Abaca program aims to keep RP number one

by Maria Kristine C. Conti

The Department of Agriculture (DA) yesterday pledged to increase abaca production to allow the Philippines to stay the number one producer in the world.

Agriculture secretary Arthur C. Yap said good production volume should be about 85,000 metric tons (MT). This year - with last year's typhoons damaging plantations in Bicol and Eastern Visayas, and heavy rains impeding harvesting and drying of fiber - output is expected to be around 69,000 MT.

Exports of raw and processed abaca reached $90.68 million in 2006. About 85% of the world abaca fiber supply comes from the Philippines.

Mr. Yap said the key to improved production is increased planting areas. The DA has an abaca expansion program that aims to develop a total of 50,390 hectares between 2004-2010. For the next three years, the program has 31,000 more to go.

"Most of the [new] plantations being established are in areas free from abaca diseases and are not frequently visited by typhoons," he said

The total abaca area in the country, according to the Fiber Industry Development Authority (FIDA), is 141,747 has.

Abaca is indigenous to the Philippines, but Ecuador and Indonesia have caught on to the abaca trade too. Ecuador is the minority commercial producer, cornering 15% of the market.

FIDA administrator Cecilia Gloria J. Soriano told Business World in a telephone interview that the agency will encourage more farmers to plant abaca. "We're telling them there's a firm, strong market demand," she said.

"Abaca is a secondary crop, it's often not the main source of income. We'll tell them there are good returns, maybe they can intercrop with legumes or vegetables."

But Ms. Soriano said there is also a problem with abaca culture and post-harvest technology.

"Most farmers do no practice proper cultural management. The population density of abaca in one hectare should be about 1,600 hills. Most farms do not have that, they plant below that so the farms will not produce the optimal yield per unit area."

After harvesting, Ms. Soriano said drying the plant also proves to be a challenge: "It affects fiber quality... in summer it's fine, you can air dry it, but during the rainy season, you cannot sun dry it. The farmers do not have the facilities so they bundle the abaca even while [it's] damp."

The FIDA has also launched "Oplan Sagip Abaca", a comprehensive program which aims to eradicate viral diseases affecting plantations in Bicol and Eastern Visayas.

Alberto P. Fenix, Jr. president of the Association of Abaca Pulp Manufacturers Inc. and director of Newtech Pulp, Inc., said the FIDA programs are good for the industry but would show results only after two to five years.

"That's the planting period of abaca, matagal yan (it takes a long time)," he said.

"We'd like to have a larger supply, of course, and this is good, since the FIDA reports production is falling by about 6% by the month this May compared to last May," Mr. Fenix said.

"Abaca has always been a marginal crop," he said, "so the farmers should have incentives to produce more abaca."

Ms. Soriano said abaca pulp, compared to the cordage (rope) and fibercrafts sectors, has the most growth potential because of the variety of end-products. Abaca pulp is the raw abaca fiber.

"It can be converted into specialty paper, for teabags, for meat casings, for cigarette paper, currency paper... also it can be made into disposable gowns, and those shoes for the operating room," she said.

Abaca (Musa textilis) is a species of banana native to the Philippines. The plant is of great economic importance, being harvested for its fibre, called Manila hemp, extracted from the large, oblong leaves and stems. Locally, Abaca is also called Saba Tsonggo.

I've prepared photos of furniture and other things that are made of Abaca.

Be proud, Filipino. Sariling atin 'to!

- Remus Mark

Abaca, the country's premier fiber and known worldwide as Manila hemp, has come a long way from its humble beginning as raw material for our ancestors' coarse and stiff clothing as well as foot wears and slippers. While the abaca is still being used for these purposes up to the present time, its application has expanded and improved tremendously, going beyond simple fiber craft to sophisticated industrial uses. Aside from the traditional cordage application, the fiber is now a superior and important material in the pulp and specialty paper industries and is used in the manufacture of tea bags, meat/sausage casings, cigarette paper, filter papers, currency notes, stencil papers and a host of non-woven product applications.

With the growing concern worldwide for preservation of the natural environment and conservation of forest resources, the importance of the abaca in the industrial sector is envisioned to heighten further.

