The Landcare Foundation of the Philippines (LFPI) is proud to introduce you to our wonderful world of landcare. Since its introduction in 1996 in the small municipality of Claveria in northern Mindanao, it has spread to sites across the southern Philippines and in the process delivered significant change and benefits to farmers and farming communities.

Never before have the twin challenges of addressing livelihood improvement and natural resource management in the Philippine rural uplands been as pressing as they are now. The passage of the Local Government Code of 1991 (Republic Act No. 7160), which devolved and decentralised national government services and programs, gave greater autonomy and power to the country’s many provinces, municipalities and barangays and brought these twin issues to the forefront of the development agenda. Similarly, it gave greater responsibility to the local government units to be more creative in finding solutions to these problems. Among the services devolved to the local government units is the delivery of agriculture and natural resource management extension.

Landcare is an alternative model for extension that can be adopted or adapted by our local government units, national government agencies and other key development players. It is a people-centred approach for extension that brings all key stakeholders in the community together to learn and jointly address a broad range of livelihood issues that confront them. The issues may be degradation of resources on the farm, low farm productivity, poor marketing systems or even bigger issues that affect the wider community.

We believe landcare holds great promise for the nation as an effective means of addressing these issues, and we invite you to share in our passion for landcare.