Upland farming provides us with basic goods -- food, water, clean air, and aesthetic pleasure. At the same time it also gives us life-safety and protection services such as preventing flooding, soil erosion and conserving agro-biodiversity. However, for these environmental goods and services that we lowlanders enjoy and which are brought about by the farmers adopting upland agriculture, they remain uncompensated.

In Southeast Asia, PES centers mostly on conserving environmental functions of the watershed and forest ecosystems. PES helps protect and conserve the remaining forest ecosystems; however, it may not totally eliminate incentives to clear the forest for upland agriculture. The issue of upland agriculture and forest environmental service payments especially in developing countries cannot be separated. Thus, there is a need to extend the PES concept from the forest to include the upland farmer’s farm.

With SEARCA's Seed Fund for Research and Training (SFRT) support in 2005-2006, Dr. Asa Jose Sajise, a senior lecturer from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, determined how a specific environmental function can be sustained through an environmental payment scheme.

The study found out that in-situ farm diversity is determined by output prices and farm characteristics. Under the efficient targeting scheme, an annual payment of PhP 3.1 million (or about US$ 74,200) is required to bring the best (healthiest) biodiversity in five barangays of Sta. Fe, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines.

With a healthy biodiversity, both uplanders and lowlanders are benefited, but the associated costs of practicing good upland agriculture are borne only by the upland farmers who are poorer than most of their lowland counterparts.

Perhaps, it is high time that we put a price tag to good upland farming practices - in fairness to upland farmers who labor in providing us with basic environmental goods and services. After all, there is really no such thing as "free lunch".