The abaca plant is indigenous to the Philippines whose warm, wet climate and volcanic soils are particularly suited to its cultivation. It has been grown in the Philippines for centuries and was known to the Filipinos long before the Spanish occupation. When Magellan and his companions arrived in Cebu in 1521, they noticed that the natives were wearing clothes made from the fiber of the abaca plant, noting further that the weaving of the fiber was already widespread in the island.

It was, however, only much later that the commercial or export importance of abaca was discovered. According to historical accounts, an American lieutenant of the U.S. Navy brought a sample of abaca fiber to the United States in 1820. This gave the initial impetus to Philippine abaca trade with the United States that five years later, the first exportation of abaca was made. Since then, abaca became well known as one of the strongest materials for marine cordage because of its superior tensile strength and proven durability under water. With the onset of the 20.th century, abaca fiber has become the premier export commodity of the Philippines.

Because of its importance, the United States Department of Agriculture sent its top agricultural and fiber experts to the Philippines to provide impetus to the production of the fiber for their consumption. Many Americans ware encouraged to establish plantations in the Philippines and in 1909. Davao was chosen as the most suitable area for abaca. At the close of the First World War, the Japanese also took keen interest in abaca for its navy, also choosing Davao as the plantation site. They improved the method of culture introduced by the Americans that raised the industry to a high level of efficiency.

Since abaca was a Philippine monopoly in the 1920s, the Americans were alarmed when they realized that the U.S. Navy was very dependent on it. In 1921, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to cultivate abaca in Central America such as Panama, Casta Rica, Guatemala and Honduras using the most outstanding Philippine abaca varieties.

This was to be the beginning of the end of our abaca monopoly. It was after World War II that a Japanese national, Furukawa, one of the pre-war abaca plantation owners in Davao, started field-testing and successfully cultivating abaca in Ecuador. Today, Ecuador is the only other commercial producer of abaca in the world.

The advent of oil-based synthetic fibers in the mid-1950s, which rapidly replaced natural fibers in their traditional usage, displaced abaca as prime cordage material and precipitated its almost total collapse. Thus, the Philippine abaca industry suffered a slump as prices hit rock bottom that several farmers eventually phased out their plantations.

At the time when demand for abaca was declining, the Philippine government encouraged the development of the fibercraft industry. Fibercraft products like abaca rugs, doormats, hats, coasters, hot pads, linen and handbags became very much in demand abroad. By mid-70s, the fibercraft industry became the second biggest foreign exchange eamer for the abaca industry, next to raw fiber exports.

Significant breakthroughs in technology and processes took place in the ‘60s that brought about development of hew uses for abaca, particularly in the use of pulp for the production of specialty paper products. In 1968, the Canlubang Pulp Manufacturing Company, the first local company to embark on the development of the technology for producing pulp using abaca, made its first exportation. As demand for abaca for pulp use increased, Filipino Investors became interested in domestically producing abaca pulp. Other investors followed suit with most of them tied-up with foreign companies, which, due to strict anti-pollution laws in their respective countries, transferred their pulp operations in the Philippines.

Demand for these kinds of paper increased from year to year, and in time stimulated a revival in the demand for the fiber. By the middle of the ‘70s, abaca pulp had become a tested material for making various kinds of specialty papers and other non-woven disposables.

Abaca is one fiber that has made the Philippines known all over the world. Abaca has, for centuries, been practically synonymous to the Philippines because it is known the world over as Manila hemp. Before the advent of synthetics in the ‘60s, abaca was the principal raw material for the manufacture of the world-renowned Manila rope. In fact, since the turn of the century, abaca was the top export earner of the country. At present, the Philippines supplies about 84 percent of the total world abaca requirement and the rest, by Ecuador.

The abaca industry pontinues to be one of the Country's major pillars in terms of employment generation and foreign exchange earnings. The industry sustains more than 1.5 million Filipinos who; directly or indirectly, depend on it for a living. Direct dependents include abaca farmers, classifiers/sorters, manufacturers, traders, exporters and hundreds of fibercraft processors who provide employment to thousands of Filipinos.

At present, the aqaca industry generates some US$81 million per year from the exports of raw fiber and manufactures.

by Venus G. Villanueva

Kalibo (20 December) -- There's no disputing the fact that Boracay Island is the biggest income-earner for Aklan. In fact, for the period January to November of this year, a total of P10,062,326,737.00 in tourism receipts was realized out of the 547,305 foreign, domestic and overseas Filipino arrivals in the island.

