Seagrass' potential as a handicraft raw material

Seagrass' potential as a handicraft raw material

Richard Bach once quoted, "every problem has a gift for you in its hands". This is the scenario that best describes Camarines Sur, which is known as one of the best tourist destinations in the country. Despite an underlying problem that mars the economic development of the said province, its tourism progressing by leaps and bounds.

In the recently held technical seminar series of the Bureau of Agriculture Research (BAR) 7th Agriculture and Fisheries Technology Forum and Product Exhibition, Mr. Emmanuel P. Oroyo of Bicol Integrated Agricultural Research Center (BIARC) presented a BIARC project promotes the exploitation of a, heretofore, relatively unappreciated resource with the potential to answer the local farmers' problem on productivity.

This project titled, Enterprise Development in Flood Prone Areas in Camarines Sur, tackled the long-standing problem of low productivity in the vast flood-prone rice-producing areas (particularly along the Bicol river basin) and the solutions they came up with to solve this dilemma.

In his presentation, Mr. Oroyo said that because of no assurance on return of investment, plenty of farmers left their farms fallowed during rainy season. Due to this fallow period, it resulted to the dense growth of various weeds and seagrasses. However, removal of these weeds and seagrasses incurred additional costs for herbicides and labor.

With this, the PalaYamanan project of PhilRice at San Fernando, Camarines Sur, spearheaded the development of integrated farming system for the flood-prone areas. The new cropping system that was developed gave birth to the local seagrass craft industry. Rather than considering the seagrass as a "pest" that should be removed, farmers were taught to look at it as a potential handicraft raw material.

Seagrass (Rynchospora corymbosa) is a coarse edge plant with distinct triangular broad leaves measuring about one meter long. Locally, it is called ragiwdiw and is also known as agas elsewhere in the Bicol region. It grows abundantly in flood-prone areas of Bicol along swamps, streams, canals, and ditches. The salapid, the hand-twined dried stalks from the seagrass, can be used as a primary raw material in handicraft-making.

The potential of seagrass in the handicraft industry paved the way for BAR to extend institutional support. Through BAR's provision of handicraft welding machine, other production tools, and construction of curing room for produced seagrass handicrafts, it is now easy for the handicraft-makers to maximize the seagrass craft industry's full operation. They can now accommodate large bulk of orders and supplying it to the local handicraft industry market mainstream.

The increasing popularity of using seagrass fiber among the handicraft-makers is due to its comparability to abaca sheath. Based on the comparative analysis done between seagrass fiber and abaca sheath as raw material for handicraft production, seagrass fiber cost less (P40.00 per bundle) than the abaca sheath (P300.00 per bundle), seagrass only takes 2-3 months before maturity for harvesting than the abaca sheath which takes 18-24 months, and seagrass fiber has greater resistance to molds during storage and rainy season than abaca sheath.

As an off-farm source of livelihood, engaging in seagrass enterprise is enough to sustain the daily needs of an average household. Amounting to P0.60 per meter, an average household (5 members) can produce 500 meters of salapid which fetches about P300.00 per day.

According to BIARC Manager Ms. Luz R. Marcelino, they have a wide array of seagrass craft ranging with functional uses such as trays, bags, slippers, and hampers to decorative items. She added that the seagrasscraft makers are continuously experimenting and generating new products. File system box and folder kit are the new seagrasscraft products.

At present, it is noted that the enterprise development in flood-prone areas project in Camarines Sur brings about additional employment opportunities among the residents due to the increase of 20-35 percent in bulk orders on seagrasscraft. The economic activity in the community is visibly ensured by increasing number of households engaged in seagrasscraft production.

For future directions of seagrass craft industry, they are leaning on identifying research areas for optimum production and continuous product development of seagrass-based agribusiness enterprise. They also envision of upscaling into municipal-level the craft-village handicraft production enterprise. They plan to cluster the direct and indirect keyplayers in seagrasscraft industry in the locality to insure stable source of raw materials and skilled workforce to meet the increasing demand of the commodity, and strengthening and maintaining linkage mechanism between the target organizations and supporting entities to sustain the local handicraft industry.
Undeniably a unique and profitable enterprise, the seagrasscraft industry has been officially identified and promoted as banner commodity of the town of San Fernando under the One-Town-One-Product (OTOP) Program of the Department of Trade and Industry.