The Vegetable Trade

The Early Vegetable Traders

As discussed earlier, one Buguias entrepreneur, Pokol, traded vegetables before the war. Pokol died in the conflict, but after liberation several young men of moderate circumstances emulated his career. Purchasing produce both at Kilometer 73 and from small farmers along the Mountain Trail, they transported it at first on buses or in rented truck space to Baguio where they could sell it to Chinese agents.

The most successful of the early postwar vegetable traders, Hil-

ary Camas, soon hired several "commissioners," underlings who would haggle deals with individual farmers. This position served as a stepping-stone for a new set of dealers. One of them, Ernesto Simion, first transported vegetables on the tops of lumber trucks headed to Baguio from the sawmill at Mount Data. Soon, Simion was leasing trucks to haul larger loads. As his business grew his attention shifted to Trinidad, where he contracted to build housing units and warehouses for vegetables. In Buguias, Simion employed subordinates to handle the vegetable trade; several eventually graduated to the position of independent dealer.

Bisna and Stafin Olsim

One of Simion's protégés, Bisna Olsim, eventually surpassed all other vegetable traders of Buguias. Mrs. Olsim was born to a poor couple and was fatherless from an early age. In 1956 she married into a relatively well-off family, but her husband, Stafin Olsim, sojourned through the early years of their marriage as a gold miner in Mindanao. After learning the vegetable trade from Simion and others, Bisna established her own "buy and sell" business. She received some help from family members, who, by her own account, pitied her for being without a father or, temporarily, a husband. Stafin's uncle lent her a truck at favorable rates, and other relatives provided vegetables to her on consignment.

By the time her husband returned, Bisna had saved a respectable sum and had purchased, on credit, a large truck. This proved to be a timely investment; as the FACOMAs collapsed, new opportunities arose for local transporters. Between 1965 and 1970 the Olsims' ascent was meteoric. Soon they needed better market access, which they attained by purchasing property and building a house and storage facility in Trinidad. Twice a week they would now make the six- to eight-hour drive to Buguias to buy vegetables, returning to Trinidad the following day.

By the mid-1970s the Olsims began to ease out of the vegetable trade and to experiment with new lines of business. Several endeavors were not successful. For a number of years they owned and managed a bus company, but the high cost of repairs and the formidable competition from Dangwa Tranco proved discouraging. Similarly, a supply store in Buguias could not compete against the

independent traders and the large supply stores of Bad-ayan and Abatan. But the Olsims' other dealings have more than compensated for these losses. Several land investments in Trinidad proved quite remunerative, and by the 1980s a road contracting business brought excellent returns. They are now fully established as the one truly wealthy family of Buguias—an identity they cultivate despite spending most of their time in the provincial capital.

The other Buguias vegetable traders were less fortunate. Although several attained prosperity, few have approached, and none has maintained, true baknang status. Several suffered business calamities, commonly the loss of a truck or two over a Mountain Trail precipice. Another followed the Olsims in running a bus company, but two disastrous crashes in the 1980s brought financial ruin. Several found misadventure in gambling, usually in the Baguio casino.

Ritual practice has been a two-edged sword in the rise and fall of prominent Buguias families. In one story, often repeated by Buguias Christians, a certain trader's decline appears to have been accelerated by ritual; after each setback he conducted elaborate propitiatory rites, which further consumed his dwindling resources. Those who practice the traditional religion, however, counter by pointing to other instances where a family's imminent downfall was averted, they say, precisely by staging the proper ceremonies.

The Practice of Vegetable Trading

Vegetable trading in Benguet has taken on many forms, confounding generalizations. Individuals holding a small business operate differently from those with larger concerns, while those who continue to farm face different economic circumstances from those who do nothing but trade. Russell (1983:91) suggests a clear-cut taxonomy of Benguet produce traders: the full-time trader is an agent, the farmer-trader is a dealer, the trader who does not own a vehicle is a buy-and-sell, and persons who rent vehicles to traders are transporters. In Buguias, however, these distinctions are not clearly developed. Until recently, most persons working in vegetable commerce were full-time traders. Because conditions changed markedly after the crisis of the mid-1970s, when smaller vehicles became available, the following discussion focuses on the practices

of the full-time vegetable agents as they existed in the heyday of the 1960s.

