Poles of hope: Empowering farmers through bamboo technology

Bamboo field day at Brgy. Salsalamagui in Vintar, Ilocos Norte.

By Leilanie G. Adriano

Staff reporter

Vintar, Ilocos Norte—Owing to the diminishing forest resources nationwide, the development of wood substitutes is one of the important interventions a community-based bamboo farm in Ilocos Norte hopes to realize in the near future.

For two years now, a group of 30 farmers locally known as the San Jera Taguiporo in Vintar town adopted a technology on bamboo propagation which led to the establishment of a Community-Based Science and Technology Based-Farm (CBSTBF) planted with at least 300 poles and 200 seedlings aside from existing bamboo poles being taken care of by the association.

Located near the Bislak River and along the hilly areas of Brgy. Salsalamagui, the bamboo areas here used to be unattended and unnoticed until the Mariano Marcos State University invited farmers in the area to attend a seminar, teaching farmers how to improve the production of quality bamboo poles. That time, the university has been campaigning for the adoption of bamboo technology with a growing demand in the market.

If not for the gathering of young bamboo shoots cooked by Ilocanos as “dinengdeng” variants, atsara or adobong labong, the presence of wild growing bamboo in the community used to be underappreciated and underutilized.

Of the several renewable resources, Professor Charlie Batin of the MMSU and project leader of the CBSTBF said bamboo is being rediscovered in many places around the world as a futuristic material substitute of wood.

According to Mr. Batin, bamboo has become the best substitute material in the furniture, handicraft, and construction industries including its uses for industrial purposes, medicine, pharmaceuticals, as a source of food, biofuel, and environmental protection. It can be profitably grown anywhere in the Philippines on practically all types of soil with virtually little care and effort. The bamboo as a plant regenerates faster than trees, has very short growth cycle, and can be harvested three to five years after planting. It is a versatile plant and has listed more than 1,500 uses.

“The prospects of the bamboo industry are bright both in the local and foreign markets,” Mr. Batin said as he managed to motivate more farmers here to adopt the so-called “One node cutting technology and Poles per Year (PoPeYe) technology” now being practice by farmer-associations in at least 11 municipalities of the province including Batac City.

“At first, I thought the technology is hard to follow. Our bamboo plants are scattered. But now, we see the fruit of our labor,” said Artemio dela Cruz, president of the Bagbag Irrigator’s Association whose group also adopted the technology and shared it fellow farmers.

Showcasing the best bamboo technology practices by the San Jera Taguiporo in Vintar, Ilocos Norte, a bamboo farmers’ field day was held on Jan. 29 at the project site where more than 150 farmers from the 11 partner-local government units of Ilocos Norte, including farmer-cooperators, researchers, bamboo entrepreneurs and some visitors from Alaminos in Pangasinan and representatives from the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD) attended.

A farmer cooperator Johnson Buduan from Brgy. Mumulaan, Paoay, Ilocos Norte said there is money in bamboo as long as you know how to take care of it. He said tending to his bamboo farm in Paoay town is rewarding as it made him more profitable when he tried to apply the technologies he learned from attending seminars initiated by MMSU.

Study shows the demand for bamboo in the fishing industry is about 3.05 M poles/year while the agriculture sector is about 37.8 M poles/year. Likewise, the demand in the construction industry is about 14.6 M poles/year. Moreover, the furniture and handicraft industries constitute the biggest share of the demand. It is then expected that the related bamboo industries could generate tremendous income for producers, traders, processors, and manufacturers. At the same time, provide employment opportunities to a substantial number of people.

However, due to overexploitation to various uses, the bamboo resources have become very much depleted. The supply could not cope with the increasing demand. Bamboo stands in the country have been estimated at 39,000 to 52,600 ha with the potential annual yield of 23 to 32 M culms. With the projected increasing annual demand of 113 to 132 M culms in the next 15 years, the annual deficit would be from 90 to 100 M culms (Bamboo Master Plan 1997).

In Region I, there are only about 1,748 ha of bamboo stands. These available bamboo stands can supply only about 37 % of the total demand. For example, Batin said the province of Pangasinan can only sell 14 % of its raw material production to other provinces because of the existence of more than 1,000 primary processors in the province.  Intraregional demand and supply already show the existence of large supply deficit in Ilocos region.

To bridge the gap between supply and demand, Mr. Batin urges more farmers to establish more CBSTBF to produce more bamboo propagules in commercial scale.

Following the farmers’ field day, the inter-government agencies supporting this project vowed to assists farmers in terms of developing more eco-friendly technologies, provision of capability-building seminars and marketing their products.