ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Land, Livelihoods and Food Security
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1696563
Exploring ways to scale direct-seeded rice in Sta. Cruz, Zambales: A Living Labs approach
Provisionally accepted
Jaime IV Albarillo Manalo*
Eduardo Jimmy QuilangKaren Eloisa BarrogaAurora CoralesAlice MataiaElmer BautistaDindo King DonayreMarc Angelo AbandoAilon Oliver CapistranoDiadem Gonzales- Philippine Rice Research Institute, Maligaya, Philippines
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While it offers a host of advantages, such as significantly reducing labor costs and methane emissions, direct-seeded rice has failed to gain traction in the Philippines. Only 43% of farmers prefer DSR, particularly during the dry season. Employing the Living Labs Approach, this study set out to unpack ways to scale DSR in Sta. Cruz, Zambales. Living Labs is an approach that values co-creation and intensive stakeholder engagement in creating usable technologies or strategies for intended users. Sta. Cruz was chosen as the research site as it has evidence of farmers employing DSR as a crop establishment method. The Collective Approach to Technology Adoption served as the main theoretical framework for this research. Multiple methods, including in-depth interviews, surveys, and policy brokering, were employed, along with capacity-building activities, to address the research questions posed by this study. High interest among locals; assistance from various stakeholders, both within and outside Sta. Cruz; transdisciplinarity and strong support from local executives, as evidenced by their passage of a local ordinance supporting wider DSR promotion in the town, contributed to the DSR scaling efforts.
Keywords: Collective Approach to Technology Adoption, Direct-Seeded Rice, Living labs, Scaling, Technology acceptance model
Received: 01 Sep 2025; Accepted: 17 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Manalo, Quilang, Barroga, Corales, Mataia, Bautista, Donayre, Abando, Capistrano and Gonzales. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jaime IV Albarillo Manalo, jamzedy@gmail.com
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