changed household livelihood strategies …...hold livelihood strategies manage to develop new...

CHANGED HOUSEHOLD LIVELIHOODSTRATEGIES IN THE CORDILLERA OFLUZON

DAVID PRESTON

School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

Received July 1997; revised November 1997

ABSTRACTThis paper identi®es and discusses changes in land use and livelihood strategies in two commu-nities on different sides of the Cordillera of Luzon, the Philippines. These include the abandon-ment of shifting cultivation on many hillsides, the growing of vegetables in pond®eldspreviously used for rice cultivation and the deterioration of pond®eld terraces as a result ofwater and labour shortages. It seeks some explanation of these changes by examining thecomplex web of activities in which Cordillera households are now involved.

Key words: Luzon, Philippines, farming, livelihoods, abandonment

INTRODUCTION

Households in rural areas throughout thecontemporary world are subject to internal andexternal pressures which result in change.However important these changes are, theyaffect only some elements of domestic liveli-hoods, and others, often highly traditional, areretained. A common change identi®ed bymany analysts and observers is simultaneousinvolvement in multiple activities. `Peopleappear to be involved in several economies',write Koppel and Hawkins (1994). People andhouseholds no longer ®t analytical categoriesinvented by social scientists, and reductionismincreasingly seems both dif®cult and danger-ous. In particular, as Slater has observed forSouth and East Asia, people are `consolidatingtraditional strengths . . . and adopting new busi-ness practices' (1991, p. 40). The new house-hold livelihood strategies manage to developnew activities as part of a capitalist worldeconomic system, but in a household contextthat has its own logic and structure.

Bebbington has identi®ed one rural strategyas a `signi®cant intensi®cation of resourcemanagement, enhancing productivity of land

and labour, increasing incomes derived fromoff-farm activities and restoring natural capitalin areas where it had been degraded' (Bebbing-ton 1997, p. 191). He refers to highlandEcuador but I argue that such scenarios may beobserved elsewhere both in the global Northand South.

The issues explored in this paper are relatedto the diversi®cation of activities of people inrural households in ways that link them moreeffectively to national social, economic andpolitical situations. This diversi®cation includesincreasing off-farm employment, both locallyand involving migration (Shand 1986; Slater1991) even when associated with new landsettlement (Sage 1996). Slater argues that a pre-condition for diversi®cation is intensi®cation ofproduction, using accessible new technologiesthat facilitate engagement in off-farm work(Slater 1991).

Besides these changes, which have beenwidely discussed, we suggest that Bebbington'snotion of restoring natural capital can be morewidely applied, as has been previouslydescribed for localities in Java and Ecuador(Preston 1989; 1990). While a recent survey ofenvironmental changes in South-East Asia

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie ± 1998, Vol. 89, No. 4, pp. 371±383.# 1998 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAGPublished by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

(Parnwell & Bryant 1996) focuses largely ondeterioration of the environment in tropicalforested areas, in long-settled land there is alsoevidence of environmental improvements as adirect consequence of the processes referred toabove.

CHANGE IN THE CORDILLERA

This paper presents the most clearly establishedchanges in farming and land resource use inthe context of domestic livelihood strategiesand is based on two periods of ®eld work tenyears apart.

The two areas studied lie on either side ofthe Cordillera (central highlands) of Luzon(Figure 1). Poitan is in Ifugao Province andclose to the small centre of Banaue, an areawhere part of household income now comesfrom non-agricultural activities (wood-carvingand textile weaving). Here some pond®elds areno longer being used for rice cultivation andare even being abandoned. For most people,hillside swidden farming is now no longer apart of household activity. Migration from thearea takes place as part of the search for woodto be carved, to use recently-cleared land inneighbouring provinces to supplement localland for food production and to work in themines and urban areas in other parts of Luzon.Some migration overseas also takes place, parti-cularly to the Middle East and urban centres inSouth-East Asia. Valuable baseline data onfarming systems and land use for a major partof Ifugao in the 1960s is derived from thelong-term and detailed ethnographic work ofConklin (1980).

