Agricultural Fields

Dry Fields: Uma and Puwal

The core of livelihood in prewar Buguias was a distinctive form of dry-field cultivation called uma , derived from swidden practices. Like its slash-and-burn antecedents, uma agriculture entailed cutting and burning woody vegetation prior to planting, and in earlier periods all Buguias dry fields had probably exhibited the common features of long-fallow swidden horticulture. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the interval between cropping cycles had been shortened sufficiently that most dry fields in central Buguias were cultivated for much longer periods than they were fallowed. In the puwal variant, slashing and burning no longer preceded planting. Both umas and puwals were intensively cultivated plots, adapted in many respects to a savannah rather than to a woodland environment.

Sweet potatoes, the staple of both people and domestic hogs, dominated the dry fields. Tubers were consumed in such quantity as to completely color the memory of prewar subsistence; this was the time, the Buguias people say, "when we ate only sweet potatoes." The common people typically dined on boiled sweet-potato tubers seasoned with sweet-potato vinegar, garnished with sweet-potato leaves, and perhaps completed with a dessert of sweet-potato syrup. In seasons of tuber scarcity, dried sweet-potato chips, either reconstituted in soup or pounded and cooked with millet, sufficed. Subsidiary dry-field crops, including several kinds of beans, peanuts, sesame seeds, maize, panicum millet, sorghum, and Job's tears, provided seasonal supplements, but were never abundant in most households. Among the poor, mealtimes were indeed a matter of "tugi angey " (or "sweet potatoes only").

Buguias dry fields could thrive only on select sites. Slopes had to be gentle for soil fertility maintenance. Clay-rich soils were always favored, for lighter earth would not retain adequate moisture for dry-season (December through April) growth. The natural terraces above the Agno River formed ideal sites, but many had long been appropriated for rice terraces. The gentle and irregular eastern slope of the village afforded the most numerous suitable locations. Here the favored sites were U-shaped hillside indentations formed by slope failure. The flattish deposit of deep soil at the slump foot could support sweet potatoes throughout the year, while the adjacent scarps produced superior tubers in the soggy wet season. In areas of suitable soil and slope, however, uma fields could form a continuous band of cultivation.

In the heart of every Buguias dry field lay the sweet-potato patch, monocropped for fear that other plants would stymie the all-important staple. The generally heavier-feeding subsidiary crops were relegated to the field edges, or occasionally to central strips. Typically surrounding the nucleus were rings of sorghum, panicum millet, maize, and various pulses. Annuals, such as maize, sorghum, and millet (often interplanted with kidney beans) were favored for central strips, since they would not interfere with the long-term sweet potato rotational schedule. In the wettest months (July through September), larger field segments normally planted to sweet potatoes might be devoted to millet or peanuts. (Some growers, fearing rat predation, would distance their millet crop from brushy surrounding growth by planting it in the center of the field.) Seed of the perennial baltong bean (Vigna sinensis ) were sown among stumps or rock outcrops where they would not interfere with sweet-potato cultivation, while brushy kudis beans (Cajanus cajanus ) often occupied drier slopes on field margins.

Buguias women cultivated approximately a dozen varieties of sweet potatoes. Some women intercropped multiple cultivars; others preferred segregation. Generally, those with large fields (.5 hectares or more) cultivated monovarietal patches, which allowed easier management since each cultivar matured at a different rate. The specific varieties planted, whether in mixed or segregated patches, depended in part on the partialities of household members, as each variety had a distinct taste and texture.

Buguias women planted sweet potatoes thrice annually, and harvested each planting up to three times before the vines reached exhaustion at the end of one year. The first planting, in April or May, either anticipated or coincided with the first rains. By October this planting's initial tubers, though fibrous and of poor quality, were ready for harvest. February marked a second harvest interval, and the final one occurred in May. The dry-season tubers were of higher quality, but as the vines aged, quality declined. A second planting in September or early October produced a superior initial crop; the young vines flourished with the copious rains and the tubers could mature as the soil dried. This planting's harvests occurred in January, again in May, and finally in August. December, marking the start of the dry season, brought the final and least productive planting; success then was possible only in the most moisture-retentive fields. Yet this crop too could produce through the entire year; only in the poorest fields was year-round cultivation impossible. Here harvests would be completed early in the dry season, the remaining foliage burned, and the uma fallowed until the arrival of the rains.

