Luzon Island, the biggest of all the islands in the Philippines, has some of the most beautiful and most hostile landscapes in the Asia Pacific region.

In many places, at the highest altitudes, the mountains are volcanoes, often filled with crater lakes.

There are 25 active volcanoes in the Philippines. In 1991 one (Mount Pinatubo) spewed out four cubic kilometres of ash and lava, which has since been gouged out by fierce erosion from the torrential tropical rainfall. The material buried whole villages as it spread 30km out from the eruption.

This unfriendly kind of landscape covers thousands of square kilometres in the Philippines, and Luzon Island sits right on one of the most active spots in the Pacific Ocean's ring of fire.

But there is another side to the coin: some of the most fertile land in the world is found in Asia Pacific, where there are lush lowlands with deep rich soil formed over hundreds of years from material brought down from the mountains and volcanic peaks.

Rice Cultivation in Luzon Island

Lowlands cover about a third of Luzon Island: a high proportion of flat land by the standards of the region. This is a typical landscape for rice farming, a strange mixture of dry land and water.

Rice farming is a messy, physically-demanding and extremely labour-intensive business.

At busy times of the year, people do the rounds of the fields belonging to their extended family and their close friends. Edna and Rey won't finish work in the fields until sunset. In the early morning the temperature is already 30 degrees.

Yet it is typical of the Filipino to look on the bright side of hard work, and the people of Tubo-Tubo have turned the daily grind of rice-farming into a social occasion.

In November, when the heavy rains of the wet season are starting to relent, there are often two or three different activities going on at the same time in the fields. Rey, Edna and company have moved on to another friend's land, where they're planting young seedlings.

Compared with many other Asian-Pacific countries, agriculture in the Philippines has been very slow to modernise. Most of the work is still done by humans and animals.

Rey and Edna's caraboa (water buffalo) is one of their most treasured possessions, and the motive power for all the really strenuous tasks in the ricefields.

There are machines available, but the cost is beyond the reach of most farmers. Nobody likes the idea of not being able to pay off a loan.

Problems Faced by Farmers

Despite the hard work of Filipino farmers, the income from growing rice is rarely enough to support a family. Everybody works at other jobs in addition to the hard slog in the fields.

The Montallos have recently bought a 'tricycle': a motorcycle adapted for carrying fare-paying passengers.

Other families, especially in non-irrigated areas, suffer even more from poor rains and other problems.

Contrary to what we may think, rainfall is irregular in the humid tropics. It is true that the mountains running along the backbone of the Philippines are almost permanently smothered in cloud, but there are often periods when the rainfall very low, resulting in problems for crops like rice that demand huge volumes of water.

Yvette Delizdo and her family lost half their rice crop because of the drought, and are putting a brave face on the worst crisis they have ever had. Over the years the Delizdos have sold off nearly two-thirds of the small amount of land they once had in order to meet the expenses of secondary shooling for their children.

Yvette's mother has a part-time job as a caretaker and gardener at the local primary school. Her father works on a building site six days a week.

Ways Out of Rural Life: Education

Most Filipino farmers want a less arduous and precarious life for their children.

The whole Montallo family is passionate about education, as are most people in the Filipino countryside. Few want to remain and look after the land when they grow up. Edna and her husband Rey are determined that their daughters get the kind of education that will help them get away.

However, the daughters are obtaining qualifications for jobs that probably do not yet exist.

Their enthusiasm for school is unlimited, and their ambitions are a world away from growing rice. Their command of English is remarkable.

Students who cannot afford to stay at school and college look for jobs in Manila. Yvette Delizdo's idea of finding a job in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, is common to thousands of rural people. There is no other city in the country approaching Manila in size. It is the strongest magnet in the push-pull process that tempts people out of the rural areas and into the big city. In this process it has sprouted some of the biggest slums in Asia Pacific.

Manila is bursting at the seams under this pressure of rural-urban migration. The expectation of a job in the bright lights rarely matches the reality.

Even Manila cannot offer all young Filipinos what they want. The best job opportunities are to be found much further away.

The Montallos children would like to be like their elder sister, who finished her studies and went abroad. The parents say that they will of course feel sad, but at the same time happy because they know their children are going somewhere better. At the last count there were two and a half million Filipinos working outside their own country.

Yvette thinks that if she is not taken on as a sales assistant, then she would like to go to Hong Kong and work as a maid. There are more jobs on offer abroad. It would be lonely, but she will have to make a sacrifice. She wants to help her parents to have a better standard of living so that they will not have to work so hard.