On the western side of the Cordillera, in theneighbourhood of Sagada, two striking changesin the land use have occurred in livingmemory: the widespread planting of pines(Pinus insularis) on the hillsides and an increasein the area of prime agricultural land devotedto cash crops, in particular vegetables, ratherthan rice, for autoconsumption. Each of thesechanges indicates modi®cations in the house-hold economy that are different from those inIfugao. Migration from Sagada has largelybeen southwards to seek work in the vegetablegrowing areas and mines of Benguet provinceas well as overseas. In Sagada, accounts of localhistory and ethnography occur in the writing

of the late William Henry Scott (especially Scott1958; 1975) and research by Voss and Jefremo-vas provides further relevant information withrelation to the increase in vegetable cultivation(Voss 1983; Jefremovas 1993).

Fieldwork during September 1984 andJanuary and February 1985 was conducted inSagada and in Poitan, two kilometres south-eastof Banaue. In each area, interviews were heldwith men and women from different localitiesin order to document personal views andexperience relating to changes in farming andin the organization of domestic productionsince the end of World War II. Some interviewswere repeated for additional information and alocal ®eld assistant was used to facilitate at leastpart of the interview being conducted in thelocal language. In Poitan, prolonged interviewswith seven households were used to record thedevelopment of livelihood strategies. Further®eldwork in August 1995, in some cases withthe same households interviewed ten yearsearlier, monitored the extent to which thechanges observed in the late 1980s had contin-ued.

Change in Sagada, Mountain Province ± Themost striking change in Sagada since the earlypart of the century is the virtual abandonmentof swidden farming (shifting cultivation) onthe hillsides and the subsequent afforestationon all sides of the valley within which thepoblacioÂn of Sagada lies. Photographs taken atthe beginning of the twentieth century in thepersonal archive of the late Eduardo MasferreÂshow the new Sagada mission buildings on abare hillside. His own photographs, taken inthe 1920s, show that the mission was then¯anked by well-grown pine trees; further awayfew trees to be seen ± pine trees were plantedby villagers at a later date. The majority of thepine forest originates from the period follow-ing the end of the war with Japan.

A further series of photographs taken byMasferreÂ to the north-east of Sagada over a 30-year period after the end of World War IIshow the rapidity of forest growth. By the1960s trees grew in profusion on all the hill-sides adjacent to the town.

The now forest-covered hillsides werepreviously used for swidden farming, especiallywhere there was adequate soil and moisture for

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# 1998 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG

Figure 1.

CHANGED HOUSEHOLD LIVELIHOOD STRATEGIES IN THE CORDILLERA OF LUZON 373


sweet potatoes to grow well. The area of swid-dens planted has decreased markedly andinformants believed that less than half ofSagada households still had sweet potato plotsin the hills. Sweet potatoes are now grownlargely close to houses, on dried terraces andsloping patches of ground without irrigationbut close to terraces or houses. Even those whocultivate swidden plots probably farm muchless hillside land than they, or similar-sizedhouseholds, did before the war. Sweet potatoesare no longer a prized food but the leaves are avalued supplementary feed for pigs.

A further reason for the abandonment ofmany swiddens after 1945 was the migration ofmen to work in the mines of Benguet and inthe newly-opened colonisation zone nearTabuk in North-East Kalinga Province. Withmany men and some complete householdsaway there was a smaller labour force. It waslogical to concentrate effort on the most easilyaccessible and productive ®elds, usually thepond®elds. Furthermore, households withaccess to their own new pine forest on formerswidden land were able to bene®t from theease of gathering wood needed for cookingand, after a decade or more, from the advan-tage of having timber for house-building. Thiswas an improvement on the situation in pre-war days when people reported spending awhole day gathering wood in distant parts ofSagada.

One reason for the increase in the area ofpine forest is to establish more prolongedpersonal entitlement to land (Voss 1983, p. 85).Swidden land on which sweet potatoes wereplanted belonged to the household that farmedit but only so long as it was in cultivation. Oncethe land was covered with wild plants, itbecame the common property of the commu-nity. When pine trees were planted in swiddenplots they were treated as a crop and thoseplanting the trees were entitled to use themand the grass under them for as long as thetrees continued to grow. Selective felling andreplanting thus effectively conferred semi-permanent entitlement to that land and itstrees and other vegetation.

The spread of the forest was apparently nota planned development in Sagada. Eventhough pines were planted in the land given tothe Episcopalian mission, missionaries were not

instrumental in encouraging people to plantpine trees on their own land. There weregovernment forestry programmes and anumber of people collected free pine seedlingsfrom government nurseries. The seedlingswere available either in the Chico river valley,over an hour's journey by bus, or near MountData some four or ®ve hours south on the roadto Baguio.

