6
The Establishment of Commercial Vegetable Agriculture
Introduction
The Buguias economy transformed rapidly in the immediate postwar years. Just as the old way of life perished in the war, a new livelihood developed in commercial vegetable production. Although a few individuals sought to recreate the antebellum practices, an inherent ecological contradiction between the old and the new regimes steadily pushed the Buguias people further into market gardening. Since free-ranging cattle would quickly ruin vegetable plots, pastoralism steadily diminished. At the same time, sweet potatoes and rice were removed from the prime fertile sites, to be replaced by carrots and cabbages. By the late 1950s, virtually all Buguias residents had become market gardeners.
The transition to vegetable farming was ongoing. It demanded continual adjustments, as the changing market called for new crop mixes and as the diffusion of innovations allowed new growing techniques. The early years saw the most rapid change, and although minor improvements would continue to appear, the basic cropping system—one fine-tuned to produce a variety of vegetables in a diversity of microhabitats—was firmly in place by the end of the 1960s.
The new economy called for a new attitude toward agriculture. Previously, the Buguias people had based their planting decisions on field characteristics and family needs, guided by historically rooted agronomic precepts. They acted rationally, but not strategically; subsistence was readily attained, and households did not compete in agricultural production. But in vegetable farming, individual cultivators were forced to adopt explicit farming strategies;[1] henceforth, the market ensured that each household would succeed or fail on the basis of its decisions each cropping session. The
all-important ledger balance came to depend on which crops were chosen, when and where they were planted, how much skill and attention went into their care, and last, but by no means least, on the vicissitudes of the market at harvest time. Market fluctuations, although beyond control, were not entirely unpredictable, and herein lay the primary terrain for strategy. Vegetable farming came to be seen as a deadly serious game, involving an elusive interplay of skill, fortitude, and luck.
As pastoralism was displaced by vegetable growing, the animal trade vanished and Buguias lost its prime economic position as a local trade hub. The previously integrated local economy was now turned inside out by the extractive power of the global exchange system. With the entire region now funneling its produce to the national capital, Buguias, poorly served by the developing dendritic (or branching) road system, was reduced to an economic backwater.
Postwar Adjustments
The Aftermath of War
In 1946, the people of Buguias faced the monumental task of rebuilding their economy and society. Simply to reclaim their old fields required much labor and capital. But labor was short, and the old cash-generating system no longer functioned. And even those retaining money simply could not find livestock to purchase and thus could not rebuild their herds. Not only Buguias, but the entire southern Cordillera—and indeed much of the country—lay devastated. Rebuilding the trade circuits that formerly supported the economy would have been a project of many years.
Ultimately, the Buguias people would have been able to resurrect their old economy only if both the cloud-forest communities and Suyoc had also been able to restore their prewar routines. But both were demolished. The cloud-forest villages of Tinoc and Tucucan lay at the center of Yamashita's last redoubt, and according to census figures the population of the encompassing municipality fell from 12,873 persons in 1939 to 3,540 in 1948 (Republic of the Philippines 1960a , v. 1, pt. ii:35). The Suyoc people survived in larger numbers, but their economy was ruined; although they
could reclaim their diggings, they could not counteract the relative decline in the value of gold.[2] The residents of Suyoc continued sedulously to mine their lodes, but no longer would their bullion make them the baknangs of northern Benguet, nor would it underwrite trade fortunes for the Buguias merchants.
The Rise of a New Economic System
Although the restoration of the prewar economy was impossible, new opportunities emerged. Vegetables had provided only supplementary income in prewar days; now demand was suddenly voracious and supply short. Prices rose accordingly. In 1947, a kilo of cabbage could fetch as much as so pesos ($5 U.S.) on the Manila market (Hamada 1960), an astonishing price even by 1980s standards. Throughout much of Benguet, individuals with access to transport and seeds, and familiar with vegetable culture, responded quickly.
The people of Buguias were soon converting their rice terraces and dry fields to cabbage gardens. Before the war, terraces had occasionally produced vegetables in the off-season, but now a few farmers devoted them to cabbage year-round. The dry-season vegetable crop (replacing rice) brought particularly high prices since there was little competition at this time, growers along the Mountain Trail seldom being able to irrigate. Although vegetables remained for a few years a cash-producing sideline for most, a few gambled everything on the market. A boom was on, and vegetable sales brought in the capital needed to rebuild a vigorous new economy. As money became available for rebuilding terraces and extending the agricultural infrastructure, the labor shortage became more acute, and wages pushed higher than ever.
The forces behind the postwar cabbage boom remain elusive. The traditional supply zone near Baguio was once again furnishing vegetables, as were a number of new locales. Official statistics nevertheless indicate a slightly smaller production of cabbage in 1948 than in 1938, while the potato yield is shown to have tripled in the same decade (Goodstein 1962:129)—yet the immediate postwar boom in Benguet was in cabbage much more than in potatoes.
One possible explanation for the decline in the national cabbage harvest just as Benguet's yield expanded lies in a shift toward high-
land production. As late as 1948, according to official figures, less than half of the total cabbage acreage in the Philippines lay in the Cordillera (Republic of the Philippines 1954, v. 3, pt. ii:2944). But the mountains, blessed with far superior climatic conditions for cabbage growing, soon supplied the bulk of the national harvest. Such an account, however, must remain speculative, given the paucity and unreliability of official records; most census reports simply fail to differentiate among vegetables, and few tables designate province of origin.
On the side of demand, the American military presence was crucial. Before Japan's surrender, the U.S. Army had planned to use the Philippines as a staging ground for the assault on the home islands. In preparation, a large military force was retained in the archipelago, and in requisitioning the necessary supplies to sustain the troops, the U.S. set the Philippines awash in currency, perpetuating for a time the hyperinflation initiated during the last year of the war (D. Bernstein 1947:218). Cabbage, as one of the few available vegetables familiar to the American soldiers, was no doubt in great demand.
Through the 1950s and 1960s the demand for temperate vegetables steadily expanded with production growing apace. By 1959, the land area devoted to cabbage had increased almost sevenfold over the 1948 figure, with almost all of the new acreage being in Benguet. Official potato acreage increased at a similar rate, growing from 548 hectares in 1948 to 2,500 in 1963, and to 3,600 by 1972.[3] Davis (1973:50) ties the long-term increase in temperate-vegetable consumption to rapid urban growth and accompanying dietary changes, a convincing thesis.