But did you know that in mainland Aklan, a plant which had been in existence even before the Spaniards came has been sustaining the livelihood of many Aklanons, and is now the focus of attention of the provincial government for further development to help improve the economic condition of the people as well as that of the province?

The fiber this plant produces, they say, is the world's strongest; its market is limitless, and according to data provided by the Fiber Industry Development Authority (FIDA) here, the fiber became the premier export commodity of the Philippines at the onset of the 20th century.

This plant is the abaca, and in Aklan, provincial officials are training their sight on improving and further developing the abaca industry here, seen as its strongest crop to improve the lives not only those of abaca farmers but of traders and other industry players like the strippers, classifiers, traders, fiber exporters and processors and manufacturers.

According to FIDA-Aklan, the abaca is one fiber that made the Philippines known all over the world. Abaca has, for centuries, been practically synonymous to the Philippines because it is known the world over as Manila hemp. Before the advent of synthetics in the '60s, abaca was the principal raw material for the manufacture of the world-renowned Manila rope. In fact, since the turn of the century, abaca was the top export earner of the country. At present, the Philippines supplies about 84 percent of the total world abaca requirement and the rest, by Ecuador.

The abaca industry, according to FIDA, continues to be one of the country's major pillars in terms of employment generation and foreign exchange earnings. The industry sustains more than 1.5 million Filipinos who, directly or indirectly, depend on it for a living.

In Aklan just this year, the Provincial Government under the leadership of Governor Carlito Marquez made the much-needed interventions in the province' abaca industry to maximize add-on value to the traditional shipment of abaca fibers for export in bales.

Governor Marquez said however that the abaca plantations in Aklan should be expanded first before the province plans to put up an abaca pulp factory intended to export abaca products in semi-processed and processed form to maximize income of abaca farmers and traders.

Last year, the province established more abaca plantations in four barangays in Libacao, the abaca capital of Aklan, according to Governor Marquez. Plantations were also established in Madalag, Banga and Ibajay, with a total area of 113 hectares with 110 abaca farmer-beneficiaries.

The province provided the beneficiaries with suckers to be able to start planting. Funds were appropriated in the 2007 budget for the purpose out of the 20% IRA Development Fund, P2 million for the Overall Abaca Development Project, P0.4 million for abaca tissue culture and production project and another P0.4 for abaca pulp enterprises.

"In the very near future, we hope to establish an Abaca Pulp Factory in the town of Banga," Governor Marquez said.

The use of abaca fiber in fashioning bags, slippers, gifts and novelty items has also been in practice for a long, long time by many enterprising Aklanons here too. In fact, Malinao, a municipality in Aklan, has identified abaca-based items and products as its OTOP (One Town, One Product), President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's priority program to promote entrepreneurship and create jobs.

Aklan entrepreneurs producing items made from abaca fiber never run out of opportunities to promote their products. These entrepreneurs get to showcase and sell their unique and fashionable items during the celebrations of the Kalibo Sto. Niño Ati-Atihan Festival and Aklan's anniversary of being a separate province from Capiz at showcases facilitated by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the local government, earning well for the producers. The products are also exposed during periodical showcases in malls in the region, at the Kalibo Airport where there is a space provided for Aklan's products, and at the SMED Center at the Provincial Capitol.

Abaca cultivation and trading in Aklan through the years, on the other hand, has made the lives of many Aklanons better.

Renette Teodosio, Libacao town's Information Officer said life has now become easier and better for many abaca planters. Some were able to send their children to college. With electric power already in place even in remote and elevated areas in the town, many were able to buy appliances from their earnings in selling abaca fiber, proof that their economic status has much improved through this plant.

In 2006, according to FIDA, Aklan was able to produce 1,220,400 kilograms of abaca fiber. At an average price of P40 per kilo, P48,816,000 was generated in the province among abaca planters, traders and other players.

With Aklan as the biggest abaca producer in Western Visayas supplying at least 75%-80% bulk, it is really clear that abaca, the world's strongest fiber, is also Aklan's strength in moving further forward the economy of the province and the economic status of the people involved in the industry. (PIA