Growing vegetables for sale is a recent inno-vation. Although vegetables had been grown bythe mission since the early part of the century,most people traced commercial vegetablegrowing to its introduction by one individual in1948. His initial success led others to follow.Migrants from Sagada in the mines of Benguetwould have seen the excellent vegetablesgrowing in the Trinidad valley and, later, thearea beside the Mountain Trail highway. Someworked for vegetable growers for periods andthereby acquired direct experience of vegetablegrowing. Now, some households grow vegeta-bles following the harvest of rice but others doso all year in ®elds where rice used to begrown. The range of vegetables includescabbages, tomatoes, capsicum, Chinesecabbage, aubergines and many varieties ofbeans. Vegetables are sent by vehicle to Baguioand other regional wholesale markets. Between1985 and 1995 there has been a strikingincrease in the number of jeepneys, whichincreased competition between owners andresulted in a willingess to relate the transportcost to the market price actually obtained.More growers now take their produce directlyto major markets. The monopoly of Chinesewholesalers in the Baguio market has also beenbroken by the successful entry of some growerco-operatives although none exist in Sagada.

Although prices ¯uctuate wildly and consid-erable outlay is needed for agricultural chemi-cals to promote growth and combat disease, thepro®ts that may accrue from growing vegeta-bles are highly variable but still attractive to thegrowers (Jefremovas 1993). The cash fromvegetable growing serves many purposes. Itpermits the purchase of rice to replace thatwhich might otherwise have been grown on theland occupied by vegetables, and an increase inrice sales was reported by Sagada shopkeepersduring the 1980s. Vegetables have also, in part,replaced sweet potatoes that used to be grown

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in drained former rice ®elds. Although vegeta-bles are grown throughout Sagada, they areparticularly important in Ambasing and thetwo districts further south: Pide and Balugan(Figure 2).

Vegetable growing is seen in the villages tobe a good way of making money. The largestAmbasing dealer is now reputedly a million-aire. The value of production per hectare ofsuccessive crops of vegetables is greater than

Figure 2.



for a single crop of rice, or even rice followedby sweet potatoes. Vegetable crops are season-ally staggered so harvesting (and thus income)takes place several times in a year. Dependenceon several crops and year-round harvestingalso diminishes the risk of loss although Jefre-movas suggests that losses are frequent but thatinter-family support and diversi®cation ofactivities help minimise the importance oflosses (Jefremovas 1993, p. 1).

A further important change in Sagada is adecrease in the irrigated area. It is impossibleto walk more than a kilometre through theterraces without encountering formerly irri-gated land which is either uncultivated, orwhich now can only support a crop during thewet season. Rice is customarily planted in anirrigated pond®eld before the onset of therainy season: without irrigation rice cannot beplanted until much later. The precise extent towhich there has been a decrease in the irrigatedarea cannot be calculated and, to some extent,land lacking water may be productively usedfor growing vegetables during the wet season.Informants agree that there is a shortage ofwater and that it is becoming progressivelymore serious.

The shortage of water for farming is notedin both sides of the Cordillera. The seriousearthquake, which caused destruction and lossof life in Baguio in June 1990, is widelybelieved to have resulted in some springsdrying up. A network of plastic pipes arevisible in many places between Sagada andBalugan, some bringing water to houses butothers leading to ®elds. The tapping ofupstream sources will obviously have a negativeeffect on downstream users without such pipes.Increasing village populations and probablynew domestic habits will probably also lead toincreased water consumption. Some informantsalso related the shortage of water to the growthof pines on the adjacent hillsides.

In several localities the creation of new pond-®elds upstream diverts water that would other-wise reach the older pond®elds. While this maybe contrary to custom law (see, for exampleBarton 1919, p. 59, on the relevant law pertain-ing to Ifugao), it is unlikely that the owners ofland downstream would be able to in¯ict anyform of retribution where a minor local watersource was involved and the owner of the

newly-developed pond®eld was economicallypowerful and socially respected. This contrastswith the more highly organised control ofwater rights in the northern part of Sagada(Bacdayan 1974) where the construction of anew channel stimulated a higher degree of co-ordination of community regulation of wateruse. This has not happened in Sagada poblacioÂnnor in the hamlets to the south.

