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.