How Benguet Became a Vegetable Country

A landscape made by more than its climate

Benguet’s vegetable fields supply food on a substantial scale. The Philippine Statistics Authority recorded about 184,261 tonnes of vegetables and root crops in the province in January–June 2026, including 38,052.68 tonnes of cabbage and 26,605.67 tonnes of potatoes. Those are production estimates for half a year. They do not tell us how the industry began, how much money remained with growers, or what farming households ate themselves. Source 1

To understand how Benguet became vegetable country, follow more than the cool weather. Follow the crop to a road, the road to a buyer, and the buyer back to the money needed for the next planting. Then return to the household that supplied the work. A productive landscape is also a history of decisions: which foods to grow, what to buy instead, whom to trust and how to keep a farm going when the harvest cannot wait.

Vegetables did not arrive in an empty economy

Even a colonial account that celebrated American rule contains evidence of an earlier trading world. In The Philippines Past and Present, published in 1914, former interior secretary Dean Worcester described Benguet people carrying coffee and potatoes to the lowlands in exchange for necessities. He also listed cabbage, potatoes, peas, beans, tomatoes, squash and sweet potatoes among goods sold in Baguio’s markets. His racial and paternalistic judgements should not be mistaken for a neutral description of the people. The useful evidence is narrower: produce was traded, sellers knew its value, and a growing town offered additional customers. Source 2

Martin Lewis’s Wagering the Land places Chinese and Japanese market gardeners within southern Benguet’s American-period expansion, especially around La Trinidad. His history also follows the industry northward: a passable Mountain Trail and Bado Dangwa’s bus enterprise helped connect the Buguias area with buyers in the 1930s. The people of Buguias already had fields, livestock and trading relationships. Commercial vegetables changed an existing economy rather than introducing economic life to an untouched mountain. Source 3

That distinction matters to the way we tell the story. Naming a foreign gardener, official or road engineer can help explain one contribution. It cannot, by itself, explain the many households that learned, supplied labour, selected crops and made repeated planting decisions. Nor does identifying an introduced vegetable make the farming knowledge around it merely borrowed. The history worth recovering is the work of making cultivation viable in a particular place.

A school was one part of the growing system

Benguet State University’s institutional history begins with thirty Grade V pupils at La Trinidad Farm School in 1916. It became Trinidad Agricultural School in 1920, reopened after the war in 1946, and developed through several agricultural-school and college forms before becoming a state university in 1986. This chronology shows an enduring local institution for agricultural education. It does not establish that the school invented highland vegetable growing or supplied every farmer’s knowledge; it belongs alongside teaching within families, farms and commercial relationships. Source 4

In Lewis’s account, war devastated Buguias’s livestock, fields and irrigation. The postwar vegetable economy offered a different means of recovery, increasingly connected to Manila demand. Growing commercial crops also required purchased inputs and food, while free-ranging cattle became difficult to reconcile with vegetable plots. The transition changed the organisation of land and livelihood, not simply the colour of the hillside. Source 3

The road changes which crop is worth carrying

Adrian Albano’s long-term study of Kalanguya farming in Tinoc, immediately beyond Benguet in Ifugao, makes the transport question tangible. Early vegetable growers favoured comparatively light garden peas and carried produce for four to five hours to reach Bot-oan in Buguias. In 1992, Tinoc’s road became passable to four-wheel-drive trucks. Better access accompanied a shift toward heavier crops, including carrots, cabbage and potatoes. Trucks could also return with chicken dung for the fields. The transport connection moved agricultural supplies inward as it moved vegetables outward. Source 5

A crop’s value therefore needs to be considered together with the effort of moving it. Imagine two equally productive plots: one beside a usable road, the other requiring a long carry. The same selling price would not create the same return after hauling. This is why a history based solely on altitude and temperature leaves so much unexplained. The physical journey helps determine what a household can sensibly choose to plant.

Albano also found that commercial growers in the studied Tinoc communities increasingly bought rice, pork and chicken from outside. Sweet potato, formerly a staple, could become a purchased snack. These are changes documented in his study area, not a claim that every Benguet household underwent the same dietary transition. Source 5

The next harvest begins with an agreement

In Madaymen, Kibungan, Roji Mae Lorenzo and Nora Sagayo studied the pasuplay arrangements of the Gumpic family and its supplied farmers. The family traced its involvement to 1985. Lilia Gumpic described rent varying with plot size and proximity to the highway. Their advances could cover seeds, fertiliser and crop-protection supplies, but also rice, LPG and emergency cash. Personal expenses were deducted from the farmer’s eventual share. A crop was consequently connected to household provisioning well before anything reached a market. Source 6