The Mountain Trail Vegetable Hearth
The cabbage boom that transformed the economy of Buguias had little impact at first on neighboring Agno Valley communities. Along the Mountain Trail, however, the effect was massive. This cool ridge-top zone, well suited to cabbage, also boasted a road that, although narrow, unpaved, and dangerous, was passable to vehicles. The resulting advantages of climate and transport attracted thousands of settlers to the ridge. Where only a handful of families had lived before the war, a string of fast-growing market towns soon sprouted.
Among the new settlements was Natubleng, a new village sitting on a plateau only a few miles from Buguias. A handful of Buguias families had relocated here in the 1930s, but in the war's immediate aftermath many more moved up to clear small gardens in the scrubby oak. But no highlanders had the capital necessary to establish sizable farms. This would fall to another immigrant group: the Chinese of Baguio City.
Chinese and Japanese farmers had long grown vegetables in the Baguio-Trinidad area, and when the Japanese were forceably repatriated after the war, the Chinese gained financial control of the industry (Davis 1973:51). As large-scale Chinese growers prospered, they looked to expand their operations along the Mountain Trail, seeking relatively flat plateaus plentifully supplied with water. Among the best were Sayangan/Paoay in Atok municipality (formerly known as Haight's Place) and Natubleng. Backed by a shadowy financial network extending from Baguio to Manila, and relying on the wage labor of local villagers, these Chinese planters cleared gardens of 10, 20, and even 30 hectares.
Of the four or five Chinese farmers clearing land in Natubleng, one named Singa is particularly remembered in Buguias. Singa tilled his large farm with local labor bound by a variety of arrangements. During the peak season, as many as 115 persons worked for wages, on a daily or monthly basis. Those workers whom Singa came to trust were eventually set up as sharecroppers on subsidiary plots.
Laborers came to Singa's farm from throughout the entire upper Agno Valley, but especially from the smaller villages south and east of Buguias. People from these areas seldom had the wherewithal to purchase seeds, and they yet lacked knowledge of vegetable culture. But working for Singa they quickly learned the new techniques, and most were able to save the small sum needed to begin gardening on their own. Many returned home, seeds in hand, after a single cropping season. In their home villages they planted cabbage in small plots, sufficient to furnish the pittance of cash they needed. Thus the late 1940s saw the vegetable-growing frontier rapidly extend to many peripheral villages of the former Buguias economic sphere.
The Chinese may have dominated the early vegetable industry, but they by no means wholly displaced the independent cultivators along the Mountain Trail. Throughout the 1950s, highlanders
with a minimum of financial backing continued to migrate to the ridge-top zone to clear and claim new lands. Most cultivated gardens of under 1 hectare, but a few grew wealthy enough to finance larger operations requiring day laborers.
While a few growers still burned brush for soil nutrients, most had turned by the early 1950s to chemical sources. The large-scale Chinese farmers, closely connected with Baguio wholesalers, doubled as fertilizer distributors. In northern Buguias municipality, however, local baknang entrepreneurs entered the chemical business. For many of the Chinese and Igorot elite, the retail selling of agricultural supplies eventually supplanted gardening as an economic mainstay.
These early postwar years saw a major reworking of the economic map of greater Buguias. A line could now be drawn down the length of the region, separating the Mountain Trail zone, with its nucleus at Natubleng, from the Agno Valley (excluding the Lo-o Basin) and points east. The former area, essentially under Chinese financial domination, supported numerous medium and large farms. The latter area, for the time being, was characterized by small market gardens still supplementing subsistence-producing dry fields. But this was only the most general of a series of fine geographical divisions that were to emerge over the next several decades.
The Ecology of Early Vegetable Production in Buguias
New Techniques
The vegetable-growing techniques adopted by Benguet market gardeners were largely of Chinese provenance (Davis 1973:53). The gabbion , a heavy hoe foreign to the native tool kit, was now the main agricultural implement. Gardeners used this tool primarily to construct ridges, generally between and 60 to 80 centimeters wide. Once this task was completed, cabbage seedlings would be transplanted in rows of three or four plants lateral to the ridge top. Intervening furrows drained the fields in the wet season and irrigated them, where possible, in the dry. In the early years, growers watered seedlings manually, scooping moisture from the furrow and pouring it around the base of each plant.
After the year's first harvest from the dry fields, many gardeners would immediately replant, hoping to get a second crop before the rains diminished. After the second harvest they would fallow the plot. Before the next replanting, growers would dig the field again so that the furrow-and-ridge pattern would be reversed, thus incorporating any silt that had been deposited in the furrow into the cropping medium.
Vegetables in the Uma
Since few gardeners possessed terraces, most planted vegetables in their old dry fields. Since cabbage plants, unlike creeping sweet-potato vines, provided the soil little protection, erosion on sloping plots could be greatly accelerated; to counteract this, farmers began constructing narrow contour ridges. Another problem was soil fertility. Cabbage, unlike the sweet potato, languished on the exhausted soils typical of most dry fields. Farmers responded by applying ash or, if they could afford it, chemical fertilizer. Because some of the added nutrients remained in the field after the vegetable harvest, subsequent sweet-potato plantings proved quite productive. Since most Buguias residents continued in the early postwar period to grow for subsistence, many began to alternate their plantings between cabbages and sweet potatoes.
The extent of preexisting dry fields in Buguias soon proved inadequate to support both market and subsistence cultivation. By the early 1950s, gardeners began to clear new fields in pastures, using the puwal technique, and in shrub or forest land, using the swidden method. But clearing new land for permanent vegetable plots required arduous work. After burning, farmers now had to remove roots before they could create a furrow-and-ridge pattern. In the late 1950s, when carrots emerged as Buguias's main crop, this job became more difficult still, since even a small obstacle could mar the appearance of the carrot root.
Terraced Gardens
Although the Buguias people increasingly turned their rice terraces into year-round vegetable gardens, conversion was never complete. They still desired the native rice, which was yet unobtainable on the market, for beer brewing. Furthermore, even the most dedi-
cated commercial growers would occasionally return a terrace to paddy in order to rehabilitate the soil. Where vegetable culture had compacted the earth, a season of flooding would render it again friable. But rice growing was demoted to a minor pursuit and was always rushed so that the fields could be returned to the more profitable production of vegetables. Seedbed preparation, plowing, flooding, and even transplanting were now conducted in haste, leading to low average yields.
