Approximately 9000 people with 8 dialects (sub-groups).
* They live in small groups with mobile camps.
Dispersed camps of 3 to 7 families (all related), i.e. 12 to 30 people (average = 25). High mobility, once or twice a month. Camps are set up in river valleys or on the seashore.
The territory of a group covers a valley and its slopes, i.e. the valley and the surrounding forested mountains
The proportion of hunting, fishing, gathering and agricultural activities varies with the different sub-groups.
* Hunting (bow or assagai) is less and less important : 50%
of labour time in the 1960s, and less than 10% nowadays.
* River fishing and collecting marine or fresh water shellfish. Some groups
do very little of this and only on a seasonal basis, whereas others devote over
a quarter of their labour time to it.
* Gathering is an important activity and represents
over 25% of labour time each day.
Foodstuffs (fruits, tubers, nuts and honey) are picked and gathered, but they also actively collect products for trading purposes, a main source of cash and nowadays the main economic activity.
* Agriculture is always a marginal part of their economy, plots
being very small (1/7 to 1/4 ha). The number of families involved in this
activity varies from area to area, ranging from 25 to 95%.
* Their diet relies heavily on exchanges with neighbouring farmers :
the latter provide 90% of the starches (mainly rice, then maize), the staple
food. But all their protein come from hunting and fishing.
However, the population of fish, wild pigs and deer, are being decimated and are on the verge of extinction in some areas. Poison, insecticide, electricity and nets are used for river fishing by migrants (farmers, small scale traders selling fish, foresters, soldiers, etc). At the same time, game is disappearing both because of the degradation of its forest environment and because of too much hunting (especially for commercial purposes).
* Relationships with farming populations : the Agta exchange about
half the game they kill ; they work as labourers in the fields in order to
obtain rice, maize and tobacco -very important for them- and cash.
Present occupations : they sell rattan, orchids, medicinal plants, firewood, wooden posts (construction material), shellfish. More and more often they are employed as labourers, as guides by forestry companies or as night watchmen (guarding lorries and machinery for companies).
* The farmers are increasingly encroaching on the areas the Agta cover on
trecks and their strategy is to maintain the latter in a subordinate position,
similar to serfdom (through a debt relationship) by obstructing agricultural
activity (by confiscating the land or even simply stealing and destroying Agta
crops).
* There is an increasing degradation of the environment (forest and river)
linked to higher population pressure due to the influx of poor migrants from
other areas.
* Awful sanitary conditions and very poor health
High mortality rates and decreasing population due to tuberculosis, pneumonia and malnutrition.
Also, the Agta are caught between the government armed forces and the communist rebels and many are actually killed by bullets.
Thus 21% of Agta male adults were shot dead between 1977 and 1984.
The Agta, as are the other Negritos of the Philippines, are at the bottom of the Philippine socio-economic scale and are not in the least bit protected by law. And as the years go by, access to their traditional staple foods, mainly fish, is deteriorating.
[35] GRIFFIN, HEADLAND, RAI, 1990