Many anthropologists debate over how agriculture spread to the Philippines, and a precise date of its beginning is uncertain. However, there are indirect indications and other pieces of evidence that anthropologists can use to estimate when and how particular crops arrived in the Philippines. Rice is a major agricultural crop in the Philippines nowadays, and many nations across the world buy rice and other Philippine products.
At the height of the Spanish rule, when businesses were fostered and developed to meet the principal demands of the colonizer Spain and other European consumers for tobacco, sugar, and abaca, traces of modern Philippine agriculture became most prominent to the outside world.
This vignette of the Murillo Velarde 1734 Map exhibits the 17th century rural settings in the Philippines.