The multiple plantings of differentially maturing sweet-potato varieties coupled with (partial) seasonal rotation with other crops and complicated by the differing physical attributes of each field, required a fine-tuned seasonal labor schedule. Uma work was also highly skilled; even the harvest was demanding, since individual tubers had to be removed at their most palatable stage without damaging the vines. Only carefully tended plants could produce through an entire year. From December to March, the prime harvest, Buguias women sliced and sun-dried the surplus, which would form the mainstay in the lean season following the early rains.

The typical uma was cropped for five to ten years, at which point declining yields forced a two- to three-year fallow. This long cropping period was possible only through continual labor. Weeding was the most arduous task; Buguias women would dig several feet into the ground to remove the tenacious roots of ga-on (Imperata cylindrica ) in particular. Weed foliage obtained both within and from the edges of the uma was buried in the field along with the old, uprooted vines, thus helping to replenish the soil.

Intensive dry-field cultivation required gentle slopes and deep soil, but new fields were sometimes relegated to substandard sites. Steeper plots could be upgraded by leveling; stone-walled semi-terraces minimized erosion while maximizing dry-season moisture retention. Unlike rice terraces, such dry terraces needed some slope, since a flat field would waterlog in the rainy season, resulting in tuber rot. These semiterraces were comparatively easy to construct; often little more than a few carefully placed boulders sufficed.

The nutrients added to the uma from field-margin weeds, downward-moving soil (notable in slump-foot cultivation), and legume root nodules were insufficient to offset harvest losses. Over time, tuber size diminished while insects and pathogens multiplied. Exhausted fields were then left to natural succession. Typical invaders included the ubiquitous bracken fern, several exotic composites (Tithonia maxima and Eupatorium adenophorum ), and the cane grass Miscanthus sinensis. After a few years these fallowed umas were cut, burned, and replanted. Abandoned fields on drier sites or in pasture areas were, in contrast, invaded by sod-forming grasses (especially Themeda triandra and Imperata cylindrica ), after which they were characteristically opened to cattle. These tenacious fire-adapted grasses precluded further recourse to the techniques of uma. Rather, if the site were to be recultivated the sod had to be overturned, a practice known as puwal cultivation.

In making a puwal, the cultivator would invert sections of sod with iron-tipped poles. If turned to a depth of some 30 centimeters at the end of the dry season, the grasses would be killed and the soil both aerated and enriched by decaying leaves, roots, and manure. Newly made puwal fields could be quite fertile, encouraging the conversion of prime pastures, even those never previously cultivated. After soil preparation, the puwal was cultivated much like the uma.

Recultivation of the fallowed dry fields was relatively easy; the mandatory fences were already in place (although, if wooden, they would need repair), and, at least with umas, the light successional vegetation could easily be cleared. Newly married couples, however, often had to create new fields. These could be either uma or puwal, depending on the site chosen. Any pine standing on the

site would be salvaged for wood, but other woody plants would be burned in situ for soil enrichment.

Door-Yard Gardens

Haphazard plantings around the houselot constituted the second subsistence sector, the door-yard garden (ba-eng ). Some gardens produced large quantities of vegetables, fruits, and even cash crops, but most were small affairs. Yet the garden did hold two advantages over the uma: manure-enriched soils and easy access.

Tobacco and potatoes, considered too demanding for dry-field cultivation, often grew alongside the nutrient-rich pigpens. Hog manure was also periodically distributed through the rest of the garden.^[1] It could be used to fertilize sweet potatoes only if thoroughly composted (Purseglove 1968, v. 1:85), a difficulty that, combined with the burden of hauling, precluded manure use in the dry fields. But even fresh dung benefited most door-yard crops. Several varieties of taro grown for the piggery were especially favored in the garden because of their shade tolerance and vigorous response to casual manure application.

Condiments (Capsicum peppers, onions, ginger, garlic, and sugar cane), and vegetables (lima and other beans, squash), were grown in the door-yard garden mainly for convenience. As new vegetables, such as bitter-gourd, eggplant, and sayote (chayote), appeared during the American period, gardens became more diverse. Sayote quickly emerged as the standby vegetable of all social classes; this perennial produces ample quantities of edible leaves, stems, and fruits, and its large tubers can serve as a famine reserve. Only the larger gardens were dominated by fruit trees (such as mangoes and avocados), since frequent household relocation constrained arboriculture. Poorer households thus rarely grew more than a few banana stalks.

