Senator pushes for more developed PH bamboo industry

TACLOBAN CITY, June 30 -- Senator Cynthia A. Villar is pushing for higher production and a more diversified use of bamboo in the Philippines, using China as a model.

Villar, who attended the Global Bamboo and Rattan Congress 2018 in Beijing, China on June 25-27, said developing the country’s bamboo industry is key to alleviating farmers from poverty.

“The participants were taught not only the good part of growing bamboo, but with value processing to provide higher income to our farmers,” Villar told reporters during a press briefing at the Tacloban Airport complex on Friday.

The senator found out that in some parts of China, a farmer with a one-hectare bamboo plantation earns USD30,000 or about PHP1.5 million a year.

“The China experience tells us that there’s a bright future in planting bamboos. We can learn a lot from them. We can send our students there to learn bamboo-planting and production technologies. Their technology is way advanced with 60 percent of (the) world’s trade in bamboo is from China,” she added.

In China, bamboo has been used as construction materials, drainage pipes, and water pipes.

In the Philippines, she observed that the uses of bamboo are limited to home decors and furniture.

The Chinese government is willing to finance the construction of a bamboo processing plant in the country, but this will depend on the availability of raw materials, she said.

The Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCAARD) estimated that the country has 39,200 to 52,700 hectares of bamboo plantation, distributed as follows: 58 percent in forest lands; 5 percent in government plantations; 7 percent in private plantations; and 30 percent in natural stands in private lands.

Bamboo thrives well in the country with its tropical weather, but Filipinos have yet to realize the economic value of bamboos, Villar noted.

Bamboos belong to the family of grasses, Gramineae or Poaceae. Of the 62 bamboo species growing in the Philippines today, only 21 are native Philippine bamboos, according to PCAARD.

Villar, Senate’s agriculture and food committee chairperson, was in the city to grace the Sangyaw Parade of Lights on the eve of Tacloban’s fiesta celebration in honor of Sr. Sto Niño de Tacloban. (SQM/LAAA/PNA)