bamboointerview

Bamboo: Sugar Substitute?

Interview conducted in Bali at IV International Bamboo Congress on 6/20/95 between: Segundino Foronda and Moanikeala Akaka.

Recording and Questions by Ed Coll and Carol Bain, transcribed by Carol Bain, Kauai Worldwide Communications, PO Box 662320, Puhi, HI 96766. 808-246-2111.

Interviewees:

SF = Segundino U. Foronda, PH.D
Director, Forestry Research Division, Philippine Council for Agriculture,
Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), Los Banos, Laguna, 4030, Philippines
Manilia Liaison office: Tel no.#822-1651
DOST, Bicutan, Tagig, MM
Telex: 40860 PARRS PM
Los Banos Secretariat: TEL NOS 50014 to 20,50024
Loc. 266,247 FAX : (63)094-50016

MA = Moanikeala Akaka, Trustee from Hawaii
688 Kinoole St., Unit 4A, Hilo, Hawaii, USA 96720
Phone: 808-961-7496 (office)

Interview starts:

MA: My name is Moanikeala Akaka, I am a trustee from Hawaii, Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

SF: My name is Segundino Foronda, I am director of Forestry Research Division

MA: Well first of all, I know some Foronda's living in Hawaii and they may be related to you. In fact we have many Hawaiian/Filipino. You say its quite interesting. You say your father as well as your uncle lived in Hawaii for plenty of years, and worked in the sugar cane plantations as well as the pineapple plantations. You say your father worked there 24 years, before going home, and then you were born?

SF: Something like that. My father used to work at Laupahoehoe in sugar cane in Hawaii for 24 years, then came home to Philippines and never thought of returning to Hawaii.

MA : Very interesting. Well, we are in a situation where Laupahoehoe, down the Hamakua coast which is where your father had worked in for 24 years, is going out of sugar. And we have a situation here where the companies are going out of sugar. We have a situation here where many, with the plantations going out, this is causing a great deal of stress. Families who have been working for sugar cane plantations for generations, sometimes 25 or 30 years, all of a sudden there is this situation where they have no jobs because the sugar cane plantations have gone broke and so we are in the situation where we are trying to find an alternative. And bamboo is an area we find quite enticing.

First of all because of most of our construction materials are brought in from the Pacific Northwest, and it costs a great deal and its becoming fast diminished. The price of wood is costing more and more. So there is a feeling that bamboo could be a viable alternative, not only as a construction material but also to be able to give these plantation workers jobs. There are those of us who would like to grow bamboo as a construction material, or for making furniture possible. After all we are part of the tropics and it only stands to reason that bamboo is very aesthetic, it has so many uses, it has strength, and there are those of us who would be willing to have this as an alternative industry for the sugar cane plantations that are going out.

MA: What have you done in the Philippines regarding this issue?

SF: What we have done in the Philippines...of course sugar in the Philippines in a mainstay of our economy. And of course we are exporting sugar but there are times when the prices are depressed. This motivates some of the plantation owners and also the manufacturers to look at how they could maintain the productivity of their own lands. Now, the lands in Philippines planted with sugar cane is really very diverse. Diverse in the sense that there are fertile areas and there are also marginal areas. and sub-marginal areas.

In one firm, for instance, it is not concentrated in a fertile area. The whole area perhaps with this one firm that is planted with sugar cane would be as diverse as I mentioned: sub-marginal, marginal and fertile areas. But if you look at the overall productivity of the areas for sugar it would be low, for the fertile areas have very high productivity in terms of yield of sugar cane. But in the marginal and submarginal areas the yield is actually much lower. So because of that the overall productivity is pulled down.

So the owners looked into how they could maintain the productivity so somehow they could still be able to export because of the depressed world market prices. Of course, planting bamboo will reduce the area they are going to cultivate for sugar. But nevertheless if they are going to concentrate on fertile lands for sugar, and the marginal and submarginal for diversification, such as for bamboo, the return on the investment will be much higher than the overall ROI (Return On Investment) they will be taking to also plant those areas which are marginal and submarginal.