A further in¯uence over land use is theshortage of labour. This must be contrastedwith the frequent assertions that there is oftena surplus of labour in rural areas (Slater 1991;Koppel & Hawkins 1994). This difference inview can be ascribed to the view of the investi-gator. In rural areas labour is attracted toopportunities to earn more than is possible athome. In economic terms this is surpluslabour, but its movement, especially whenprolonged, creates a labour shortage in thesending community. As a consequence, someareas of good land are no longer farmed, orare farmed less intensively, because the land-owning household lacks available labour. Inone such case a husband is working in themines. His wife has small children and cannotconveniently travel to the ®eld. Rather thanrent it and risk alienation of the land by thetenant, she prefers to abandon it and allowneighbours to pasture water buffalo on it.Other causes of labour shortage include moreof the children attending school for longerperiods and migration for periods of varyinglength both within Luzon and overseas. Insome cases, available labour may simply beconcentrated on the most productive activitiesand other jobs, such as terrace maintenance,may have lower priority.

Changes in agricultural production inSagada since at least 1945 have profoundlyaffected the physical environment. Theincrease in pine forest has provided a valuablefuel and building material closer to hand thanbefore. The virtual abandonment of shiftingcultivation has released men and women fromthe work of clearing and cultivating that oncedemanded much time. Both sexes, but particu-larly men, have transferred some of this timesaved to the growing of vegetables. The wholefamily is now regularly involved with harvest-ing and packing vegetables for transport tomarket.

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Sagada livelihood changes ± During the pastcentury, increasing numbers of householdshave a range of links with other parts of Luzonand household livelihood strategies frequentlyencompass work and/or study in the Baguioarea, in Manila and overseas. This re¯ectsimproved communications technology and abetter quality road network. Although some ofthose who have left Sagada are working onfarms, most are employed in mines or otherurban-industrial jobs unrelated to farming orother activities with which they were familiar inSagada. Some of the migration is a directconsequence of the high quality of educationavailable in Sagada as a result of the schoolsassociated with the Episcopalian Mission.Pupils from Sagada schools have been excep-tionally well prepared to obtain entry to any ofa range of universities, colleges, and technicalinstitutes, and many Sagada families now haveprofessionals among their absent sons anddaughters. However, neither tertiary educationnor urban jobs are available in Sagada: would-be college and university students and workerswith skills only in demand in cities have there-fore to migrate. Overseas migration certainlyhas some importance because two of the grand-est new houses built on the edge of Sagadabetween 1986 and 1995 belonged not to vegeta-ble dealers but to households some of whosemembers had worked overseas.

The changes in household productive strate-gies have resulted in modi®cations in thegender division of labour. There is clearly agreater amount of farm work appropriated bymen than previously, as in other areas wherevaluable cash crops are introduced (Koppel &Hawkins 1994). Several older people commen-ted spontaneously that the opportunities forearning money through different forms offarm work attracted men, particularly youngermen, who previously were underemployed.Tasks previously performed by men for cashelsewhere ± such as stone walling ± are now lesssought after, and the nature of changes in localcropping systems demands more labour duringmuch of the year.

Women probably have less work in the ®eldsand certainly have less responsibility forfarming than formerly. They are still impor-tant in rice cultivation, but the area of rice

cultivation has decreased. With the decline ofswidden farming they have much less work todo cultivating hillsides and, although menorganise vegetable growing, women also contri-bute time to such work. Possibly associated witha reduction in time devoted to farming, womenhave begun to spend more time in collectiveaction. Women's groups have been formed topromote hamlet activities, such as improvingthe footpath network, but little evidence wasfound to support Voss' implication that thestatus of women in the hamlet had been greatlyenhanced by these changes (Voss 1983, p. 172).

These changes show how Sagada peoplehave sought to adopt more of the valuesprevailing in contemporary urban Philippinesociety. The decrease in importance of sweetpotatoes balancing the growth in importance ofvegetables for cash sale is partly a consequenceof the recognition that money is necessary tobuy a range of goods that enable the quality ofrural life to more nearly approach that in thecity. Money is acquired by modifying produc-tion systems in response to the needs ofmarkets external to the region and by increas-ing use of technology developed elsewhere.Planting pines, on the other hand, re¯ects anindividualist as opposed to corporatist attitudeto property which likewise mirrors the State'sview of property. Sagada people have retaineda high degree of control of their resources byensuring that Sagada businesses are still whollycontrolled by Sagada families. A well-off, well-educated group of Sagada merchants and busi-ness people has emerged which controls muchof local economic activity although Voss arguesthat economic differentiation is restricted (Voss1983, p. 100ff.). The bus line that links Sagadawith Baguio (four times a day in 1995compared with once daily in 1985) is owned bya local family, and the plethora of jeepneysthat are parked on and off the roads aroundSagada indicate their local ownership.

