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.