The Vegetable Frontier
Beginning in the late 1960s, and accelerating through the following decades, the high-elevation region of eastern Buguias municipality was opened to commercial agriculture. Although a few vegetables had been grown here since the 1940s, large-scale production was initially held back by poor transport. When feeder roads finally penetrated the pine-oak border zone, gardening was suddenly very profitable; soils were fresh, waters abundant, and weeds and other pests uncommon. But the local inhabitants could not easily harvest the rewards, as they lacked the capital needed both to clear the land and to farm it intensively. Entrepreneurs from the Agno Valley realized the bulk of the profits in most eastern villages.
Geographical Patterns of Expansion
The southern Cordillera's vegetable zone has gradually projected outward in several different salients over the past twenty years. As the road network has been extended, ever more communities have been able to take up commercial farming (see map 8). In the 1960s and 1970s, several projections pushed westward from the Mountain Trail heartland. But further movement to the west is uncertain. In much of Bakun municipality, for example, progress is impeded by steep and rocky slopes and by the locally active New People's Army.
Map 8.
The Road Network of Buguias and Nearby Locales.
Some of the smaller and more recent roads are not indicated.
Note also that the Agno Valley Road north of Kabayan
Barrio is seldom passable during the rainy season.
Northward, the vegetable frontier has recently enveloped several Northern Kankana-ey villages in Mountain Province. Here local residents who had previously labored on Mountain Trail farms introduced commercial production. Yet these communities essentially retain subsistence orientations, with vegetables forming subsidiary cash crops (see Voss 1983). The same is true in several Ifugao villages in the Kiangan region, where vegetable gardens are presently increasing in acreage.
In recent years, the main thrust of expansion has been eastward from the Agno Valley, particularly in Kabayan (Calanog n.d.) and Buguias municipalities. In greater Buguias, development in the 1960s and early 1970s was concentrated in the north. Contractors gradually extended feeder roads east from Lo-o and Bad-ayan into the oak-covered hills. In 1976, however, the main frontier shifted southward after the Buguias-Bot-oan road was inaugurated. Intended as the first leg of a proposed highway into western Ifugao, this route terminated at the then insignificant hamlet of Bot-oan. Within a few years, Bot-oan had become a major agricultural and commercial center, and the seat of the new barangay of Catlubong, carved out of the territory of Buguias proper.
Bot-oan, sitting on the pine-oak border, is ideal for most temperate vegetables. Here a relatively flat saddle is endowed with abundant water and unusually light and friable soil. Yet the local inhabitants had little interest in vegetable culture before the mid-1970s. A few had grown and sold peas, but most still raised swine for their minimal cash needs. Hog raising no longer yielded much profit, however, in large part because hogs could no longer roam free.
The Bot-oan people, considered the least "progressive" of all the residents of greater Buguias, lacked both the knowledge and the capital necessary to exploit the new opportunities the road provided. But several prosperous couples quickly moved up from the Agno Valley to develop the land. Before long, they composed a local elite, whose exogenous origins their poorer neighbors did not forget. Only one local resident ascended into the elite stratum, a rise made possible by many years of work in the Saudi oil fields.
The outside developers first hired workers, both locals and Kalanguya immigrants from Ifugao province, to clear new gardens. But by the 1980s most had turned to bulldozers. Usually they would turn the newly made plots over to local sharecroppers. Many share-
croppers later cleared their own tiny gardens, giving Bot-oan today a mixture of large and small holdings.
Not long after the road arrived, other entrepreneurs opened a number of stores and a periodic market emerged as well. Impetus for retail expansion came from both the growing local economy and from Bot-oan's newly strategic position vis-à-vis western Ifugao. The village now occupied the closest roadhead to Tinoc and Tucucan. By 1985, several hundred Tinoc residents were making the trek to Bot-oan twice each week, returning home the same day heavily laden with goods ranging from rice and gin to treadle sewing machines and iron sheeting.
More profitable than stores are transport vehicles. During the long wet season few trucks can negotiate the steep climb out of the Agno canyon; the three Bot-oan entrepreneurs who own powerful International Harvesters able to make the climb form an effective, if seasonal, transport oligopoly. Nevertheless, Bot-oan retail prices are on average lower than those of Buguias. Buguias residents find this perplexing and infuriating, and most attribute it to the noncompetitive environment of their own increasingly marginal community.
The Bot-oan road has also allowed the Kalanguya people of Tinoc and nearby villages greater participation in the market economy. Tinoc now lies at the far eastern fringe of the vegetable empire, the position previously occupied by Bot-oan itself, where high-value, lightweight crops can be grown profitably. Peas in particular have made inroads into local swiddens. Physiography itself contributes to pea culture, Tinoc being somewhat protected from the typhoon winds that frequently destroy fragile trellises farther west. After a severe storm, Tinoc growers can reap high profits in the inflated pea market. Lately, a few growers have gambled on other crops; by early 1986, young Tinoc men were carrying fifty-kilo sacks of carrots to the Bot-oan market during price peaks. To date, however, seldom are such vegetables valuable enough to bear the cost of portage over the tortuous, muddy, and leech-infested trail linking the two villages.
In southern Buguias and northern Kabayan municipalities, contractors pushed two other feeder roads to the edge of the cloud forest in the 1970s. Here, in contrast to Bot-oan, almost all local residents had been cultivating small commercial plots since the 1940s,
carrying their produce first to Kilometer 73, then to Buguias Central. Road development allowed some to expand their gardens, but most have remained small operators. Outside entrepreneurs have not found these areas attractive, in part because their slopes are steep and their water insufficient. Furthermore, since the locals already had gardens of their own they have been reluctant to accept sharecropping arrangements.