In Sagada new resource use strategiesapplied to both hillsides and pond®eld terracesrepresent an intensi®cation in the use of mosteasily accessible resources and much less inten-sive use of an environment whose use is nowseen as irksome and not highly productive.

Change in Poitan, Ifugao Province ± InPoitan, on the eastern side of the Cordillera



from Sagada, similar changes have taken placebut non-farming income plays an increasinglyimportant part in livelihood strategies.

The hamlet of Poitan is within a half hourwalking distance from the town of Banaue.This gives members of the community easyaccess to a small town that is a centre forforeign tourists. Banaue has regular busservices to Manila via the Cagayan valley and toBaguio, across the Cordillera to the west viaBontoc, and increasingly via Nueva Vizcaya.Several buses and some jeepneys and motor-cycle trishaws pass through Poitan each daylinking it to Banaue town and its weeklymarket at which producers and consumersfrom much of north-central Ifugao meet.Poitan is thus more strongly in¯uenced bycultural and economic changes than othervillages further from Banaue.

Poitan is only a small hamlet. Its houses arescattered over hillsides at altitudes from 880 to1500 metres above sea level. While about 30%of households live close to the road, more liveaway from the road and some up to 40±45minutes walk away. In the past decade increas-ing numbers of people have constructedhouses along the roadside, further facilitatingaccess to the town. A marked improvement inpaths within the community has also madeaccess between localities within the communityeasier as well as making it easier to reach theroad.

Poitan is an interesting contrast to Sagadabecause it has been in¯uenced by the localopportunities for diversifying productive activ-ities outside farming in both wood carving andweaving. The most important set of changesthat occur in Poitan are associated with thepond®eld terraces. There seem to be two paral-lel trends, on the one hand towards a deteriora-tion in the productive capacity of the terracesas a consequence of poor maintenance andwater shortages and a shift towards the produc-tion of vegetables for cash sale on both drierand well-irrigated terraces, but these changesare both more recent and less widespread thanin Sagada. There is a decrease in area ofswidden farming, as observed in Sagada, butthis is not associated with widespread plantingof pine trees. In the early 1980s Eder examinedthe nature of some of the agricultural problemsin a hamlet near Banaue (Eder 1982) and made

similar observations concerning the deteriora-tion of the pond®eld terraces. He did notconsider other aspects of land-use change nordid he review these changes in the context ofthe overall development of household liveli-hood strategies. Eder estimated that one-thirdof the terraces visible in an old photographwere now abandoned. In my own work in 1986I considered that this exaggerated the trend butmost recent ®eld work suggests that this maynow be accurate. The deterioration of thepond®eld terraces can be observed on theground by identifying areas where wet rice hasnot been grown for several seasons and byidentifying ®elds whose size has been reducedby landslips whose repair has not fully restoredthe ®eld to its original dimensions. Conklin'sstudy of Ifugao land use con®rms which areaswere farmed in 1963. The problem of erodedand dried pond®elds is not new: he commen-ted that in most years a third of pond®elds inone area, Bayninan, were lacking suf®cientwater for rice to be cultivated (see also Conklin1980, p. 81). Close study of his maps of pond-®elds and their use in nearby Poitan, suggeststhat, in 1963, very few pond®elds were lackingwater. Rapid ®eld survey, using photographstaken a decade earlier as well as Conklin's 1963maps, suggests that there are more dried pond-®elds than 30 years ago.

Changes in pond®eld use occur for manydifferent reasons. Informants gave many expla-nations for the changes in terrace use. Theseemphasise the wide range of personal as well asenvironmental factors that affect householddecisions. Changes too vary from the completeabandonment of cultivation to the substitutionof vegetables for cash sale for subsistence ricegrowing. The main cause of the changed use isusually shortage of water. However, the percep-tion of the seriousness of this as a problem is afunction of the range of other activities inwhich members of the household engage. Theproblems facing pond®eld users are not newbut their responses to them are different from20±30 years ago.

