Recession and Revival
By the early 1950s, the cabbage boom in central Buguias had fizzled. Lack of quality seeds undercut Buguias growers, who were evidently outbid by more prosperous farmers along the Mountain Trail. A more serious problem was oversupply. As new land was cleared along the Mountain Trail, the cabbage harvest expanded apace. The Buguias gardeners could not easily compete with their ridge-top rivals, who enjoyed inexpensive transport and a cool climate better suited to cabbage. But as prices dropped, even the most favored areas suffered, and not a few Benguet farmers began to revert to subsistence crops. By the early 1950s, the market often glutted (Baguio Midland Courier May 10, 1953), and the nascent vegetable industry fell into its first recession.
Crisis was staved off in part by new crops. Unlike cabbage, other vegetables, heretofore largely limited to the Baguio region, remained fitfully profitable. Carrots especially attracted Buguias farmers, as they thrived in the moderate climate and rich soils of the Agno Valley. A sack of carrots, however, did make a heavy burden to carry up to the Mountain Trail roadhead. Lighter crops, including peas, beans, and bell peppers, were thus also attractive. Along the Mountain Trail, potatoes came to rival cabbage as the mainstay, but the market for this crop also began to reach saturation.
The real break for Buguias truck gardening came in 1958, when a branch road was pushed down the Agno Valley as far as the center
of the village. Now growers could truck their produce a mere 15 kilometers to Abatan and the Mountain Trail. As transport costs diminished, carrots emerged as Buguias's prime crop. Other vegetables also proliferated, as the Agno Valley began to reap the benefits of its equable climate. By the early 1960s, the economy of Buguias rested squarely on some half-dozen temperate and subtropical vegetables.
Agricultural inputs boosted the renewed vegetable expansion of the late 1950s. Growers could now increasingly afford chemical fertilizers, and the use of lowland chicken manure spread. Although some gardeners had used DDT as early as the late 1940s, the late 1950s marked the widespread adoption of the backpack sprayer and the introduction of various special-purpose insecticides. Insecticides helped growers as much by saving labor (from the arduous task of insect plucking) as by allowing higher yields. High-quality fungicides, introduced in the same period, probably had an even greater impact, since wet-season humidity fostered vigorous fungal growth. Growers had earlier applied a copper-sulfate powder mixed with hydrated lime, but this attacked human skin as effectively as it killed fungus. With the safer new products, potatoes could be competitively grown in the Agno Valley, and the tuber crop increased approximately tenfold.