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.