The shortage of water may be the result ofinfestation of the ®eld by large earthworms,which penetrate the retaining wall and allowpercolation of water; because of breaching ofthe wall by landslips, possibly aided by earth-quakes; or because of the drying up of springs

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or other sources of water as a result of manypossible contributory factors.

The change in land use may also be whollyor partly the result of the unavailability ofsome members of the household labour force ±either working locally or far away, and so notavailable to help in ®eld tasks ± or even thereduction of the household to just two oldpeople who have neither the energy to do thenecessary work nor the need for the producefrom the ®eld. Informants also stress thedislike of many younger people for any dirtyand strength-sapping outside work if morecongenial and remunerative alternative work isavailable.

Rice is of great importance for Ifugaopeople, for food, as a source of ceremonialdrink and as a component in many rituals.Conklin has documented this exhaustively.Although rice is important, the amount oflabour needed to produce it is always consid-ered before deciding whether or not to investthe considerable amount of work necessary tomake the pond®eld capable of producing agood crop of rice. In many cases people preferto work for cash, some of which is used topurchase rice.

A second change is the reduction in areasused for swidden farming. Conklin's examina-tion of the agricultural cycle in Bayninan, adja-cent to Poitan, led him to conclude that sweetpotatoes were as important an element in localdiet as rice, comprising 38% (by weight) of thefood input per person annually (comparedwith 40% for rice). Sweet potatoes are grownboth on permanently cultivated land, in parti-cular drained pond®elds, and on swiddens.Evidence from interviews suggests that swid-dens are less common than previously, largelybecause people prefer to cultivate land nearerhome and because they prefer, or believe itmore pro®table, to engage in either wagelabour or cottage industry, rather than to clearand cultivate a swidden garden. Sweet potatoesare now largely grown on banks on themargins of pond®elds or on dried terraces.Those who carved or wove regularly seldomcultivated a swidden ®eld and others not regu-larly working as carvers or weavers alsopreferred waged work rather than to farmtheir own swiddens. Hillside land is readilyavailable for clearing but as fewer people make

clearings the probability of losses of crops fromrats, monkeys and pigs increases since they nowhave fewer ®elds to raid.

A further change that can be noted is plant-ing pine trees in woodlots or in abandonedswiddens. While this has not transformed theenvironment in the way that it has in Sagada, itis still noteworthy. As supplies of pines fromthe higher mountain slopes to the west decreaseand become more costly then planting fast-growing pines in areas near to house sitesbecomes logical. The work of CECAP (CentralCordillera Agricultural Programme) in the1990s has included further encouragement forplanting several species of fast-growing anduseful trees. Planting trees in woodlots is acommon practice but Poitan informantscommented that the planting of pine trees wasrecent, certainly post-World War II. The areasof pines are scattered and small, few standscontaining more than a dozen trees, but pinesare more common in woodlands than theywere 50 years ago. Informants suggested thatpine trees were now sometimes planted inprevious swidden plots to establish theirprolonged use-right to the area planted, thuscorresponding to practice in Sagada.

Poitan household livelihood evolution ±Changes in household livelihoods have beenclosely associated with changes in the ruralenvironment although such changes are dif®-cult to quantify without prolonged observationand good baseline data. Very few householdsnow cultivate swidden plots, either becausepeople prefer to work for others as paidworkers or because they prefer to concentratetime and energy in cultivating pond®elds andnearby dried terraces or in domestic manufac-ture of textiles or woodcarvings. Although thearea in which swidden farming is possible issmaller in Poitan than surrounding commu-nities, a generation ago most households hadseveral swidden plots.

A strong preference for rice over sweet pota-toes as a major component in meals hascontributed to the decrease in swiddens. Thischange has occurred as more households haveaccess to the money to buy rice, once their ownsupplies have been exhausted. Few householdsproduce enough rice to satisfy their domesticneeds for more than two or three months. As a



larger proportion of households eat rice morefrequently, others wish to emulate them andengage in strategies to facilitate this. Sinceswiddens neither produce rice nor cash crops,their importance in domestic production strate-gies is likely to decrease, so long as there arealternative income-producing opportunities.Young people are particularly in¯uential inchanges in consumption and discarded packetsof drinks and snacks on the side of roads andpathways indicates the increasing importanceof convenience foods.

