The Agroecological Transition

In recent years many geographers have linked the transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture with substantial environmental degradation (see Grossman 1981; Richards 1983; Blaikie

1985). Some have further argued that commercial farming inevitably brings a dangerous agroecological simplification, as intricate, historically rooted techniques suited to local habitats are replaced by an imported monocropping package based on massive chemical subsidies (Grossman 1981). For the Buguias people, this view represents a half-truth. Vegetable culture here is unarguably dependent on dangerous biocides and fertilizers, and it has brought severe environmental degradation. This will be analyzed in some depth below, but at this point it is helpful to recognize that it also evinces a remarkably complex environmental fit that has evolved through the detailed knowledge and ready experimentation of the farmers themselves. As deplorable as their continual spraying of poisons might be, one must applaud the Buguias farmers for their adaptation of a technically complex temperate-vegetable agriculture to the many microhabitats of their homeland.

The socioeconomic dislocations that often accompany the spread of cash-cropping into new territories may be profound enough to generate not only "subsistence malaise" (Grossman 1981:232), but, in some instances, mass starvation as well (amply illustrated for northern Nigeria by Watts [1983]). But as Watts also recognizes (1983:267), during times of "buoyant commodity prices" the living standards of even the poorest producers can substantially improve. This occurred in Benguet's vegetable districts from 1946 to 1972. Indeed, one might argue that commoditization helped prevent famine, for in the two decades after the war, only the less commercialized areas of the Cordillera experienced severe food shortages.^[4] Varied environmental agents, including drought, rat invasions, and typhoons, caused these famines, although certainly governmental neglect must also take blame. In Buguias, however, a diverse, year-round commercial agriculture proved remarkably able to withstand such ravages; neither destitution nor even particularly lean times struck the market gardeners during these years. This is not to imply that cash-cropping represents a superior agricultural adaptation; the point is simply to recognize that, in these years , commercial agriculture proved instrumental to, rather than destructive of, a kind of environmental buffering. The problem is that this "safeguard" proved susceptible to secular market trends just as it brought about long-term environmental degradation. In the long run, severe new problems would appear.