The Buguias people constructed several new terrace systems in the early postwar years, financing them through cabbage profits. Some of the new terraces served initially for both rice and vegetables, but others were made expressly for vegetable culture. By the mid-1950s, the Buguias people discovered that simpler, less sturdy structures would suffice for the new crops, substantially reducing terrace construction costs. In the former pasturelands, several individuals experimented with sod-walled terraces, an especially cheap alternative. Although these would last ten years at most, they were so inexpensive to construct that many found the investment worthwhile. Gardeners irrigated their vegetable terraces where possible, but in general even a dry terrace was preferred over a sloped field, since the latter was both more difficult to work and more vulnerable to soil erosion.
Farming and Ranching in Conflict
Several of the surviving members of the Buguias elite still hoped at war's end to recreate the pastoral economy. After a few years, cattle could again be purchased in Cervantes, and several Buguias baknangs had reaccumulated enough capital to begin rebuilding their herds. In the intervening years, however, unfenced garden plots had invaded many of the best pastures. Before long the community was embroiled in a classical struggle between agriculturalist and pastoralist. The former, anxious to avoid the considerable expense of fencing, called for a change in customary law to reflect the transformed economy, while the cattlemen advocated returning to the antebellum status quo.
Following customary precedent, the contestants argued and settled their dispute in tong tongan deliberations. Despite the high status of the leading pastoralists, the gardeners had numerical ad-
vantage and economic logic on their side. The new rules thus called for the constraining of all livestock to fenced pastures, pens, or tethers. Whichever option they chose, would-be graziers now faced considerable expense: tethered animals had to be moved to a fresh site every few hours, and lands completely dedicated to pasture would require extensive fencing.
The few men who endeavored to enclose pastures seldom managed to mark off areas larger than 10 hectares. Since few commoners fenced their lands, the Buguias cattle barons could now lend few animals. And those who did fence their pastures had difficulty mobilizing the labor necessary to maintain grazing capacity. Soon Eupatorium and other noxious weeds infested most enclosed sites. Because of fencing costs, graziers increasingly withdrew into areas naturally barricaded by slope breaks, gullies, and other obstacles. They also learned to divert water to accentuate erosion in small gullies, thus creating superior barriers. Since pastoralists often skimped when they had to fence, their animals periodically escaped, and the conflict thus continued to smolder. Cattle owners and tenders were frequently assessed for crop damages, and irate gardeners who maimed trespassing animals were sometimes levied fines as well. As such incidents mounted, gardeners clamored for stricter fence regulations.
Most Buguias men still hoped to raise cattle, but this was usually possible only if one were willing to move them about on a tether. With the new labor demands in the gardens, the average household was limited to a single animal. Responsibility for the family cow now generally passed to children and the aged. Theoretically, leashed cattle could be pastured anywhere, so long as they did not damage gardens, but conflicts erupted nevertheless. Animals often pulled loose and ruined gardens, but more problematically, households sometimes quarreled when one claimed the right to pasture its cow in an area that the other sought to convert to a vegetable plot. Ultimately, securing a tax declaration would give the prospective gardener the right to determine land use, so long as he or she actually began to cultivate the site.
The new rule especially hindered hog raising, as swine could not forage effectively if tied, and they required much tighter fences than did cattle. Henceforth, hogs were increasingly confined to small houselot pens. After the transformation of customary law,
the few traditionalists who clung to large scale swine raising were forced to relocate, for a household could not raise more than a few hogs unless the animals could forage. Such couples thus moved up to the higher zone east of Buguias proper, where many of the village's swine had ranged in the prewar days. Gardens and fences were still uncommon here in the 1950s, and mast-producing oak trees abounded nearby. Eventually, however, most free-roaming hogs even in these remote districts disappeared under pressure from the advancing vegetable frontier and from the steady progress of individual tax declarations.
Continuing Agricultural Development
Recession and Revival
By the early 1950s, the cabbage boom in central Buguias had fizzled. Lack of quality seeds undercut Buguias growers, who were evidently outbid by more prosperous farmers along the Mountain Trail. A more serious problem was oversupply. As new land was cleared along the Mountain Trail, the cabbage harvest expanded apace. The Buguias gardeners could not easily compete with their ridge-top rivals, who enjoyed inexpensive transport and a cool climate better suited to cabbage. But as prices dropped, even the most favored areas suffered, and not a few Benguet farmers began to revert to subsistence crops. By the early 1950s, the market often glutted (Baguio Midland Courier May 10, 1953), and the nascent vegetable industry fell into its first recession.
Crisis was staved off in part by new crops. Unlike cabbage, other vegetables, heretofore largely limited to the Baguio region, remained fitfully profitable. Carrots especially attracted Buguias farmers, as they thrived in the moderate climate and rich soils of the Agno Valley. A sack of carrots, however, did make a heavy burden to carry up to the Mountain Trail roadhead. Lighter crops, including peas, beans, and bell peppers, were thus also attractive. Along the Mountain Trail, potatoes came to rival cabbage as the mainstay, but the market for this crop also began to reach saturation.
The real break for Buguias truck gardening came in 1958, when a branch road was pushed down the Agno Valley as far as the center
of the village. Now growers could truck their produce a mere 15 kilometers to Abatan and the Mountain Trail. As transport costs diminished, carrots emerged as Buguias's prime crop. Other vegetables also proliferated, as the Agno Valley began to reap the benefits of its equable climate. By the early 1960s, the economy of Buguias rested squarely on some half-dozen temperate and subtropical vegetables.
Agricultural inputs boosted the renewed vegetable expansion of the late 1950s. Growers could now increasingly afford chemical fertilizers, and the use of lowland chicken manure spread. Although some gardeners had used DDT as early as the late 1940s, the late 1950s marked the widespread adoption of the backpack sprayer and the introduction of various special-purpose insecticides. Insecticides helped growers as much by saving labor (from the arduous task of insect plucking) as by allowing higher yields. High-quality fungicides, introduced in the same period, probably had an even greater impact, since wet-season humidity fostered vigorous fungal growth. Growers had earlier applied a copper-sulfate powder mixed with hydrated lime, but this attacked human skin as effectively as it killed fungus. With the safer new products, potatoes could be competitively grown in the Agno Valley, and the tuber crop increased approximately tenfold.
The Agricultural Cooperatives
A state-initiated cooperative marketing and supply scheme also stimulated the vegetable industry in the late fifties. The co-op movement received impetus not only from the state's desire to enhance local economic development but, perhaps more importantly, from its wish to rid the vegetable industry of alien—meaning Chinese-control (Baguio Midland Courier Jan. 8, 1956). Local and national leaders concurred that to stabilize the vegetable market, seen as a prerequisite for orderly development, they first had to uproot the Chinese growing and marketing organization. This "cartel" was said to practice "unfair trade . . . and cutthroat competition" (Hamada 1960). The Chinese could be displaced, they hoped, by local cooperatives united under government supervision.
