These amazing structures are located at 1500 meters altitude and cover 10,360 square kilometers of mountainside. The ancestors of Ifugao people used an unique and efficient irrigation system which is bringing water from the rain forests above the terraces to fed the “suspended lands”.

In an attempt to conserve this unique mankind wonder, UNESCO subscribed the Banaue Rice Terraces in 2001 to the List of World Heritage in Danger due to the blending of the socio-cultural, economic, religious, and political environment as a living cultural landscape.

The Ifugao people practice traditional farming spending most of their labor at their terraces and forest lands while occasionally tending to root crop cultivation. The Ifugaos have also been known to culture edible shells, fruit trees, and other vegetables which has been exhibited among Ifugaos for generations. The building of the rice terraces, work of blanketing walls with stones and earth which is designed to draw water from a main irrigation canal above the terrace clusters. Indigenous rice terracing technologies have been identified with the Ifugao’s rice terraces such as their knowledge of water irrigation, stonework, earthwork and terrace maintenance. As their source of life and art, the rice terraces have sustained and shaped the lives of the community members.