The earliest Spanish colonists discovered fields with flat-bottomed sections and surrounded by small dykes, where rainfall could be collected in the center. Even before the 16th century, farmers had cultivated their rice fields with light plows with only one handlebar, each hauled by a single buffalo.
As early as the 17th century, the Spaniards had allowed the local chiefs or datus to take ownership of rice fields and have them farmed by sharecroppers. The Spanish encouraged Filipinos to plant corn and sweet potato crops from Mexico and Central America.
This vignette of the Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas exhibits the rural life of 17th century Filipinos. Jesuit priest and cartographer Padre Pedro Murillo Velarde also illustrated the local Indios along with a few wild and farm animals such as the crocodile, the boa constrictor, and the carabao.