In 1952, the Farmer's Cooperative Marketing Association (FACOMA) appeared in Benguet (Fry 1983:220), the first of its
kind. Branches of FACOMA soon sprouted in several municipalities; these in turn all operated under the aegis of the government's Agricultural Credit and Cooperative Financing Administration (ACCFA). The state directed the FACOMA to distribute subsidized fertilizers and biocides and to assist in produce marketing. In both areas, middlemen were to be eliminated, to the benefit of farmers and consumers alike. The Central Cooperative Exchange in Manila supplied chemicals, both domestic and imported. The Benguet FACOMA eventually purchased several large trucks for hauling vegetables to market and agricultural chemicals back to the farm areas, while the ACCFA financed several centrally located warehouses, from which vegetables could be shipped directly to Manila.
The FACOMA co-ops enjoyed modest success through the 1950s and early 1960s. Though perennially undercapitalized, they did provide credit to a few local entrepreneurs, nourishing a locally run agribusiness infrastructure. But early hopes that the co-ops would wrest financial control from the Chinese were soon dashed (Baguio Midland Courier May 5, 1963; Hamada 1960). The Chinese merchants had created a sophisticated and perennially solvent organization; where the co-ops usually worked on consignment, they could generally offer cash to the currency-strapped farmers (Fry 1983:220; Baguio Midland Courier May 10, 1953). They also enjoyed immediate knowledge of marketing conditions in Manila, thanks to extensive radio connections with local operatives there.
Faced with the failure of the cooperative effort to oust the Chinese, the Igorot gardeners resorted to political action. As early as 1955, FACOMA leaders trekked to Manila to protest the presence of "alien" farmers and dealers along the Mountain Trail (Baguio Midland Courier Dec. 4, 1955). As the political pressure intensified, then-president Ramon Magsaysay opted for direct action: in 1956, he signed into law Executive Order 180, commanding the summary expulsion of all Chinese farmers from the Mountain Trail vegetable district (Fry 1983:220).
Magsaysay's antialien policies were part of a larger program designed to aid small farmers throughout the Philippines, to ensure the ecological sustainability of highland agriculture, and to solidify state authority in rural areas. Government officials fretted over the unconstrained vegetable industry; gardens were increasingly being cleared in Mount Data National Park, erosion was accelerat-
ing, and watersheds were being denuded. By official criteria, some 94 percent of all Benguet vegetable farms were illegally occupied (Baguio Midland Courier Jan. 8, 1956). Magsaysay viewed the Chinese evictions as a necessary precondition before land titles could be awarded to the indigenous gardeners, most of whom were at the time considered squatters in their own homeland. Legal land ownership, it was thought, would encourage ecologically sound agriculture just as it would promote local economic development.
Magsaysay's death in 1958 cut short these ambitious plans. Much to the disappointment of Benguet leaders, the Chinese remained, although some would be expelled some ten years later. The cooperatives persisted for some years, but as government support diminished, most slowly withered; others, however, fell quickly owing to local corruption (Fry 1983:221).
Crops and Field Types
By the 1960s, Buguias possessed a stable and intricate system of market gardening. Diversity marked both the crop assemblage and the techniques employed; growers could now choose different crops for each microhabitat. Complex cropping schedules allowed farmers to exploit environmental variation efficiently, just as it gave Buguias an advantage over other Benguet vegetable districts where crop ensembles and growing strategies were more limited. This helped offset Buguias's higher costs of transport and labor. Since the basic system developed at this time persists to the time of writing (although with some important changes noted in later chapters), the following discussion has been worded in the present tense.
Seasonal Patterns
The oscillation of wet and dry seasons shapes the basic form of Buguias agriculture. The first rains usually arrive in late April. Plantings on dry fields, especially those with clay-rich soil, can now begin, although cautious farmers wait for the more reliable rains that come in middle to late May. By July, the soil is saturated; most mornings begin with sunshine, but afternoons are usually drenching. July may also see the first typhoon. Through the wettest months good drainage is vital, especially for root crops. Fungal
growths also plague most crops in this season; although these can be counteracted with fungicides, farmers avoid growing susceptible crops in damp and shady areas. Wind may also destroy certain crops in the typhoon season, although topography creates limited areas of partial protection.
The rains usually diminish in October, but typhoons can strike in November and lingering showers sometimes persist through December. This late rainy season is in many respects the ideal cropping period. Although soils are still moist enough for sowing, they are seldom too wet, and they dry gradually as the plants mature. In unirrigated fields with heavy soil, residual moisture allows cropping to continue into the early weeks of the true dry season. By February, however, all dry fields have been harvested and left fallow until the spring rains. Irrigated crops, on the other hand, thrive during the arid months. With sunshine plentiful and humidity low, fungus is minimized, and the warm weather of March and April favors even such subtropical crops as bell peppers.
Soils and Topography
Buguias has diverse soils. Before the war, dry fields had been limited to clay areas, which alone would support year-round cultivation. But the postwar transition gave all soils agricultural utility. Indeed, light soils are now often preferred during the typhoon season, since they drain readily and are always friable. Heavy soils are now disparaged as difficult to cultivate, and, since they easily waterlog, they may be left unplanted in the rainy season. Chemical fertilizers and imported chicken manure obviate concern for soil fertility, and even sterile subsoil horizons exposed by mass wasting—or on purpose—can be profitably farmed. Indeed, the very diversity of soils has allowed the Buguias growers to develop complex and flexible cropping strategies.
The main soil types of Buguias, by local classification, are as follows:
Loboy: A heavy loam found in flat areas; favored for umas. Often rich in organics.
Komog: Weathered dioritic rock; an infertile and light subsoil.
Lagan: "Mountain sand"; sterile, very light.
Tapo: Alluvial silt; very fertile, of medium weight and water retention qualities. Good for umas but previously little used because of potential flooding.
Oplit: Clay soil; good for umas, but very hard to work. Good nutrient and water-holding capacity. Usually found in flat areas and depressions.
Liang: "Red clay" subsoil. Avoided in the past; very low fertility.
(Most soils are of hybrid form. The best uma soils, for instance, are those with a high clay component, but not necessarily pure oplit. Many farmers favored an oplit-loboy mixture for their uma fields.)
