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6 The Establishment of Commercial Vegetable Agriculture
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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-


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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.


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6 The Establishment of Commercial Vegetable Agriculture
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