A Rice Village Saga: Three Decades of Green Revolution in the Philippines

This detailed case study explores the dramatic economic and social changes that the rice belt of Laguna Province has experienced in the last quarter-century. Besides major advances in rice technology, increasing population pressure, land reform programs, growing infrastructure, and urban economic activities have accelerated the pace of change. Utilizing a unique data set built from numerous surveys from 1966 to 1997 in a typical Laguna village, the authors illustrate a pattern of socioeconomic development shared by irrigated rice areas throughout Asia.

Yujiro Hayami is professor of international economics at Aoyama-Gakuin University, Tokyo, and author of a number of studies of agriculture and economic development. Masao Kikuchi is professor of agricultural economics at Chiba University in Japan and author of Asian Village at the Crossroads (with Yujiro Hayami).