Having adopted a diverse vegetable agriculture, the growers of Buguias have to consider more than just fertility, moisture retention, and drainage when selecting a cropping medium. Subsoils (komog, liang ) are now valued because one can easily build a quasi terrace simply by removing the overburden and exposing the lower-soil horizons until a flat space emerges. Given its light, friable texture, one can harvest a good crop on a komog bench even during the wettest months. And liang, always avoided in the past, is now valued for the ruddy appearance it imparts to carrots and potatoes.
Truck farming also allowed the cultivation of topographic zones previously considered nonarable. Steep slopes are now favored for wet-season root crops, and shady northern exposures are valued for lettuce in the dry season. Even the alluvial deposits along the small streams of eastern Buguias can now be farmed, yielding especially large harvests if check-dams are constructed to trap additional sediment. But this is a risky strategy, since a single typhoon can destroy an entire field. But with the change to vegetable farming, Buguias residents became professional risk-takers; their agricultural endeavor, as they perceive it, is now one of continual gambling.
Vegetables
By the mid-1960s, carrots occupied the prime position among Buguias vegetables. They can be grown throughout the year and in all soils. During the dry season they are grown on irrigated ter-
races, and in the rainy months on inclined fields. The former crop yields larger harvests, but the latter often brings higher profits because of the season's hazardous growing conditions.
Carrots are relatively pest-free, although leaf spot demands continual spraying. Labor demands remain high through the first month, as the carrot seeds germinate with difficulty and the seedlings are delicate. Several days of dry weather can destroy a neglected field of young plants. Continual and meticulous weeding must persist through the first month. But once carrots are well established they survive many disasters, especially typhoons, comparatively well. In light soils, carrots produce long, straight roots, while in heavy soils they yield squat, bulky roots. In general, fertile soils produce larger carrots, but here they must be harvested as soon as they mature, regardless of market conditions. In poorer, lighter soils, by contrast, the roots can remain in the ground (except at the height of the rainy season) for weeks or even months without losing texture or flavor.
Buguias gardeners continue to grow cabbage, although to a much lesser extent than they did in earlier years. Cabbage grows better at higher elevations, but it is valued in Buguias for its low labor requirements and relative price stability. By the 1960s cabbage had become primarily a wet-season crop; if grown in the dry months it must be sprayed incessantly to minimize insect damage. Leaf mold, a perennial wet-season curse, is controllable with fungicides, but excessive rain can simply rot the heads, especially those of the Chinese cabbage. But some farmers still prefer Chinese over European cabbage because it matures more rapidly. And a more delicate Chinese crucifer, the flowering pechay , may be harvested after only five or six weeks, attracting a few growers who want an especially fast turnover.
Some growers favor potatoes for their low labor requirements and long-term storage potential. In Buguias, potatoes are cultivated in all but the rainiest months (July through September), when leaf mold and strong winds can be devastating. Gardeners avoid heavy soils throughout the wet months. Potatoes are occasionally infected with leaf wilt, which is not treatable (although crop rotation can reduce losses). Potatoes yield most heavily on newly cleared fields, especially those in the higher elevations of
eastern Buguias. Buguias farmers often devote irrigated terraces to potatoes in the dry season, when many other Benguet vegetable districts lack sufficient water to produce a crop.
The edible-pod snow pea, like the carrot, is grown year-round. During the typhoon period, the slender cane trellises that support the vines are vulnerable to wind damage, so growers generally plant peas in this season in protected microhabitats. Peas are also favored in gardens far from any road, since they bring high prices per unit weight.
Snap beans flourish in the wet season, especially on sloped fields. At this time, insect pests are few, yet temperatures are high enough for good growth. Although fungus does attack, it is easily controlled. Bean plants, twining up cane poles, also suffer wind damage, but not to the same extent as the softer and more ramified peas.
Peppers, both "bell" and the "Chinese yellow," also thrive during the wet season. Gardeners sow them in seedbeds in March, the time of maximum sunshine and warmth. Transplanted as the southwest monsoon arrives, the plants fruit in the wettest months. Farmers could grow peppers for harvest during the dry season, but they would then compete with the lowland pepper crop, favored by easy access to the Manila market.
Buguias farmers also grow celery in the wet season. This most demanding of crops thrives only on highly fertile soils. Slope is also critical, for celery requires good drainage but abundant moisture at all times. Gardeners avoid shady areas that would foster fungal growth. Still, celery easily fails, and even if it flourishes, a poor market can render it virtually worthless.
Lettuce can be grown throughout the year, but in the dry season it requires careful water monitoring and in the wettest months it often rots; four days of continuous light rain can destroy a crop. Some growers favor lettuce for its fast growth (two months or less) and for the high prices it sometimes brings. But lettuce is an inflexible crop; when mature it must be harvested and shipped without delay.
The above discussion outlines a few of the considerations that Buguias farmers juggle when deciding what to plant. But it does not exhaust them. All growers, for example, rotate different crops
through their fields to minimize nematode infestations. Periodic flooding of terraced fields brings some relief, but for most farmers, field rotation is the only prophylactic.
The Survival of Subsistence Cropping
Buguias farmers continued to grow subsistence crops even after becoming full-fledged market gardeners. Some occasionally plant their vegetable plots to sweet potatoes, and many grow a few tubers along field margins. A few wealthier farmers continue to plant rice, and nearly every household keeps a cow, a hog or two, and several chickens. The door-yard garden, as before, supplies various foodstuffs to established families. Coffee growing persists as well, but only for home consumption. Moreover, a new source of "subsistence" has emerged in the market crops themselves. A typical Buguias meal now consists of lowland rice, an occasional bit of dried fish or tinned meat, and a "viand" of boiled vegetables from the garden's seconds.
But unlike many other peoples who have recently been integrated into the world economy (see, for example, Grossman 1984: 6), the Buguias people have not maintained a level of subsistence cultivation that either substantially subsidizes their cash-cropping endeavors or that could act as a fallback in the event of market collapse. Home-grown crops now provide little more than supplements; since the late 1950s, local agriculture has been incapable of providing the staples the community requires. Nor could the earlier ways be easily revived. Population has greatly expanded, necessary skills have vanished, the old agricultural infrastructure has disappeared, and the prewar trade network—previously vital for "subsistence"—is beyond resurrection. If the Buguias people were forced, by market conditions, to subsist directly from their own territory, their impoverishment would be drastic. No one in Buguias even contemplates abandoning commercial farming.
