AN EMPIRICAL TYPOLOGY OF BRACKISH-WATER POND AQUACULTURE SYSTEMS IN THE PHILIPPINES: A TOOL TO AID COMPARATIVE STUDY IN THE SECTOR

Abstract

Aquaculture in the Philippines is long-established but has witnessed rapid technical change in the last 20 years with the introduction of hatchery technology and commercial feed mills changing the production possibilities for a fishpond operator. To understand the sector, a typology of brackish-water pond farming systems is constructed using multivariate methods (principal components analysis, cluster analysis). Eight input variables across all major factors of production are used in the analysis, gathered from a net sample of 136 farms in two regions in 2003. Three latent variables are described, accounting for 58% of variance in the original data: specialization; land vs. labor intensity; and feeding intensity. Five clusters (farm types) are subsequently described: extensive polyculture (40% of sample); semi-intensive prawn-oriented polyculture (11%); low-input labor-intensive farms (27%); very large, extensive milkfish-oriented farms (8%); and semi-intensive milkfish monoculture farms (14%). Implications for technical efficiency estimation and comparative study of economic indicators are discussed.