The lifestyles of modern rural young peopleare in¯uenced by the regular ¯ow of youngforeign tourists and travellers who arrive dailyin Banaue town and who transverse the coun-tryside on foot to admire the rice terraces. If ayoung person with a motorcycle can earn anagricultural worker's daily wage by carrying asingle tourist on a short trip to the viewpointalong the road to Bontok then it is hardlysurprising that agricultural work has becomeunattractive to the young unless it offers super-ior ®nancial rewards. Carving wooden ®guresthat can be sold locally for a reasonable price isan attractive job, carried out under cover andbeside a radio or cassette player. Demand forcarvings seems buoyant, prices are stable andthe main problem associated with carving isobtaining the wood. The availability of trans-port between Poitan and Banaue means thatPoitan is more profoundly in¯uenced by suchchanges than more distant settlement. Thestring of new homes along the road passingthrough the upper part of Poitan indicate theresettlement of some Poitan households in loca-tions with better access to town.

Migration, schooling and small-scale industrycontribute to the removal of a part of thelabour force. There is now an absolute shortageof labour for rice growing if the husband isbusy carving either in the village, in the forestor in the city, and if the elder children are occu-pied in full-time education either locally or in adistant urban centre. Some use their earnings toemploy others to work for them on the terracesand maintain pond®elds in good condition. Onthe other hand, various terraces were reportedto have been abandoned because the owner wasfully occupied elsewhere and no-one wished torent or sharecrop them. Some of the damage toterraces caused by the 1990 earthquake was not

repaired for shortage of domestic labour andthe high cost of employing people to carry outrepairs. It is even said that some pond®elds aredeliberately not rented to avoid the possibilitythat the tenant might not relinquish the land atthe end of the tenancy. Terrace land withadequate water and free of pests would prob-ably always be cultivated if the domestic labourexisted to do the work.

Both men and women make wood carvings.Girls and older women do not generally carvewood but they work in the ®nishing, sanding,staining and polishing. Women also weaveblankets and smaller items, largely for sale totourists. Although both men and women workat home to earn money it seems that malelabour is more concentrated in income-earningactivities. This gender bias has been widelyreported in other areas (see, for example, Hart1980). For women, weaving is frequently aspare time occupation and since women spendmore time than men in rice cultivation and indomestic activity they are likely to have lesstime available than men to produce goods forsale. Male and female informants asserted thatthere had been no major changes in the sexualdivision of labour. Just as in Sagada, males nowseem to work more.

The major changes in Poitan household live-lihoods have resulted in less time spentfarming. There is some indication that thequality of the work done when farming hasalso deteriorated. Several older men said therice ®elds were less well maintained, less care-fully prepared for planting with less attentionto ritual. What is possibly more important isless care is taken in timing the planting of rice.Ministry of Agriculture staff attributed thepoor harvest in 1984 to the rice being sown toolate. In 1980 a previous poor harvest had alsoresulted from late planting and in the threesucceeding years planting had taken place atthe correct time with of®cial encouragement.Similar comments were made in 1995. Manypeople commented that craft work often tookpreference over farm work.

FIFTY YEARS OF CHANGE IN THECENTRAL CORDILLERA 1945±95

A period of rapid change spans the lifetime ofliving Cordillera people. In local market places

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old women bent double as a result of demand-ing ®eld work in home-woven skirts walkalongside men wearing T-shirts and g-strings.A few metres away young people from theircommunities listen to international popularmusic from radios, wearing clothes that arelittle different from those worn in Manila orHong Kong. The built environment of thevillages has also been transformed as tradi-tional houses have their thatch replaced by GI(galvanised iron) and modern-style homes arebuilt alongside traditional granaries. The ®eldsand hillsides have changed too but often in lessobvious ways.

Three broad changes in environmental useemerge clearly. There is less intensive use ofthe hillside land away from the terraces: its usefor periodic cultivation has virtually disap-peared in Sagada and is greatly diminished inPoitan. Hand in hand with this is the use offormer swidden land for the provision oftimber and fuelwood needs, particularly inSagada. Hillside land elsewhere in the Cordil-lera has not been so fortunate. Extension ofswidden cultivation in the north of the Cordil-lera has been associated with considerable soilerosion as larger areas on steep slopes havebeen farmed. Further south along the Moun-tain Trail highway towards Baguio the exten-sion of intensive vegetable farming onmountain slopes has led to widespread defor-estation and environmental deterioration(Lewis 1992). The particular circumstances ofSagada and Poitan are different. In Sagadalabour formerly invested in swidden farminghas been transferred to vegetable productionon existing terraces while, in Poitan, work hasswitched from hillside to woodcarver's work-shop.

