activities in rural areas, and

16. SMALL FARM FOCUS
The notion of „rural growth
linkages‟ has proved
particularly pervasive and
durable (Delgado et al., 1998;
IFAD, 2001), even though the
methods used to substantiate
the significance of such
linkages are somewhat
debatable (Harriss, 1987; Hart,
1989; 1993).
„The growth of the non- farm
economy depends on the
vitality of the farm economy;
without agricultural growth in
rural areas, redressing
poverty is an impossible task‟
(Singh, 1990).

17. PROCESS APPROACHES
TO RURAL DEV’T
The second „paradigm shift‟
was the switch occurring
during the 1980s and 1990s
from the top-down or
“blueprint” approach to
rural
development, characterized
by external technologies
and national-level
policies, to the bottom-
up, grassroots, or
“process” approach
(Rondinelli, 1983; Mosse et
al., 1998). This envisages
rural development as a
participatory process that

18. KEY STRANDS ON APPROACHES TO RURAL DEV’T
The advent of farming systems research (FSR),
and the growing argument that the Green
Revolution in monocrop farming systems (rice
and wheat), mainly in Asia, might not
necessarily work for raising incomes in
diverse, risk-prone and resource-poor
environments (e.g. Chambers et al., 1989);
A growing acknowledgement of the validity of
indigenous technical knowledge (ITK), and of
the ability of the poor themselves to contribute
to solutions to the problems they confront
(Richards, 1985);
The rise of the participatory method, originating
in rapid rural appraisal (RRA) techniques in the
1980s and evolving into participatory rural
appraisal (PRA) and participatory learning and
action (PLA) during the 1990s (Chambers,
1994; 1997);

19. KEY STRANDS ON APPROACHES TO RURAL DEV’T
The advent of an “actor-oriented”
perspective on rural policies,
emphasizing that participants in rural
development, including the poor
themselves, are actors with differing
understandings of the processes of
change in which they are involved (Long
and Long, 1992);
Structural adjustment and market
liberalization beginning in the early
1980s, leading to the withdrawal of
governments from previous large-scale
“management” of the agricultural sector;
Disenchantment with the performance of
governments in the delivery of rural
services, leading donors to look for other
partners;

20. KEY STRANDS ON APPROACHES TO RURAL DEV’T
The rise of NGOs as agents for rural
development, occurring at the same
time as, and benefiting from, the
decline in enthusiasm for big
government;
The rejection of overarching theories as a
useful guide to action, arising in part
from post-modern intellectual ideas
emphasizing the uniqueness of local
and individual experience (for an
overview see Booth, 1994);
The rise of gender as a concern in rural
development, emphasizing the
different experience of women from
men, and the need to consider closely
the differing impacts of rural politics on
women and men.

21. CONCLUSION
Currently few developing country
governments, and few donors, take a
sufficiently cross- or multi-sectoral
view of the possibilities of rural
poverty reduction Notwithstanding
energetic assertions about the
underfunding of agriculture (IFAD,
2001), the reality on the ground is
that agriculture is preferred in the
public funding of services to rural
productive activity (via research,
extension, credit, seeds and so on) to
say, providing an enabling
environment for start-up non-farm
activities, or removing barriers to
trade and mobility, or reducing
licensing requirements for small
businesses, or a host of other
potential means by which the options
and opportunities of the rural poor

22. CONCLUSION
a new paradigm of rural development
is to emerge, it will be one in which
agriculture takes its place along with
a host of other actual and potential
rural and non- rural activities that are
important to the construction of
viable rural livelihoods, without
undue preference being given to
farming as the unique solution to
rural poverty. It is in this sense that
the cross-sectoral and multi-
occupational diversity of rural
livelihoods may need to become the
cornerstone of rural development
policy if efforts to reduce rural
poverty are to be effective in the
future.

23. GOVERNMENT POLICIES
There has emerged a
consensus among
economic researchers that
the failure of the Philippines
to grow robustly on a
sustainable basis and to
induce substantial poverty
reduction during the last
half century stems mainly
from the absence of an
“effective allocation
mechanism” that allows
the true comparative
advantage of various
industries to emerge

24. From the 1950s to the 1980s, an array
of policies meant to push the country
towards an import substituting
industrialization track inadvertently
stunted the development of the rural
sector by creating a bias towards
large-scale, capital-intensive
manufacturing industries located in
urban areas (especially Metro Manila)
to the detriment of rural enterprises
which are inherently smaller in
size, hire more labor and make
greater use of local materials
(Medalla et al., 1995; Ranis and
Stewart, 1993).

25. SECTORAL POLICIES
• Masagana 99 and launched in 1974, the program
called for government assistance in the form of credit,
irrigation, extension services and fertilizer subsidy.
•the National Grains Authority (NGA), the government‟s
rice and corn agency, expanded its control of the food
sector to include the effective monopolization of wheat
(beginning 1975) and soybean (beginning 1978) imports .
•NGA transformed to NFA in January 14, 1981 – PD 1770

26. • Agrarian reform (land reform)in 70‟s
Presidential Decree No. 27 (PD 27) was
issued stipulating that all rice and corn
fields of over 7 hectares be transferred
to the tenants who tilled them at a price
2.5 times the value of average annual
production and that all the rice and corn
lands of 7 hectares or less under share
tenancy be converted to fixed-rent
leasehold with the official rental ceiling
of 25 percent of average output for the
three „normal‟ years prior to land reform.
• In 1992, Congress, with the endorsement
of the executive branch, passed the
Magna Carta of Small Farmers (Republic
Act 7607), which barred importation of
agricultural products produced locally in
sufficient quantity.

27. • the Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program (CARP).
Launched in 1988 under
Republic Act 6675
• A change in the policy
environment had been
anticipated with the
country‟s accession to the
World Trade Organization
(WTO) in 1995 since this
required opening up local
agricultural markets to
competition as well as
enacting laws prescribed by
the trade treaty.

28. The Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA)
was enacted in 1997 partly in response to the farm
lobbies‟ opposition to the country‟s entry to the WTO.

29. SUMMAR
Y
Generally, there are only 2 major paradigm shifts of rural development
in the Philippines. The first „paradigm shift‟ in rural development
occurred in the early to mid- 1960s period, when small-farm
agriculture switched to being considered the very engine of growth
and development.
The second „paradigm shift‟ was the switch occurring during the 1980s
and 1990s from the top-down or „blueprint‟ approach to rural
development, characterized by external technologies and national-
level policies, to the bottom-up, grassroots, or „process‟ approach
(Rondinelli, 1983; Mosse et al., 1998).

30. DAGHANG SALAMAT!