So what they did is to look into areas of diversifying from sugar cane to what kind of crops that could be planted. And a lot of the things they did look at because they also consulted specialists, like us, was bamboo. And knowing that bamboo was a grass and could easily thrive in their areas, they went into it to really find if it could be profitable or not.

This was done, some specific analysis was done. It was really shown that it is profitable given the current products in demand of the world market, and given the current prices also acceptable in the world market. Bamboo was shown as profitable in the Philippines for these lands.

So the thing here is of course it is not just bamboo being profitable, you have to look at the international economy so you could relate to the overall prices that are being demanded in the whole world. So based on the study they went slowly into bamboo. So those that were marginal and submarginal were delegated and slowly being transformed into bamboo plantations.

At the same time, because bamboo plantation alone without processing it is not going to provide you a lot of benefits, they also went into vertical integration. That is they have to go through the processing aspect of it to provide more value to the overall product that they are going to produce out of bamboo.

So out of this they have put up this factory. Right now they are producing skewers and toothpicks also out of bamboo. And they are exporting. Not that they are exporting a lot already, but they have started making connections with the other countries and the entrepreneurs.

Right now they are in the process basically of planting and locating bigger areas because their projection is that it will be very good business. Not only on the money sense, but also environmentally it will be a very good. It will help in the environmental movement.

And since you are not cutting tropical forests, you are actually improving the forest by adding on bamboo which is going to provide you a better return on the investment considering that you can harvest bamboo in 4-5 years time, that is starting from zero. Whereas if you compare it with planting trees, the shortest possible time would be 6 years. 6 years would be very optimistic. 7 years would probably be the better estimate that is if you are planting fast growing species of trees. But bamboo as I said you could harvest in 4 years, so that is practically doubling it.

And one good thing is once you have planted bamboo you don't have to plant any more, unlike trees. Bamboo, once you have planted, every year after you ar going to harvest, harvest, harvest. But of course you are going to have to do some management activities also. But that is minimum compared to the benefits you will be getting.

So that is the whole thing. And this time the companies are on its way giving the commitment right now. I don't think they are going to let go of bamboo with this company.

MA: What type of bamboo are you planting in this example?

SF: The type of bamboo we are planting we have what we call the Bambusa (blugena or Buluh galah?)...the most important bamboo species in the Philippines. It is a clump forming type bamboo, it has also spines or thorns and this makes it difficult for harvesting purposes but I think this is only if you do not manage the whole clump. If you manage the whole clump you should be able to get rid of the spines, or small branches located in these clumps. The reason I have said this is the most important species located in the Philippines is that it is a very good material for construction. It has special qualities in terms of the strength. It is much stronger than other species of bamboo in the Philippines that we have. Of course we have the sub-species of Bambusa (blugena) and this is used solely for construction purposes.

Of course there are many uses you see here at the Bamboo Congress and the many species of bamboo could be used practically in all these products.

If I remember it correctly I am not sure if whether that the species of the clump I saw growing behind the house my father used to live in Laupahoehoe was Bambusa (blugena) but I know there are lots of bamboo thriving in Big Island.

MA: You were saying it was hard to find banks to fund projects for bamboo production. Why?

SF: Well the situation in the Philippines is that I want to term it as very traditional as far at the attitude and the lending schemes of the banks. Even development banks that are put up by the government are not really that aggressive in promoting enterprises. In the sense that for those projects that will be longer in terms of giving a good return, even 3 years and up, there all considered very risky. The thing is for banks, for a 1-year project they consider that a good one. For a 2-year project would be medium risk. But if it's 3 years and above they consider it risky. We have discussed this with some of the banks in the Philippines and we still trying to convince them to try to look at it from a different perspective to encourage people to look at establishing bamboo plantations. Because right now the return as I said if you are starting at year zero, that means you do not get any returnship; all are inputs until year four. So that is why they consider it risky.

But if you look at forest species, and I look at bamboo as a forest species, five years is a very short term activity.

MA: Right. They said that most softwoods take about 20 years before you are able to harvest it, so I understand what you are referring to.

Question: Your research does demonstrate profitability after four years?

