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.