The most valuable door-yard crop was coffee. Introduced in the late Spanish period, coffee cultivation spread rapidly among the elite, who found the beans a valuable trade item as well as a beverage source. Having planted sizable orchards of arabica trees, wealthy individuals soon lost their inclination to relocate their homes periodically. As coffee drinking and trading spread, poorer

couples too planted smaller orchards. But in the final years of the Spanish period, blight struck, damaging especially those orchards located on clay soils. Coffee production henceforth would be concentrated in the gardens of a few wealthy households situated on rich loam.

Pond Fields: Taro and Rice

The irrigated or pond-field terrace, an artificial wetland seasonally planted to rice and, occasionally, to taro, formed the third agricultural sector of prewar Buguias. Among many Cordilleran groups (including the Ifugao, the Bontoc, the southern Kalinga, the Northern Kankana-ey, and the Ibaloi of Kabayan and Nagey), pond fields were a significant, if not dominant, element of the agricultural landscape. In the Buguias region, however, rice was a subsidiary crop, albeit vital as the source of rice beer. Buguias residents seldom ate unfermented rice, and on the rare occasions when they did, they usually mixed it with millet or dried sweet potatoes.

The first pond-field terraces in Buguias may have been designed for taro.^[2] This most versatile of crops grew unirrigated in dry fields and door-yard gardens, but it produced larger, if poorer tasting, tubers when cultivated in water. In prewar Buguias, taro grew in several aqueous niches: along irrigation canals, in natural seeps, around small ponds, on the edges of rice terraces, and in small terraces of its own. A vastly greater expanse of pond-field land, however, was devoted solely to rice.

Rice beer in prewar Buguias was a necessary ritual intoxicant. Virtually all couples occasionally brewed beer, but only the wealthy owned pond fields; poorer individuals purchased rice or worked in the paddies of wealthier relatives. Even couples possessing extensive terraces (up to several hectares) fermented the bulk of their harvests. The sweet and yeasty beer dregs, however, made a treat especially beloved of small children.

Buguias's pond-field system gradually expanded through the late Spanish and early American periods. Natural river terraces, reasonably level and low enough in the valley to be dependably watered, formed ideal building sites. Some lower terraces could be irrigated directly from the Agno River, but the necessary diversion works would be demolished annually in typhoon floods. More man-

ageable water sources were the non-entrenched, perennial side streams and the natural seeps. But by the American period, continued pond-field expansion necessitated the excavation of canals—some several kilometers long—to tap the larger eastern tributary streams.

Labor in the rice fields was arduous. Leveling and churning the muck had originally been done entirely by hand, although by the later American period some individuals had harnessed water buffalo for the task. Seedbeds, started in November or December, were ready for transplanting by January, although fields watered from the community's several hot springs could be planted a month or more later. By April, the enlarging grains required the constant vigilance of old men and children to ward off birds and other pests. In July, hastened by the impending typhoon season, the fields were reaped. After harvest they remained flooded, thus receiving nutrients from typhoon-eroded sediments. The only other fertility supplements consisted of Tithonia leaves and water-buffalo manure, the latter deposited casually when the animals worked the fields or wallowed in them during the off-season.

Compared to other Cordilleran peoples, the Buguias villagers planted few varieties of rice. Each of the two major types, glutinous diket and nonsticky, red kintoman , boasted no more than three or four distinct strains. The growing conditions of each variety were considered roughly equivalent, although one slowly maturing cultivar had to be transplanted by December. Glutinous and non-sticky grains were usually mixed for eating and for the making of beer. The Buguias people knew of many different varieties planted by other Cordilleran peoples, and some of these they recognized as superior. But although they not uncommonly planted experimental fields, few new varieties proved successful. Especially desired was a lowland strain that would produce a crop in the cloudy wet season, but no planting ever proved successful.

Buguias residents continually enlarged their pond-field system through the American period. Wealthy traders and livestock breeders initiated most new construction, which they usually contracted out to the expert terrace engineers from Ifugao and Bontoc subprovinces. (The latter workers were acclaimed for their ability to lever large river boulders into terrace walls, while the former were noted for their skilled masonry with smaller stones.) Most

Buguias people thought that terraces built by local residents lacked the durability of those constructed by outside workers.