(Part 1)

Filipino students are taught that the country is rich in natural resources, many of which are either exploited or taken for granted.

Bamboo, which grows plentifully all over the country, and which plays a significant part in Philippine culture, from being the plant from which the first man and woman sprang forth to being used as construction material and textile.

I spoke to Dr. Julius L. Leaño, Jr., director of the Philippine Textile Research Institute (PTRI) about the agency’s Bamboo Fiber Textile Innovation Hubs for this series of stories. First, we talked about bamboo as a fiber in the Philippines. “Bamboo is not a fiber crop to begin with,” he said. “It’s actually incidental that you can generate fibers.”

There are two ways fiber can be generated from bamboo. The older, more popular one is where the bamboo is dissolved in a solvent, resulting in a silky filament, most commonly used in bed linen.

PTRI uses what it calls a “top down approach,” where they “eliminate components of the bamboo before liberating the fiber.” “It is novel because of the different bamboo species that we have in the Philippines. Of course, it is scalable. These are the two criteria for IP (intellectual property) protection, but the inventiveness is where there is a problem. In the Philippines, there are no existing technologies. Apparently, literature says it has already been protected elsewhere, that's why it cannot qualify as a patent. It's still protected for the next seven years for us to ‘exploit’ for commercial purposes in the Philippines.”

Despite, or perhaps because of its ubiquity in both the countryside and in various aspects of Filipino culture, bamboo is not cultivated on a plantation basis. Supply currently comes from what grows naturally or from small commercial bamboo planting projects initiated by the private sector. “Bamboo is a high-yielding plant. That’s why we aren’t worried about its depletion yet,” Leaño explained in Taglish. “It recovers quickly compared to the other sources of fibers that have lower fiber yield.”

Despite its prominence in traditional Philippine culture, Leaño laments the current lack of appreciation for this wonderful grass. “The valorization of bamboo is low,” he said. “The low hanging applications there are structural, maybe for fences or for skewering fishballs. The value is low, that’s why labor is high. We want to match or at the very least, offer another proposition which you can actually command a better price.”

He illustrated that a bamboo pole, that’s about eight months to two years old (the optimum age for both construction or textile), for example, might fetch a farmgate price of around ₱20 per kilo, but a kilo of bamboo fiber can cost more than 10 times that amount. “The material’s value rises before it leaves the community.”

PTRI set its sights on bamboo and other niche fibers because, “economies of scale are not within our side, so what you have to do is to niche,” Leaño said.

He added that he always tells his team that, “If it doesn’t matter to farmers, forget about it because it doesn’t make sense in government if we leave somebody behind. And these are farmers who are not necessarily dependent on producing the fibers for us, but are actually using byproducts.” For example, after harvesting pineapple fruits, the leaves can be sold to piña textile makers for extra profit.

PTRI buys the fibers, which go to the nearest textile hub to be turned into yarn, which can be used to create textiles. The hope is for the communities near PTRI’s textile hubs to be able to operate the entire process by themselves. This not only requires community members to understand how to operate machinery, standardize and update if necessary their traditional textile culture and practices, but also how to run a textile business. It’s a slow process because community integration is important. “Remember, they are not used to having machines. These are people who would simply rest after lunch. Now they have something to do. Their lifestyle and behavior are changing. Even their spending behavior. They’re forming cooperatives,” Leaño said.

This also serves the growing market for Filipiñana, not just as a fashion statement, but as a signifier of being Filipino. “The creative industries have done a lot to shape our consumer behavior because now, Filipiñana is the default theme for formal events,” Leaño said.

“I think national identity goes beyond weave designs, colors, or iconographies. National identity is more about values. Resilience, care for the environment, the value that you put on women and children, and the value that you put on people who do not share the same voice as others. I think these are all looped into textiles, and when you put that all together, it might not be your ethnic textile, but that textile represents the national identity that has evolved through time.”

Watch for part two next week.