To prosper in the vegetable business, a trader must keenly forecast price trends and competently manage credits and debts. The ambitious trader must also master the exacting practice of pakyao , or the advance purchase of unharvested crops. If prices are high, or if the trader anticipates a sharp rise, he or she may wish to secure a large future supply. Growers are often amenable, as they may be anxious to obtain cash as early as possible, declining to speculate on the possibility of a future price upswing. To profit on such a deal, the trader must accurately assess the future yield of a given field. And even if the prediction of the harvest volume should prove accurate, the trader could still be crushed if the market were to fall in the interim.

Other hazards can also sink the unwary trader. The vegetable business can be very competitive (despite the fact that farmers are often beholden to specific traders), and it offers thin profit margins. Furthermore, growers do not always repay their debts. Vegetable trading is a social endeavor, and successful agents must maintain good relations with employees, buyers, and sellers (see Anderson 1969). They must also maintain their vehicles against the grinding wear of the rough mountain roads. Fortitude is equally vital; when prices are high, dealers and their crews must work feverishly, often forgoing sleep for several days.

The advance purchase system, and vegetable trading in general, can generate enmity between farmers and dealers. An unscrupulous grower, for example, might resell a standing crop for which he or she has already received payment. A dealer, in contrast, may take advantage of a consignment sale by remitting to the farmer less money than promised, justifying the action through reference to a lowered price or to spoilage. Davis (1973) argues that such potential discord reinforces the tendency for dealer-farmer connections to develop along kinship lines. In Buguias, the deeply embedded genealogical and "co-villager" relationships extending throughout the community have to a great extent safeguarded against these corrupting tendencies.

Since the 1960s and early 1970s, large-scale vegetable traders from Buguias have sent produce to their own storehouses in Trinidad, from which they can sell directly to the Chinese (and, increas-

ingly, Tagalog) merchants who control the Baguio-Manila trade. Smaller traders have usually sold directly in the wholesale section ("New Market") of the Baguio market. The largely Igorot wholesalers of the New Market, numbering some 350 to 400 (Russell 1987:142, 143), offer competitive bids on incoming produce. After cleaning and sorting the produce, they sell it to Chinese or Tagalog traders, who then ship large truckloads to their marketing agents in Divisoria, the vegetable emporium of Manila.

A few of the large agribusiness concerns in the greater Buguias region presently ship vegetables directly to Manila. This requires both a dependable supply of vegetables and a fleet of large trucks. But even those who transport their own vegetables to the capital still have to deal through Chinese middlemen. One wealthy Badayan family, for example, sells produce to their Manila partner for a price somewhere between the Baguio and the Manila wholesale figures. Many large-scale farmer-traders do not find these marginally superior prices worth the effort, and thus continue to deal in Baguio. Several powerful traders, including the Olsims, have attempted to eliminate another rung of intermediaries by acquiring a wholesale stall in the Divisoria market, but so far all such attempts have failed. Most highland observers attribute their ill success to the machinations of Chinese "cartels."

Agribusiness Reconsidered

The most successful indigenous entrepreneurs in Buguias municipality have been those who have integrated farming, trading, and input sales. A prime example is the Maliones family of Bad-ayan. Mrs. Maliones began her career shortly after the war by cultivating a few experimental cabbage patches on soils that local residents had regarded as sterile and worthless, and by selling fertilizer out of a tiny shack. Since then her fields and her sales have expanded continuously. By the 1970s she owned several large trucks suitable for hauling produce directly to Manila, had purchased additional lands on the Mountain Trail, was developing commercial property in Trinidad, and managed one of the best-stocked input and hardware stores in Benguet.

Successful business people like Mrs. Maliones have in many respects been able to thrive precisely because of earlier successes in

gardening. Big farmers with integrated concerns enjoy economies of scale, just as they are buffered from economic and natural disasters. Indeed, one study (Lizarondo et al. 1979) has shown a direct relationship between the size of a farm and the profit per unit area that the grower can realize. This advantage is amplified when one also considers the other aspects of vegetable agribusiness pursued by most large-scale farmers.

Yet in Buguias proper, no large agricultural combine has emerged. While the Olsims' businesses have grown, they have not invested in Buguias agriculture. This is partly because they have seen few opportunities in a district characterized by small owner-occupied farms; yet their very decision to invest elsewhere has contributed to the divergent social and economic evolution of the village. Some locals regret the absence of big growers in Buguias, feeling that this has redounded to the economic marginalization of their once-central place. But while the Olsims have located most of their endeavors in other areas, they nonetheless continue to play prominent roles in the political and ritual life of their natal community. And considering the environmental and social problems that have increasingly impinged upon the Buguias landscape in the past two decades, the Olsims' decision to invest their profits elsewhere may well prove to have been prescient.