The Agroecological Transition
In recent years many geographers have linked the transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture with substantial environmental degradation (see Grossman 1981; Richards 1983; Blaikie
1985). Some have further argued that commercial farming inevitably brings a dangerous agroecological simplification, as intricate, historically rooted techniques suited to local habitats are replaced by an imported monocropping package based on massive chemical subsidies (Grossman 1981). For the Buguias people, this view represents a half-truth. Vegetable culture here is unarguably dependent on dangerous biocides and fertilizers, and it has brought severe environmental degradation. This will be analyzed in some depth below, but at this point it is helpful to recognize that it also evinces a remarkably complex environmental fit that has evolved through the detailed knowledge and ready experimentation of the farmers themselves. As deplorable as their continual spraying of poisons might be, one must applaud the Buguias farmers for their adaptation of a technically complex temperate-vegetable agriculture to the many microhabitats of their homeland.
The socioeconomic dislocations that often accompany the spread of cash-cropping into new territories may be profound enough to generate not only "subsistence malaise" (Grossman 1981:232), but, in some instances, mass starvation as well (amply illustrated for northern Nigeria by Watts [1983]). But as Watts also recognizes (1983:267), during times of "buoyant commodity prices" the living standards of even the poorest producers can substantially improve. This occurred in Benguet's vegetable districts from 1946 to 1972. Indeed, one might argue that commoditization helped prevent famine, for in the two decades after the war, only the less commercialized areas of the Cordillera experienced severe food shortages.[4] Varied environmental agents, including drought, rat invasions, and typhoons, caused these famines, although certainly governmental neglect must also take blame. In Buguias, however, a diverse, year-round commercial agriculture proved remarkably able to withstand such ravages; neither destitution nor even particularly lean times struck the market gardeners during these years. This is not to imply that cash-cropping represents a superior agricultural adaptation; the point is simply to recognize that, in these years , commercial agriculture proved instrumental to, rather than destructive of, a kind of environmental buffering. The problem is that this "safeguard" proved susceptible to secular market trends just as it brought about long-term environmental degradation. In the long run, severe new problems would appear.
Strategies in Vegetable Farming
Buguias farmers must weigh many factors in choosing among cropping options. They base their choices on an intimate knowledge of field and crops characteristics as well as on their access to labor. But they also attempt to anticipate market conditions. Vegetable prices fluctuate predictably through the seasons, but erratically week by week. To some extent, market seasonality cancels environmental seasonality; when the production of a particular vegetable is difficult or perilous, its market value will usually be correspondingly high. Regional diversity adds another layer of complexity. In the dry season, for example, when cabbage can hardly be grown in Buguias, it does very well in irrigated Mountain Trail gardens.
Ultimately, the cropping strategies selected vary with the personalities and life histories of individual farmers. Some opt for conservative plans promising reasonable returns regardless of market conditions or environmental perturbations, although even the most cautious farmer cannot always avoid unprofitable crops. Other gardeners deliberately choose risk, gambling on the chance of a windfall. Precarious strategies include planting a crop during its season of maximum hazards, or sowing a dry field at the first rain, in hope that more will soon follow.
Crop Variability
The riskiest crops, lettuce and celery, are marked by pronounced price swings. This volatility reflects meteorological sensitivity, since neither crop will endure weather extremes. But the rapidity of price fluctuations, often severalfold in less than one week, baffles scholars and farmers alike. Conventional explanations cite the unfathomable machinations of the Chinese "cartels," but this is mostly conjecture.
Not uncommonly, a Buguias farmer confronted with miserable prices will allow a lettuce or celery crop to rot in the field, since harvest and shipping costs would not be recoverable. The perishability of both vegetables adds further risks; even a transport delay, common during the landslide-prone wet season, may doom a mature crop. For precisely this reason, however, a truckload of lettuce
or celery brought in when the price curve peaks can bring its owner the elusive "jackpot" harvest.
A risk-averse farmer does well to choose cabbage or potatoes. These are, without rivals, the leading crops of Benguet, and their large area of supply combines with steady demand to dampen price swings. Furthermore, both crops may be stored for sale when prices rise. Cabbage remains reasonably fresh if held in a high-elevation storehouse for up to one week, whereas potatoes can last several months. Nevertheless, neither crop shows a flat price curve. Severe weather can bring on rapid changes of fortune, and a series of typhoons can block transportation, allowing those farmers retaining road access to reap extraordinary profits. Either crop, however, can be overplanted in any given season, depressing prices and leaving most growers with little if any profit.
Other vegetables generally yield reasonable returns, although all are subject to periodic gluts and shortages. Carrot prices fluctuate erratically only in certain years. In 1986, however, carrots climbed from 1.5 pesos a kilo to 7 pesos a kilo then promptly fell back to 3 pesos a kilo, all in the span of a little more than one month. At the start of this sequence farmers shipping carrots lost money, in the middle they profited greatly, and at the end they broke even. This oscillation especially perplexed local market experts, since it occurred during the dry season, a period of general price stability.
Environmental (Mis)fortune
The wild card in the gardener's deck is the typhoon. A tropical depression can destroy crops in a geographically unpredictable pattern just as it can block the market access of specific regions by triggering landslides. A storm can benefit Buguias farmers if it wreaks greater damage in competing districts than it does at home. Similarly, a landslide can be a boon or a calamity, depending on its precise location. A massive break on the Mountain Trail between Trinidad and Kilometer 73 can devastate Buguias, preventing transport for as long as one month. (Small trucks might still reach market by traveling south on the Agno Valley Road through Kabayan, but slides frequently block this road south of Buguias in the rainy season: see map 8, p. 187.) A slide on the Agno Valley Road north
of Buguias is distressing, but farmers can still return to their old ways and carry produce to the Mountain Trail at Kilometer 73. A disruption of the Mountain Trail north of Kilometer 73 can actually benefit Buguias by blocking the market access of Lo-o, Mount Data, and other northern produce districts. And even what may appear to be the worst imaginable calamity can have positive attributes. Two fierce typhoons in 1989, for example, demolished the transport infrastructure throughout Benguet, but when lettuce hit 70 pesos a kilo and carrots topped 40, Buguias farmers chartered a helicopter to fly their produce to Baguio, profiting handsomely in the process.
The dry season is thus the time of relative quiescence, whereas the typhoon months are marked by unrelieved suspense. Although everyone endeavors to cultivate year-round, until the late 1970's, arid-season cropping was constrained by a lack of irrigation facilities. Accordingly, during these years the wet months formed the main cropping period. But the Buguias farmers have never shied away from the risks so entailed. Indeed, many have welcomed them, pinning their hopes not so much on steady income as on a jackpot. Their belief that the flow of luck is largely controllable promotes this attitude; the new economic realities only affirm traditional ideology on this score.