The case study follows agreement, cropping, harvest, marketing and the final computation of shares. It also records reciprocal harvest help, with the receiving farmer responsible for feeding fellow workers. These details show why looking only at a vegetable’s selling price misses both the obligations and the support organised around its production. Source 6

A. Milagrosa’s 2007 doctoral research gives a broader view of trading arrangements. It distinguishes commission agents, wholesalers and contractors, and identifies an unequal distribution of farm sizes and sales. Farmers could turn to wholesalers when formal credit was difficult to access. Selling through the lender reduced some costs of finding buyers, negotiating and enforcing agreements, while restricting alternative outlets. An arrangement can be convenient in those respects and still leave the borrower with limited choices. “Efficient” therefore needs a stated meaning; it does not automatically mean equal bargaining power or the best possible return for the grower. Source 7

Who does the work, and who makes the decisions?

Jinky Leilanie Lu’s 2007 study interviewed thirty-nine vegetable growers about work, production resources, household decisions and occupational exposure. Women participated in demanding farm tasks, including manuring and pesticide application. The research also examined the relationship between control of income and decisions over household expenditure. Its scale does not justify a timeless portrait of all Benguet marriages. It does establish why a serious account must ask who performs the work and who controls the proceeds, rather than assume these are always the same person. Source 8

The difference is practical. Counting a household as one producer can conceal several contributors. For an account of a farm’s success to be meaningful, it should recognise the time of the person sowing, weeding, packing or finding a buyer, alongside the person named in a transaction. The labour that makes food available deserves to remain visible even when it is not paid separately.

A successful harvest can still be difficult to sell

Patricia Ann Sanchez and colleagues interviewed 119 farmers in June–September 2017 for research published in 2019. The convenience sample covered Benguet and some neighbouring towns in Mountain Province and Ifugao. Most respondents sold soon after harvesting; lack of storage was common. Interviews also showed that the categories “farmer” and “trader” overlapped because some people performed both roles. The study recommended connecting storage with market information and buyers, rather than treating a cold room as a complete solution by itself. Source 9

The distinction between keeping a vegetable usable and selling it profitably is essential. Extra storage time has value only within a workable arrangement for costs, payment and eventual sale. A farmer who needs money for outstanding expenses may judge waiting differently from a buyer who can hold stock. The history of the industry includes those time pressures as surely as it includes the opening of a road.

Vegetable country contains several kinds of farm

Research led by Leila Landicho in Caliking and Topdac, Atok, documented farming among Ibaloi and Kankanaey residents. The 2021 paper describes sayote grown with trees as well as sayote monoculture, coffee-based agroforestry, mixed vegetables and mixed fruit trees. Farmers used boundary trees, terraces and communal forest management; the researchers also recorded the use of Alnus. These observations complicate an image of Benguet as one continuous field managed in one way. They describe local practices, rather than proving that all environmental pressures have been resolved. Source 10

This variety should shape how we ask about improvement. A measure that suits a tree-integrated sayote plot may not be the right answer for a small lettuce enterprise with perishable packs and a delivery schedule. Ask which farm, which crop and which constraint is involved before proposing a solution. Recognising that diversity also gives growers credit for choices already being made.

Anita’s path from labourer to grower

A study by Christine Grace Sidchogan-Fuchigami and Faith Napudo, published in the journal’s 2022 volume, gives one farmer’s changing role a name. Anita, originally from Asipulo in Ifugao, worked on vegetable farms before moving to La Trinidad in 2006. Training helped her qualify to take over cultivation of a plot previously worked for an employer. Her documented crops included spinach, kale, lettuce and wansoy. Unsold produce returned from the outlet went into her compost. Her story appears within a study of thirty participating organic farmers, not a representative income forecast. Source 11

The same paper describes organisations coordinating crop plans and delivery quantities to address unsold produce and competition among members. It also records learning within families and between employers and workers. Agricultural knowledge continued to move through relationships, while growers experimented with arrangements for selling what they produced. Source 11

The field finally meets the household

A 2025 University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies study by Lady Litz Aquino, Julieta Delos Reyes and Maria Angeles Catelo traced vegetable sources for 180 households: sixty each in upland Topdac, urban Balsigan in Baguio, and coastal Laois in Labrador, Pangasinan. Their results connected local farmers, public markets and other outlets, with differing routes among the three communities. The authors explicitly caution that the mapped quantities describe the one-time survey, not all vegetables traded. It is a useful final shift of perspective: production acquires meaning through the households able to obtain the food. Source 12

Benguet became vegetable country through accumulated connections among land, teaching, work, transport and trade. Its future will be made through those connections too. For the person buying cabbage or potatoes, knowing the history adds more than a place name. It asks us to recognise that a familiar ingredient is also the result of repeated commitments: a field prepared, a crop chosen, work shared, a journey arranged and a household hoping that the sale will support the next planting.