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."