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.