Bamboo in Hawaii

by Carol Bain (5-1-96)

Carol Bain attended the IV International Bamboo Congress held in Bali Indonesia in June, 1995, that attracted over 500 participants from 37 countries who are researching, testing and promoting the use of bamboo around the world. The following article highlights the information that may be applicable for the future of bamboo in the Hawaii islands.

The Potential of Bamboo for Economic Diversity in Hawaii

As the big sugar plantations are slowly exiting the Hawaiian Islands, economic planners are searching low to high-tech for replacement industries. The fear and desperation to find a solution for employment is almost palpable along the Hamakua Coast, where hundreds are out of work since their sugar plantation closed down.
It is agreed that diversification is the key toward developing a strong economy. With land becoming available that once grew sugarcane, it is natural to look toward agricultural products to provide quantities of jobs.
As an isolated group of islands in the Pacific, Hawaii needs to develop local resources toward a sustainable, more self-reliant future.
Our residents are paying high shipping costs for basic items like furniture and building materials for houses. The final price of importing materials for contructing an average two-bedroom furnished home are out of reach for many.
Five-piece living room sets of bamboo furniture may cost $250 from Thailand or Indonesia, but by the time the shipping container costs are covered and delivery and taxes are added on, the price may have increased to as much as $4,000
Costs for these basic living items, housing and furniture, could be reduced dramatically if we developed local resources for building materials.
What one resource grown in Hawaii could provide plenty of jobs and raw material to construct furniture and housing? It's growing right under our noses. It is bamboo.
The plant is aesthetically beautiful, has literally thousands of uses and is known as one of the fastest growing aborescent grasses in the world. As a high yield agroforestry product, bamboo is being considered as one of the answers to provide a sustainable future in a world of diminishing resources.
Asia certainly thinks so. An estimated seventy-five million homes each year are needed in Asia, and they are looking to bamboo to provide them.
Bamboo withstands up to 52,000 pounds of pressure per square inch, rivaling steel. Dried bamboo is lightweight as aluminum yet is known for its high strength-to-weight ratio. In Costa Rica, homes that used bamboo withstood the 1992 earthquake that reached 7.6 on the Richter scale at its epicenter. Properly constructed bamboo framed homes have demonstrated excellent wind strength.
The Philippines has almost the identical land change situation as Hawaii. Some of the country's large landholders growing sugar for export, aware of the falling sugar prices on the world market, have already diversified to bamboo.
One company has planted bamboo on their marginal and submarginal lands, while keeping their more fertile land in sugar. "Bamboo was shown as profitable in the Philippines for these lands.", according to the Director of Forestry Research for the Philippine government, Dr. Segundino Foronda.
"From our own perspective we would like to go into the production of bamboo construction materials due to our lowering resources of wood materials in the Philippines. We are really looking at bamboo not as a substitute material but an alternative material."
As far as establishing a bamboo plantation in the example set in the Philippines, the transition from sugar to bamboo was smooth. The plantation workers had no difficulty adapting to the similar propagation techniques.
"No fertilization is needed for bamboo on these marginal lands, just plant it and forget it," Dr. Foronda said. Cultivation and harvesting can be accomplished with simple tools, putting control directly into farmer's hands.
Moanikeala Akaka, OHA Trustee, hopes that type of employment transition, from sugar to bamboo plantation, could occur also in Hawaii. "There are social problems as a result of the diminishing role of sugar plantations here," said Ms. Akaka. "We have had family stress, suicides, family abuse going on because of the frustration of the lack of jobs now that the sugar company is going out of business."
"There is a hope that bamboo could be a viable alternative, not only as a construction material but also to be able to give these plantation workers jobs," said Ms. Akaka, "and perhaps the Office of Hawaiian Affairs can play a role in the development of the bamboo industry in Hawaii."
For an agroforesty product, bamboo is considered a high-yield renewable natural resource. Ply-bamboo is now being used for wall paneling, floor tiles, bamboo pulp for paper making, briquettes for fuel, and raw material for furniture and housing construction.
Bamboo and its related industries already provide income, food and housing to over 2.2 billion people worldwide. There is a 3-5 year return on investment for a new bamboo plantation versus 8-10 years for rattan. Other forest species of hard and soft woods can take twice that long.
Demonstrating the economic viability of a relatively "new" industry that takes 5 years to show a return on investment will require patient promotion and education, because banks and traditional loan institutions consider any investment over 3 years "risky".
Though large-scale commercial production of bamboo has not been promoted before, this useful plant has long been present in the Hawaiian islands.
Various uses of `ohe, bamboo, by Hawaiians included musical pipes or flutes, water containers, bamboo rattles called puili, and even fire blowing tubes. `Ohe Kahiki, introduced from Tahiti, was a type of bamboo with short, green joints and large leaves that produced a hard wood used for knives, fishing poles, and house construction.
In Hawaiian legend, Maui's grandmother Hina planted a variety of bamboo she had brought from Tahiti. When Maui saw it, he reached for it and cut his hand o the sharp edges. To prevent this from reoccurring, Hina refashioned bamboo to be round and smooth on the outside, as it is today.
In Hopi Indian origin myth, the lowest of the four worlds was so crowded that two gods went down and planted various plants in hope that something would grow to a height that would allow escape from that unhappy place. Finally, bamboo grew tall enough to allow people to climb its joints to a higher world.
Bamboo is known for its ability to grow quickly, and is even used for erosion control. One species, Gigantochloa levis, can grow over five meters in height in just twelve weeks. No wonder this is called the bamboo "shoot" phase.
Bamboos were once considered weeds in forestry practice whereby attempts were made to prevent or control their growth. Currently in Malaysia, due to the rapid expansion of bamboo-based industries, bamboos have become the second most important non-timber forest crop after rattan. Of the commonly utilized bamboo species in Malaysia, only nine are suggested for plantation.