Continuing Road Development
Eastern Buguias municipality's road development in the 1970s was financed largely by the national government and by the United States, whose motivations were mainly military. At the time, Bot-oan formed an NPA stronghold. By the early 1980s the NPA presence diminished, and state funding evaporated. A road extension into western Ifugao—a remaining NPA refuge—was still planned, but this proved too expensive and dangerous. After the 1984 legislative elections, politicians seemingly abandoned the road, much to the consternation of the Kalanguya people of western Ifugao province.
Through various creative financing schemes, feeder-road construction continues. Wealthy farmers, especially those living in the Bot-oan area, occasionally build private roads. Road developers sometimes convince the barangay to assume maintenance costs, effectively passing all burdens to the public sector. Barangay roads are usually maintained through cooperative work parties, with some communities occasionally purchasing bulldozer time.
Less prosperous farmers sometimes jointly finance road construction in their hamlets. In a typical case, each farmer directly benefitting will donate something on the order of 500 pesos, with wealthier growers usually contributing severalfold more. One such project in Buguias was unsuccessfully negotiated for several years; the interested farmers all sought different corridors, since all wanted close access but none wished to lose any land. Although they finally reached a compromise, one barangay official fears that erosion safeguards were discarded in the process. A similar road in another Buguias hamlet had eroded so quickly that it was downgraded to a buffalo-cart path after several years.
The municipal and provincial governments share responsibility for major roads, generally those entailing construction costs of over 50,000 pesos. Funding is politically charged, as villages compete for road access. In 1985, the Buguias municipal council released funds to extend the Bot-oan road southward toward the upper Capuyuan drainage. Southern Buguias municipality marked this as a victory, since in their eyes the more powerful northern interests usually monopolize road funds. This project also generated some unusual local opposition, as a few elders argued that it would only bring in more gin and associated social ills.
Land Speculation
The new roads east of Buguias have provided opportunities for speculators as well as gardeners. Local land speculation dates to the credit schemes of the late 1960s; bank loans had to be secured with real estate, whether titled or declared, and the only broad areas still available lay in the eastern reaches of the municipality. While property claims were officially limited by one's ability to pay tax (as determined by the assessor), even persons of moderate wealth could obtain tens of hectares of undeveloped land.
Although these lands were initially declared as loan collateral, a few individuals realized their development potential should a road reach the area. By the early 1970s, a handful of speculators rushed to stake out lands along the planned transport corridor between Bot-oan and Tinoc. One wealthy Buguias couple even claimed a plot on the highest pass, intending to build a cafe there to service the buses that they thought would soon ply the Tinoc route. Such explicitly speculative declarations were largely held by residents of Buguias and nearby valley communities, but a few locals also claimed large plots, in part to protect themselves from the outsiders. By the mid-1970s, virtually all lands of any agricultural potential had been declared.
A tax declaration is difficult to define in the cloud forest. Landmarks are rare, visibility through the dense forest is low, and movement is constrained. Some speculators thus cleared their plots of all woody growth. Although most cloud-forest trees readily stump-sprout, continued recutting has reduced these parcels to a low
scrub. This needless degradation has prompted some resentment, but no one is powerful enough to contend with the economic interests involved.
Few of the Buguias speculators reaped the profits they had anticipated. The Tinoc road stalled and the general pace of transport development slackened. When the vegetable industry stagnated, many could not afford their taxes, and therefore allowed their declarations to pass into delinquency. As feeder roads were slowly built, most declarants sold their remaining parcels piecemeal, sometimes at a fair profit, to the wealthy Bot-oan farmers.
But when the municipality initiated extension of the Bot-oan road in 1985, several declaration holders finally made good. It is of interest that the most successful was not a speculator but rather a local ritualist. Many years earlier, this modest man had declared several hectares of relatively flat and rich land near his home and exactly proximate to the future roadway. He managed to pay his taxes, while leaving virtually the entire plot in virgin oak forest. When the road pushed through, his parcel suddenly gained value, and when a wealthy Bot-oan farmer offered him 20,000 pesos a hectare, he happily sold.
In 1975, before even Bot-oan had road access, a hectare of land in this area could hardly have sold for 200 pesos. The following years saw fierce inflation; by 1985, the price of a large animal had increased some tenfold. Yet as this case shows, prime land on the cloud forest fringe could appreciate as much as a hundred times. Clearly, land speculation could yield spectacular gains.
By early 1986, this particular plot had already been bulldozed clear of vegetation and topsoil. The new owner had hired several local residents, who had earlier raised hogs for their cash needs, to sharecrop the land. Potential tenants are not lacking here; the market is a strong lure, and most residents prefer to begin gardening by working for a successful entrepreneur rather than by cultivating a tiny and underfinanced private garden.
Agricultural development in eastern Buguias municipality has primarily benefited three parties: wealthy farmers, a few lucky land speculators, and bulldozer owners.[2] For most local residents, the results are mixed. Although now more prosperous than before, they must share the risks and the dim future of the vegetable industry. Nor is expansion itself without economic contradictions;
the overall vegetable harvest grows faster than demand, lowering profits elsewhere.
But the eastward march of the vegetable frontier is most threatening ecologically. As the cloud forest of eastern Buguias municipality vanishes and as new irrigation works are installed, stream flows gradually diminish, undercutting Agno Valley irrigators. In several areas of the municipality, formerly verdant rice terraces are now dry, most likely because of water development upslope. As their natural endowment deteriorates, farmers in the lower valley may find it exceedingly difficult to compete with those who have recently developed rich, new lands. And as economic and ecological problems mount, social and political turmoil grows apace.