Insurance Strategies
Buguias farmers employ several tactics in anticipating the vagaries of price. Some simply observe what crops others are planting, especially in the premier vegetable districts along the Mountain Trail, and then try to avoid whatever seems currently popular. But information is always too limited to make this strategy truly effective; only a fraction of Benguet's farms are visible from the road between Buguias and Baguio. Buguias farmers also watch the arrival of the first rains with great interest, since most Benguet gardeners depend on rainfall. If precipitation comes late, harming dry fields on the Mountain Trail, cabbage planted on Buguias's irrigated fields may be more remunerative than usual. Farmers even try to anticipate typhoons; if they foresee a large storm they will quickly harvest any relatively nonperishable crop, such as cabbage, and ship it forthwith to a storehouse in Baguio or Trinidad. If the typhoon in-
deed strikes, these prescient farmers will profit; if not, they will incur a loss, since their now-wilted cabbage will command a reduced price.
Many farmers would ideally cultivate a mix of crops in all seasons to spread their chances. But those with small gardens (0.2 hectares or less) have limited options. Wealthier growers are able to cultivate more diverse assemblages, and a few large growers living elsewhere in Buguias municipality even maintain widely separated garden plots located in different climatic zones—a strategy that provides calamity insurance without diminishing the possibility of a jackpot. Outside development experts have advised farmers to stagger their plantings even in individual fields to gain security against market drops (FAO 1984:22), but this practice has not spread to Buguias. Such serial plantings complicate labor scheduling, and, more importantly, they decrease the chance of superprofits.
Cropping strategies also vary because of partial specialization. Each crop requires specific techniques that are unevenly known by different farmers. Some individuals devote more time than others to mastering the culture of demanding vegetables such as celery. These semispecialist growers hope to gather at least above-average yields, if not extraordinary profits. Crop periodicity adds still another dimension. Young farmers especially seek to maximize their jackpot chances by squeezing in as many crops as possible. By concentrating on fast-growing vegetables and by carefully timing seedbed planting and transplanting schedules, they can harvest four or even five crops from a single irrigated plot. Such frenetic work, however, discourages most farmers.
The Spatial Reorganization of Exchange
After its economic transformation as before, Buguias depended on trade for its livelihood. But whereas the community had once formed the hub of an essentially local circuit, it was now reduced to an outlying production zone for the national market. For centuries, Buguias had been tenuously linked to the international economy through the Suyoc gold trade; now it was directly dependent on global resource flows.
As the position of Buguias and neighboring communities shifted vis-à-vis larger economic structures, the spatial patterns of the local economy reformed. This process manifested itself, in part, in the emergence of distinct agricultural regions, one of which was coterminous with the territory of Buguias Village. But for local exchange, it was the road network, connecting the vegetable districts with the Baguio and Manila markets, that emerged as the organizing framework.
The Displacement of Buguias Central
The immediate postwar years saw the rapid rise of Buguias Junction (Kilometer 73 of the Mountain Trail) as the new trade center of the greater Buguias region. Before the Agno Valley Road reached Buguias in 1958, all local vegetables had to be ported to this site. A number of Buguias residents soon moved to Kilometer 73, both to farm and to take advantage of the emerging market. As commerce began to settle in place, the tradition of peripatetic trade withered.
On market days (Thursday and Sundays), those Buguias farmers with produce to sell would begin their strenuous hikes to the Mountain Trail hours before dawn, lighting their way with pine torches. The habitués of the market at Kilometer 73 included many others as well; since few Buguias traders now ventured into the cloud forest, its residents also began to trek to this emergent entrepôt.
As its marketplace grew, Buguias Junction displaced Buguias Village as the center of the regional meat trade. The Agno Valley no longer produced many animals, nor did its traders procure meat in the eastern oak woodlands. But demand persisted, even strengthening in times of high vegetable prices. The few Buguias residents who had purchased trucks for vegetable hauling now began to import animals directly from the lowlands. But within a few years, Ilocano entrepreneurs discovered this profitable trade, and before long lowlanders all but monopolized the transport of livestock.
The Rise of the North
Buguias Junction's ascendancy proved short-lived; by the 1960s exchange had jumped to other centers. Buguias itself reclaimed a minor commercial role as it gained road access and as the cloud-
forest people began to hike to the village for their needs. But this did not last long either, since Buguias was soon far overshadowed by two new mercantile villages in the northern part of the municipality: Abatan and Bad-ayan.
Abatan, situated on the junction of the Mountain Trail, the Agno Valley Road, and the Mankayan-Cervantes Highway, had long been a natural market site. A few permanent businesses clustered around the crossroads in the prewar period, to be joined by several more following the armistice. But Abatan developed slowly. Some attribute its retarded growth to the arrogance of certain Lo-o baknangs who had established the first stores. These early merchants would reportedly intimidate any potential competitors, in some instances simply expelling them from town. Not until Northern Kankana-ey and Ilocano merchants arrived—people not so easily bullied—did Abatan flourish. The northern traders first dickered in a new periodic market, but gradually a number of them constructed permanent stores. By the early 1970s, Abatan reigned as the premier trade depot of northern Benguet and as the new de facto seat of the Buguias municipal government.
Lo-o, only a few kilometers east of Abatan, did not suffer as the latter town rose. Rather, the two communities were close enough to form something of a single trade hub, and a number of small businesses also emerged in central Lo-o. Lo-o also benefitted from its thriving agricultural high school and from the Buguias Town Fiesta, celebrated annually on the school grounds.
Bad-ayan, while never rivaling Abatan, gradually emerged as the second trade center of the Buguias region. Exchange gravitated here during the early 1950s, when Bad-ayan marked the terminus of the Agno Valley Road, and it expanded when a periodic market was established in 1957. Permanent stores were soon built by Badayan residents, and two of them evolved into fully stocked agricultural supply houses. By the 1960s, road extensions to the east gave the village a growing hinterland of its own. Now Bad-ayan was the most accessible town to the cloud forest of western Ifugao province.
Gradually a stable periodic market system developed, linking the various old and new commercial centers of northern Benguet. David Ruppert (1979) discovered in the 1970s that just over half of the market vendors in Abatan were Igorots (mainly Northern Kankana-ey), the others being largely Ilocanos and Pangasinanes. Virtually all were women. By the mid-1980s, many vendors rotated
Map 7.