The use of the most productive land ± thepond®elds ± has changed to become moreintensive with high-intensity modern vegetablecultivation in place of sweet potatoes or evenrice in Sagada and, to a much lesser extent, inPoitan. In Sagada the knowledge of the trans-formations taking place further south, wheremigrants had worked and visited, facilitatedinnovation as did the high quality of localeducation and promotion of a form of capital-ism by the US protestant mission since thebeginning of the century. It is dif®cult other-wise to explain the successful adoption of vege-

table production in an area that had fewcompetitive advantages.

The use of some of the potentially mostproductive land has also changed to becomeless intensive. In physical situations whereintensive work was necessary to maintain orrestore pond®eld terraces after landslips ordeterioration after vermin infestation, work hasnot been carried out and the terrace has onlybeen able to be planted with crops not needingirrigation. The competing demands for thetime of the land owner or user ± whether forvegetable production in Sagada or woodcarvingin Poitan ± who may well have other terracesmaking less demand on his time lead to lesstime being spent on the less-productiveterraces.

During the period in which these changeshave occurred most people in communitiessuch as Sagada and Poitan have become moreclosely linked with national society andeconomy. Roads have improved, allowing theeasier movement of goods and people in mostdirections. Schooling has become more wide-spread and effective and itself has causedmigration to other areas as pupils seek educa-tion beyond what is locally available. Migrationhas also become more general and widespreadas knowledge of work opportunities diffusemore widely. There is little evidence thatmigration has led to population decrease inthese two communities. In Poitan census datasuggests an increase in resident population ofabout 25% in each of the last two decades. Thisretention of population is possible only becauseopportunities exist in the locality and throughperiodic migration.

The implications of the changes that havebeen outlined for the regional resource baseare varied. In both areas the regeneration offorest and other vegetation on the hillsides isclearly visible and likely to be continued sincevery little erosion has occurred that will hinderplant growth although research currently inprogress will document this more precisely.The increasing population and improvingliving standards will place greater demands onwater sources at the same time as some farmingpractices also need water for irrigation. In theabsence of detailed hydrological studies it isonly possible to report the widely-sharedperception that water shortages are more



common in both rural and urban areas. Thedevelopment of intensive, agro-chemical-basedfarmings systems in Sagada and, on a limitedscale, in Poitan will alter both soil and waterresources. Sagadans already widely use a ricevariety that will tolerate enriched soils inimicalto traditional varieties. In neither area is accel-erated soil erosion likely so long as vegetablesare grown on terraces.

The deterioration in the former pond®eldterraces that Eder highlighted over a decadeago seems likely to continue. The labourneeded to maintain terraces in the fashiondescribed by Conklin (1980) is not likely to beavailable in the foreseeable future. The work ishard, dirty and demands considerable knowl-edge of low-technology engineering skills notwidespread among younger people. It is likelythat the combination of scarcity of waterresources and physical deterioration of terraceswill advance in tandem and will allow the best-watered and most productive ± probably largest± terraces to be maintained. Other terraces willgradually become smaller, as a result of unre-paired landslides, used for rain-fed crops andsome will eventually cease to be used at all.

This paper has identi®ed a series of changesin resource use. They re¯ect a re-evaluation ofhow people spend their time. As the range ofopportunities for making a living hasincreased, it is hardly surprising that farminghas sometimes become less important and someland has become used differently. It is neces-sary to remember that rural life does not neces-sarily place farming in a primary position. Theland-use changes that have been describedshould also be seen in a historical perspectiveas land that is being used less intensively isusually capable of being brought back intomore intensive production to satisfy changinghousehold needs.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe a great debt to the people of Sagada and

Poitan for their co-operation. I am grateful for the

help and advice given by Carmen and Emilio Abayao

in Poitan on two occasions. I owe a deep debt of

gratitude to the late W.H. Scott for his counsel and to

H.C. Conklin for commenting on different aspects of

my work in Poitan. This paper has bene®ted from

valuable comments from Jim Eder and Rosemary

Preston. The earlier research on which this paper was

based was carried out during the tenure of a Senior

Research Fellowship in the Research School of

Paci®c Studies at the Australian National University.

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