
THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 87 
of the standing crop. With the Nabaloi it is bad form 
to rent a camote field: the rich must grant its tempor- 
rary use to the poor gratis. 
Local conditions determine the varying proportions of 
rice and sweet potatoes consumed. Thus among the 
Ifugao, the rice grown in the Kiangan district is esti- 
mated to bear a proportion of 9 to 2 to sweet potatoes; 
whereas in neighboring Banawe, the ratio is only 3 to 7. 
But there is no question of the preference of the 
Filipino. The sweet potato soon palls as a steady diet, 
whereas rice becomes a habit like wheat, or even an 
article craved. The Ifugao reckons as kadangyang or 
rich only those families that grow enough rice to last 
them, even though eaten at every meal, the year round. 
The mabitil or middle class are those whose supply gives 
out before the next harvest is ripe. The poor or 
nawatwat use sweet potatoes as a staple, helped out 
perhaps by the rice which they manage to raise on some 
little patch, or which they receive as wages for tilling 
the fields of the wealthy. 
In third place in Philippine agriculture maize is 
probably to be reckoned. This was of course introduced 
from America, but has long since formed an integral 
element of native farming, even among the most remote 
pagans who until recent years had never set eyes on a 
Caucasian, much less heard of the aboriginal American 
developer of the grain that they grew. The spread of 
useful plants is sometimes incredibly rapid, especially 
in the tropics. Two hundred years sufficed to establish 
not only maize but tobacco and several other American 
plants through large parts of the East Indies, Asia, and 
Africa as firmly as if they were indigenous. 
Of other annual crops, millet and beans were pre- 
Spanish, and are likely to have been introduced from 
Asia, perhaps in the first period of Hindu influence. 



