Number and area of farms/holdings reported in 2022

The 2022 Census of Agriculture and Fisheries (CAF) in Sarangani Province reported a total estimate of 54,282 farms/holdings during the period of 01 January to 31 December 2022. The number of farms/holdings in 2022 decreased by 6.7 percent compared to the 58,205 farms/holdings in 2012. Moreover, the total farm area in 2022, covering 83,063.645 hectares, is lower than the total farm area in 2012 at 108,830.000 hectares, reflecting a reduction of 23.7 percent. Consequently, the average area of farms/holdings dropped from 1.87 hectares per farm/holding in 2012 to 1.53 hectares per farm/holding in 2022. (Table A)

More farms/holdings reported an area of less than 1 hectare

About 98 percent of the total farms/holdings in Sarangani Province in 2022 had size 7.0000 hectares and below. Of these, two in every five farms/holdings were below 1.0000 hectare with an average area of 0.14 hectare per farm/holding. (Table B)
 

About 43 percent or 23,350 farms belonged to farm/holding size group 1.0000 hectare to 2.9999 hectares. The area of these farms/holdings totaled 33,854,159 hectares with an average area of 1.45 hectare per farm/holding. One out of seven farms/holdings belonging to 3.0000 hectares to 6.9999 hectares had an average area of 3.90 hectares per farm/holding. Approximately two percent of the remaining number of farms/holdings had sizes of more than 7.0000 hectares, which were categorized as large farms/holdings, measuring an estimated area of 15,494.79 hectares. (Table B, Figure 1)

Majority of the farms/holdings consisted of only one parcel

The 54,282 farms/holdings were reported to have a total of 58,365 parcels. Nine of the ten farms/holdings consisted only one parcel with a total area of 67,804.605 hectares. These farms/holdings had an average area of 1.34 hectares. (Table C)

Six in every ten farms/holdings had two parcels while the remaining farms/holdings had 3 or more parcels. As the number of parcels per farm/holding increased, the average area per farm/holding also increased. (Table C)

About one-third of the farm/holding parcels were used under permanent crops

Almost one-third of the total parcels, covering 35,780.454 hectares, were devoted under permanent crops. About 11,210 (19.2 percent) farm/holding parcels with a total measure of 14,520.125 hectares were reported to have been used under temporary crops. Meanwhile, 14,699 or one-fourth of the total parcels were utilized for growing both temporary and permanent crops. An estimated of 9,666 homelots were also used in agricultural activities such as raising and keeping livestock and/or poultry, vegetable gardening, among others. Such homelots represented 16.6 percent of the total parcels used for agricultural operation in 2022. Other parcels were used for aquaculture, livestock/poultry raising, grazing/pasturing, temporarily fallow, covered with wood and forest, public land, and other main land use. (Table D, Figure 1)

Technical Notes:

The 2022 Census of Agriculture and Fisheries (CAF) is a large-scale government undertaking geared towards the collection and compilation of basic information on the agricultural and fishery sectors in the Philippines.

The 2022 CAF selected and used sample barangays. It listed all households residing in these barangays and interviewed completely those that engaged in any agricultural activities with reference period January 1 to December 31, 2022. Household interviews for the 2022 CAF were conducted from September to November 2023, while non-household interviews were conducted from May to July 2023.

A farm/holding is any piece of land used wholly or partly for any agricultural production involved in raising crops, livestock, poultry and other agricultural activities under single management, and operated as one technical unit by one person alone or with others, regardless of title, legal form, size or location.

Parcel is one contiguous piece of land under one form of tenure without regard to land use. “Contiguous” means not separated by other lands, or water or road or forest or other features that do not form part of the agricultural holding/farm. A parcel may consist of one or more fields or plots adjacent to each other.

Land tenure refers to the right under which a farm/holding parcel is held or operated.

Physical Area of the Parcel refers to the size or actual measurement of the parcel.

Main Use of the Parcel refers to the main use of the land parcel such as growing crops, raising livestock or cultivating/culturing fish, and other agricultural activities carried out on the parcel making up the holding with the intention of obtaining products and/or benefits.

Temporary crops (such as palay, corn, etc) are crops grown seasonally with a growing cycle of less than a year and which must be sown/planted again for production after each harvest.

Permanent crops (such as fruits trees, etc) are crops with more than one-year growing cycle and do not need to be replaced after each harvest.