SF: Yes, If I remember it correctly, depending if the site is marginal or submarginal, starting at the fifth year, you start getting some returns. You start harvesting, and then harvest every year thereafter. So depending upon the product you are going to create, whether you are going to sell them as poles, or as materials for your own processing plant it will give you different values or benefits. So the profitability may come after 6 or 7 years, but you would be in the black already after 5 to 7 years. But after the 5th year perhaps you should not experience things being in the red.

Question: Do you have to apply fertilizers or chemicals or does the bamboo just grow?

SF: I'd say it just grows. We have a friend whose term for his method establishing bamboo plantation is Òyou can plant it and forget all about it.Ó Of course, he doesn't really mean you can for the whole thing, he's going to manage it. But unlike trees, you are going to do very little weeding activities or fertilization activities. You can plant bamboo and forget all about it once it is higher than all the other grasses. So its easy.

For weeding activities, bamboo is a grass. And since bamboo is more dominant than other grasses it will dominate all the other species in the fields. And if we are talking about sugar lands as far as bamboo is concerned, it will be a fertile land.

MA: Do you have termites in the Philippines?

SF: Of course.

MA: Have you done any studies in terms of construction materials...Because is costs so much for wood, bamboo can take the place, I'm hoping in Hawaii for it to be used as an alternative for wood. The fact that it costs $2-almost $3 hundred thousand dollars for a home in Hawaii sometimes it is hard.

I was concerned about termites. With the high cost of wood that is imported, I was thinking that bamboo would be an alternative if we can grow our own bamboo. Especially since bamboo is so cheap and because it is fast growing, does not have to be imported, and to me that is very positive.

Termites are a big problem for us in Hawaii. I am concerned about the treatment of the bamboo so that the termites and the treatment do not work against us as far as its use for construction.

SF: As far as termites, there has been a lot of studies to control termites. All you have to do is treat the material. There are various ways to treat the material. There are different chemicals to treat it for the purposes of building houses. You can specify the treatment. And for other purposes you can utilize other chemicals that would be a little cheaper.

We are very much aware of the formaldehyde emission standards that have been set worldwide. Like plywood, you cannot just make use of phenyl formaldehyde anymore. Its got to be revealed the limit is set for emission purposes. So there are chemicals that can be used for treating bamboo.

MA: Do you know about the treatment that does not involve chemicals?

SF: In the Philippians there lots of what we call indigenous technologies and there are people interested in documenting this type of indigenous knowledge. At this point in time there is still examples of older houses where there are no termites affecting them. You can find out how they did prevent the termites from damaging the materials. There is definitely knowledge to provide this kind of assistance.

MA: Very good. I hope we can utilize the knowledge that you have been using in your country so we can transfer and use it in our own situation as we look for the positive aspects of making bamboo a possible alternative for the sugar cane plantations that are now going out of business, and In that way giving our people an economic alternative for right now there is a deep void. There are social problems as a result of the diminishing role of sugar plantations.

Families are highly stressed after working for the plantation 25 -30 years now they are out of work. This puts great stress on the family not knowing where their next paycheck is coming from. We have even had suicides, family abuse going on because of the frustration of the lack of jobs now that the sugar company is going out of business.

MA: Can you speak briefly about spin-off industries related to bamboo...furniture, and how a small ohana might take advantage of a cottage industry using bamboo?

SF: There are a lot of spin-off industries that could be generated out of planting bamboo. Of course we talk here in Bali about industries like handicrafts but of course not only handicrafts you can go into construction materials production. From our own perspective we would like to really go into the production of construction materials because particularly in the Philippians we have no sources of wood materials. Wood has become so expensive in the Philippians. Even though we have been exporting timber until this time, we have cut of the exportation of timber because of this problem. We are really looking at bamboo not as a substitute material but an alternative material because I do not think bamboo should really substitute wood. As a matter of fact bamboo has its own place in the whole construction industry. The thing is, aside from these construction materials you could generate, others like furniture, housewares, toys, giftware, not only handicraft because you talk about novelty so its not just handicraft. So there are lots of other things you could do. I think the limitation is just the creativity of your own mind to think about what you can do with bamboo.

If there is a way about which your institution and my institution can collaborate with some of these activities, I think it would be a very welcome project to cooperate on.

MA: Thank you very much.
____________End of Interview
total words : 2850