Shifting cultivation in the Philippines is widely referred to as 'kaingin', but as this paper reported, different communities attached different meanings to the term. The most common local definition was slash-and-burn with no return to forest, and farmers in all areas attributed deforestation to kaingin rather than to commercial logging. Farmers had responded to deforestation by planting or regenerating trees on their lands. The areas with the most secure land tenure had the highest diversity of tree species on farms.