The Changing Spatial Structure of Buguias Trade.
from Lo-o on Wednesdays, to Bad-ayan on Thursdays, to Abatan on Fridays and Saturdays, and finally to Mankayan on Sundays before journeying to Baguio or even Manila to purchase new supplies.
The Market in Buguias Central
When the Agno Valley Road was finally pushed south to Buguias, local trade temporarily revived. Thursdays and Sundays were des-
ignated market and produce-shipping days; vegetable traders would then drive their large trucks to the center of town, where they would be greeted by growers descending from the surrounding farmlands with their harvests. After selling their vegetables, farmers would shop in the periodic market and in the half-dozen or so permanent stores that had recently opened. But the shops of Buguias offered fewer goods at higher prices than their rivals in the northern towns, and the market was a local affair, unable to attract the professional peripatetic vendors.
When marketing innovations in the 1970s permitted farmers to ship their vegetables on any day of the week, the Buguias market withered to virtual extinction. Most farmers continued to devote Sundays and sometimes Thursdays to socializing in the center of town, but by the mid-1980s only a single used-clothing trader offered any substantial goods in the marketplace.
Connections with the Global Economy
The Benguet vegetable farmers became entangled in the world economy not primarily as producers for a global market, but rather as consumers of agricultural supplies produced in the metropolitan states. Certainly international economic ties are implicated in vegetables sales—the tourist hotels of Manila and the American military bases are large and steady produce customers—but little is exported. By contrast, most of the industry's inputs are imported. Russell (1983) has argued persuasively that the companies supplying these goods extract a substantial surplus from the vegetable growers.
The transport systems of economically subservient regions often assume a dendritic pattern, in which roads effectively channel resources from the interior to an export entrepôt without developing corresponding internal connections (see C. Smith 1976). Benguet is no exception. Here too a dendritic pattern is readily discerned in the still-developing road network. Internal transport remains tortuous, for almost all trunk and feeder routes culminate in Baguio, from which point a busy highway leads directly to Manila.
The agricultural inputs employed by the Benguet farmers fit into three major categories: fertilizers, biocides, and seeds. Each developed its own pattern of supply and distribution, in which one can trace the global geographic patterns underlying the vegetable in-
dustry. As of the later 1980s, Benguet is linked to all of the world's centers of economic strength, including several emergent ones.
Approximately 40 percent of the typical farmer's fertilizer budget goes to chicken manure. This input is domestic, produced on poultry farms in central Luzon. Tagalog merchants truck manure into the mountains, often delivering it (sometimes on their backs) to very remote locales. Chemical fertilizers are of two major kinds: ammonium sulfate, providing nitrogen, and so-called complete, a balanced plant food. Although the Philippine government has made efforts to foster a domestic fertilizer industry, most supplies are imported. At present, the largest suppliers, especially of ammonium sulfate, are Taiwan and South Korea.
Biocides (including insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides) are largely manufactured offshore by multinational corporations. As of 1986, four companies predominated, two German (Hoescht and Bayer), one Anglo-Dutch (Shell), and one American (Union Carbide). While their products are sold by local distributors, these companies maintain a strong presence in the vegetable industry, particularly through their advertisements and other competitive activities.
In the early days of vegetable growing, American companies supplied most seeds. Gradually they have been supplanted by Japanese competitors; today only lettuce seeds are routinely imported from the United States. Seed potatoes have been generally procured from western Europe, but local supplies (developed largely by a Philippine-German cooperative project on the slopes of Mount Data) are becoming increasingly available. Quality seed procurement has long been a bane of the Benguet farmer. The demand for seeds of early maturing cultivars especially is often unsatisfied (FAO 1984). Moreover, several Buguias farmers complain that they cannot grow several potentially profitable crops, such as scalloped squash, because they are simply unable to obtain seeds.
The multinational agrochemical companies dispense much selfserving information to Benguet farmers through their field agents. Indeed, these agents, rather than government extension personnel, are the main source of new technical information (Medina n.d.:2). Many, if not most, company operatives are local residents, usually graduates of the agricultural college in Trinidad. These agents organize meetings for growers when they have a new chemi-
cal to sell, selecting "demonstration farmers" who receive the product free in exchange for cultivating "test plots." The typical recipient is a successful farmer who possesses an easily visible roadside garden. Other farmers then inspect the experiment to judge whether the new input is worthwhile.
Such advertisements often prove successful for the sponsor. Farmers use substantial quantities of chemicals, although applications have decreased somewhat since the crisis of the early 1970s. Previously, many growers used biocides prophylactically and to great excess (Medina n.d.:2). But despite the recent decline, the spraying of biocides is incessant, and the environmental and medical consequences appalling.
In short, the postwar transformation both reordered Buguias's agrarian ecology and repositioned the community within the global economy. In so doing, it undermined the old bases of social hierarchy: pastoralism and Cordilleran trade. But at the same time, the new order presented abundant opportunities for the elite—both old and new—to (re)assert dominance. Here one may find both striking discontinuities between the prewar and the postwar eras and profound carryovers as well.
1. Headman of Buguias, 1901. Courtesy, Worcester Collection, University of Michigan. Themeda pasture
is visible in the background, with scattered young pines in the higher areas. On the far left, several
fence lines may be distinguished.
2. A Group of Buguias Men, Circa 1900. Courtesy, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
Intensively cultivated uma fields, stone walls, and small houselot gardens are visible in the background.
3. Puwal Cultivation, Circa 1900. (Originally titled "Igorots breaking ground with pointed
sticks, Baguio, Benguet.") Courtesy, Worcester Collection, University of Michigan.
4. Southern Cordilleran Traders, Circa 1900. (Originally titled "Igorot carriers on the trail.")
Courtesy, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. These merchants have likely just returned from the
lowlands, where they would have purchased the dogs. In Buguias, women seldom joined such expeditions.
5. Buguias Village in 1986. Only the central part of the community is visible.
6. Sloped Fields and Pine Forests near Buguias, 1986. This area, just south of the village, has experienced
rapid field expansion and forest retraction in recent years. Note the roadway in the foreground.
7. Carrot Harvest, Buguias 1986.
8. Bulldozing "Mega-Terraces," East of Buguias, 1986. The bulldozer cuts deeply into the subsoil,
a nutrient-poor but friable material that will make an adequate cropping medium once fertilizers are applied.
9. Manbunung (Pagan Priest) and Sacrificial Hog, Buguias 1985.
The blood-soaked taro slices on the animal's back symbolize cash.
10. Ritual Dancing in Buguias, 1985.
Wearing a death shroud, the dancer is performing in the stead of one of his ancestors.