Hawaii is fortunate to have one of the better clumping species: Bambusa vulgaris. The stem, called a culm, is glossy green and sometimes yellowish when mature. Its natural habitats include forest fringes and river banks. This species can be used for paper making, construction, edible shoot production, and agricultural and fishing materials.
Bamboo is a perennial grass belonging to the sub-family Bambusoidae of the family Graminae. It has a woody stem arising from rhizome buds. The buds will develop into bamboo shoots usually at the onset of the rainy season.
The plant is characterized by its cylindrical, mostly hollow culms with a series of nodes and internodes. Most species have small branches at the nodes of culms. Wall thickness varies and density ranges from 500 to 800 kgm.
Commonly catagorized as a "runner" or a "clumper", the runner variety sometimes spreads so quickly it can frighten the small gardener away from all species of bamboo entirely. However, rural areas and back yards in Hawaii have tall clumps waiting for the entrepreneur to harvest.
The Philippines study found that a bamboo plantation alone without processing will not provide many benefits. Vertical integration, putting raw bamboo through a processing aspect, is going to provide more value to the overall product, and provide more local jobs as well.
Countries that already appreciate the uses of bamboo, such as Viet Nam are seeing even more potential for construction materials development. This includes a new "ply-bamboo" that is actually stronger that standard plywood.
"Hawaii can develop a processing plant for approximately $800,000 that can create laminate, chipboard and plywood out of bamboo for local construction or export," according to Doug Lewis, owner of Bamboo Hardwood Company. He and his partner recently constructed plant in Viet Nam that is beginning production of similar bamboo materials.
The initiation of this kind of industry will take a ten-year commitment of 2,000 acres planted in bamboo. Though most traditional banks and lending sources may consider that duration before a return on investment too risky, this alternative industry may be just the kind of venture for jobs that OHA is looking for.
Trustee Akaka said, "It only stands to reason that bamboo is very aesthetic; it has so many uses; it has strength. There are those of us who would be willing to have this as an alternative industry for the sugar came plantations that are going out."
"Bamboo has been used in the America's for over 9000 years," according to Columbian architect, Oscar Hidalgo, "and the Incas developed a basic platform-type construction 3,000 years ago which is still used today in Columbia."
Hidalgo has found examples of homes in Columbia using bamboo framing that have lasted over 100 years, thus demonstrating solutions to destructive insects such as termites and the powder post beetle.
Though covered bamboo may only last ten-fifteen years, a thin coating of mortar will keep the moisture out as well as the insects. Fungus and bugs love bamboo like any other wood in this tropical climate. Methods using chemicals for preservation are generally more effective for the protection of bamboo than the non-chemical methods, but they are not always economical and applicable.
Traditional, non-toxic treatment methods include water leaching, ponding, boiling, smoking and clump-curing. Costa Rica and Bali successfully use a sap-displacement method called Boucherie, where a boron-type preservative is pressured into the culms.
Bamboo is one of the strongest building materials. Bamboo's tensile strength is 28,000 per square inch versus 23,000 for steel. In the tropics is it possible to plant and grow your own bamboo home. In a plot 20m x 20m2, in the course of 5 years, two 8m x 8m homes can be constructed from the harvest. Every year after that the yield is one additional house per plot.
By the early 1980's, Costa Rica desperately needed to develop local raw materials as housing solutions because they were destroying 1% of their forest timber per year. Rural areas of Costa Rica needed a cheap and locally available resource material for housing in order to stop the migration to the city.
With the end of their tropical rainforests in sight within this generation, the Costa Rica Proyecto Nacional De Bambu (National Bamboo Project) met the challenge by introducing bamboo to the country. The project resulted in 200 hectares, 494 acres, of genus Guadua planted over an eight-year period. Subsequently, many bamboo framed houses were built in rural areas and suburbs which cost only $7000 U.S.
The new homes built in Limon, Costa Rica, with bamboo framing reinforced with mortar made such a strong composite material they withstood the violent 1992 earthquake when, next door, the traditional wood home collapsed. Even homes caught in subsequent mud slides kept their integrity better than the traditional construction and have tested well for wind resistance.
Costa Rica is now building 10 per cent of total house construction with bamboo, and the goal is to reach 100 per cent and to develop the furniture industry in the rural areas.
In a report on the future of housing technologies by Dr. M.A. Sattar of Bangledesh, bamboo had many advantages including good growth and mechanical properties. However, the gaps in research include a lack of information on specific species for strength, and testing methodology standards are not set. As far as a construction material, bamboo is not a cylinder but is tapered. Fastening devices need to be investigated and no code of practice is set internationally.
Solutions to these include rural based enterpreneurships and cost assessments including machinery and tools. Dr. Sattor saw a direct need for government subsidy to implement bamboo industry in underdeveloped and even so-called, "developed" countries.
Technical feasibility for bamboo construction materials and other products will need promotion and application of research.
The International Network of Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) has been instrumental in developing research exchange about bamboo propagation and uses. Though developing countries are taking advantage of the information, more industrialized or so-called "developed" areas like Hawaii should not overlook these resources.
The Netherlands have made great strides in standardizing the building codes for bamboo housing. However, research is still needed in many areas of propagation, management, and standardization of testing methodology for all species has not been set.
Commercial scale bamboo production is technically feasible in many tropical envrionments. Kent Fleming, at the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, has developed a practical methodology for calculating the financial and economic cost and return associated with bamboo production.
Internet users who want more information about bamboo, locate the Bamboo Web at http://www.kauai.net.