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• Agritourism in the Philippines tends towards production of spectacle. • Production of spectacle serves urbanite imaginations of the rural. • Spectacle can disrupt, redefine, and curtail on-site food production. • Spectacle's impact on food production can extend beyond the farm gate. • Agritourism's emphasis on spectacle questions its food security potential. Agritourism has often been framed as a means to revitalize a declining rural economy by improving and diversifying household incomes, forestalling rural flight, and preserving agrarian cultures. We argue, however, that it can also have the propensity to create a different kind of rural revitalization, one that accentuates the production of spectacle, at times at the expense of food production. We draw from qualitative field research to examine the growing agritourism movement in the Philippines, a country with a struggling rural sector. We observe that agritourism sites in the Philippines negotiate space and work in multiple ways and highlight the tensions that farmers increasingly perceive on the ground. Some farmers persist in maintaining the production of food, while others shift more towards the staging of experience and spectacle to serve urbanite imaginations of the rural. We present various tendencies in the process of transitioning from farm to agritourism and argue that attention to the production of rural spectacle is important in understanding agrarian transitions at the farm and community level, and ultimately agritourism's implications on rural revitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Kale has become a popular superfood leafy green in the Philippines. • The kale assemblage first territorialized as an exclusive network. • The assemblage eventually became accessible to low-income producers and consumers. • The materialiaties of kale help explain its eventual deterritorialization. In the last ten years kale, a Brassica crop common in the West, has been produced and consumed in noticeable quantities in the Philippines. Based on field research and discourse analysis of popular media, and drawing from the literature on socio-material relations, this paper illustrates the complex ways kale has traveled from the United States and assembled in the Philippines. Findings suggest that upon arrival in the Philippines, kale's socio-material relations territorialized around privileged agri-food networks. Its translations as a 'superfood' and the 'queen of greens' have allowed it to become the most expensive vegetable in the Philippines and therefore inaccessible to lower income consumers. Through time, however, kale's socio-material relations deterritorialized to transcend its exclusive network, with small growers now producing the leafy green for self-sustenance. While the nutritional properties of kale have turned it into a high status vegetable, its ability to be grown and propagated in the lowlands of the tropics and its close association with locally available Brassica crops like pechay (Chinese cabbage) have made it receptive to mainstreaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Participatory guarantee systems (PGS) are now emerging in response to problems associated with third-party certification. • PGS is advocated for its potential to promote food sovereignty, inclusivity, and grassroots empowerment. • PGS in the Philippines encounters issues of double certification among its farmer-members, creating tensions within groups. • PGS groups negotiate these tensions differently, depending on broader structural conditions and local particularities. Abstract In response to the neoliberal regulation of the organic agri-food sector through third-party certification (TPC), participatory guarantee systems (PGS) are advocated for their potential to promote food sovereignty, inclusivity, and grassroots empowerment. However, we show that in the Philippines, farming groups adopting PGS encounter politics that manifests as tensions and contradictions in the imagination and practice of this seemingly more transformative organic guarantee system. Based on qualitative research, we observed how some members continue to aspire for TPC resulting in cases of double certification (i.e. members having both PGS and TPC). Such contradiction encounters varying levels of contestation, which we attribute to the local particularities of the two PGS systems and the broader structural conditions that continue to privilege TPC. Rather than frame PGS as co-opted by the dominant neoliberalised organic agri-food sector, we emphasise possibilities for farmers' autonomy in negotiating these tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of rubber has encountered varied reactions among upland smallholder populations in Asia—some have cooperated while others resisted. While the general scholarship on smallholder behavior vis-à-vis rubber production has extensively examined perspectives in political economy/ecology, few have studied the role of environmental constructions, discourses and practices in elucidating spatial politics associated with rubber. This paper offers a case of indigenous smallholders’ varied response to rubber based on their multiple understandings of and practices in upland environments in the Philippines. Based on qualitative field research in one rubber-growing community in Palawan, findings suggest that many indigenous smallholders have consented the expansion of rubber production areas in fallow lands and shifting cultivation systems, but opposed expansion in tabooed forests inhabited by invisible entities. The multiple meanings indigenous populations accord to different environments correspond to variations in political reactions and land-use decisions on the ground, thus highlighting the nuances of cooperation in and resistance to boom crops production regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In the Philippines, green economy projects encourage the production of agro-industrial commodities ostensibly for climate change mitigation, environmental rehabilitation, and inclusive rural economic growth. This paper illustrates, however, how elite constructions of the uplands as being “idle” and “unproductive” precipitate low-carbon, agro-industrial crop production in the Philippine frontier. Based on field research from 2010 to 2012 (i.e., in-depth interviews with policy and market elites, participant observation, and archival document analysis), we argue that elites constructions of and discourses on the uplands as idle and unproductive have been carried over from the colonial period, albeit in more complex ways, to inform and legitimize agro-industrial policies and programs couched in the green economy vision of the country. Such discourses simplify green economy policies and undermine upland dwellers’ constructions of place. Our findings raise critical questions about the realization of the vision of the green economy in the Philippines and much of the Global South. Regardless of the inclusive growth discourse in the green economy program, elite constructions of the idle and unproductive uplands pose serious risks to upland environments and populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding farmer behaviour is needed for local agricultural systems to produce food sustainably while facing multiple pressures. We synthesize existing literature to identify three fundamental questions that correspond to three distinct areas of knowledge necessary to understand farmer behaviour: 1) decision-making model; 2) cross-scale and cross-level pressures; and 3) temporal dynamics. We use this framework to compare five interdisciplinary case studies of agricultural systems in distinct geographical contexts across the globe. We find that these three areas of knowledge are important to understanding farmer behaviour, and can be used to guide the interdisciplinary design and interpretation of studies in the future. Most importantly, we find that these three areas need to be addressed simultaneously in order to understand farmer behaviour. We also identify three methodological challenges hindering this understanding: the suitability of theoretical frameworks, the trade-offs among methods and the limited timeframe of typical research projects. We propose that a triangulation research strategy that makes use of mixed methods, or collaborations between researchers across mixed disciplines, can be used to successfully address all three areas simultaneously and show how this strategy has been achieved in the case studies. The framework facilitates interdisciplinary research on farmer behaviour by opening up spaces of structured dialogue on assumptions, research questions and methods employed in investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Fats, oil and grease (FOG) can be recovered efficiently from grease interceptors for biodiesel production. FOG is susceptible to hydrolysis because of its inherent high moisture content and the presence of lipases associated with food residuals in the grease interceptors. This study reveals that the FFA content of FOG derived from grease interceptors did not exceed 8% (w/w) due to constant influx of fresh FOG from wastewater. However, if the FOG is allowed to hydrolyze without dilution, the FFA content can reach 15% (w/w) in more than 20days. Experiments were conducted to optimize reaction parameters for the esterification of FOG prior to the conventional alkali-catalyzed biodiesel production process. Sulphuric acid (H2SO4) was a more efficient catalyst than Fe2(SO4)3 in reducing the acid value to ⩽1mg KOH/g under identical reaction conditions. At reaction temperatures of ⩽50°C, only H2SO4 was capable of reaching the recommended acid value within 24h. The optimum methanol to FFA ratio for an H2SO4-catalyzed reaction was 20:1, whereas for Fe2(SO4)3 it was above 26:1. Esterification occurred under static, non-mixed conditions, although conversion rates were low. The rate of conversion increased with mixing speed, with a 200rpm orbital shaking speed as optimum. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]