Agriculture in Guinaang, Mountain Province, 1985-1989

Abstract

Between 1985 and 1989, the people of Guinaang, Bontoc carried out several kinds of subsistence agriculture, predominantly irrigated rice farming and dry gardening, and to a minimal extent, swidden agriculture. Their agriculture requires exhausting labor inputs by women, men and even children, and they generally consume all of what they harvest. Most of their labor was devoted to their rice ponds which were dependent on springs and river water. Their most cherished agricultural land is strictly passed from one generation to the next through inheritance, never to be bought or sold. Sufficient productivity that meets the nutritional needs of the community was dependent on numerous factors, such as both family-level and community-level organization to exploit natural resources, the fine-tuning of agriculture to the annual climatic cycle, and rituals which can provoke the good intentions of the ancestral spirits. To assess intensification of agriculture, numerous factors, among them the planting second rice crops, must be examined.