VIRAC, Catanduanes – When prices of abaca were soaring before the global downturn, strippers of the main cash crop of the province were regulars at the cockpit arena here.

“They [placed bets bigger than those of government employees],” said Lita Gianan, in charge of the tissue culture laboratory of the Fiber Development Authority (Fida) office in this capital town of the country’s biggest abaca producer.

Now that abaca prices have tumbled, the palahag-ot (strippers) are nowhere to be found in the arena. “They’re gone,” said Gianan, whose husband is a cockfighting aficionado.

Abaca fiber [known worldwide as Manila hemp] shed up to three-fourths of its prices from the middle of 2008 to April, data from Fida show.

The sharp drop in prices was disastrous for one stripper in Baras town, 25 kilometers from Virac.

Hanging from a tree

Felix Tresvalles, 59, was found dead hanging from a tree in Barangay (village) Buenavista on April 12, a Black Saturday.

The Baras Police said Tresvalles used a nylon cord to hang himself just behind the cemetery.

Remedios Tresvalles, 47, said her husband had been deeply troubled by the low abaca prices. “How will we survive now that prices have collapsed?” she said, quoting what her husband had told her hours before he took his own life.

The price of a kilo of the S2 grade fiber (excellent) plunged from P64 in June-July last year to P37 in April, while that of M1 (coarse) fell from P40 to just P11, according to Fida.

Remedios said a trader was buying abaca fiber from her family at P28 a kilo, down from P58 last year and lower than the rice she was getting from the trader at P30 a kilo.

Under a sharing system followed in the province, strippers get two-thirds of the abaca fiber and the landowner, one-third.

“Sometimes we can strip 100 kilos of abaca per week,” the widow said at dusk on May 11 while her married daughter’s family was lighting fire in the kitchen to prepare food for supper.

Necessities

From its income from stripping, the family buys food, (including rice), sugar, coffee and other basic necessities.

Asked if her husband would have committed suicide had abaca prices not collapsed, Remedios said: “He might not have killed himself. [When prices were up], our income was more than enough for our needs. We could even give money to our children. Then just like that, he was gone.”

Besides abaca prices, Tresvalles had expressed concern about his wife’s health.

Before Holy Week, Remedios and her husband moved to their daughter’s small house in Buenavista from Barangay (village) Sulong, where they had been stripping abaca, so she could seek medical help.

The Tresvalleses, who are from Barangay Batorinao, move from one place to another to find work. They would set up temporary shelter in the place where they would harvest abaca.

Remedios said she had been coughing and suffering from headaches so painful that she wanted to bang her head against the wall.

“Look at what we’re in. You are sick and the prices of abaca are down. What will happen to us? You can no longer help me [in stripping abaca],” Remedios quoted what her husband had said.

Last conversation

She responded that the family could not do anything about the situation. “That was our last conversation,” Remedios said.

The night before he died, Tresvalles went fishing with his son-in-law, Andres Tenerefe, on a banca in the waters off Barangay Kagraray, about five kilometers from home.

They used kitang, a line with more than 1,600 hooks that had shrimp as bait.

At about 1 a.m., after three hours out on the sea, they headed home with just one sikag, a fish twice the size of dilis (anchovy), Tenerefe said.

Deeper into despair

The meager catch might have driven Tresvalles deeper into despair, according to Rey Briquillo of the Baras Police.

Tenerefe said that when he woke up at 6 a.m. his father-in-law was nowhere to be found in his sleeping space on the floor of the small house.

“We looked for him,” the son-in-law said. “He was found hanging from a hagupit tree.”

Police officer Briquillo said there was no indication of foul play. The death, according to a police report, stemmed from a “family problem,” referring to loss of income from low abaca prices and the wife’s failing health.

The family was so hard up that Tenerefe had to ask for scrap plywood for his father-in-law’s coffin.

Lorenzo Tariman, head of Fida Catanduanes, said strippers like Tresvalles might have panicked because of the sharp drop in prices. ”If you depend on the crop, you will really panic because the prices abruptly went down,” he said.

Out of school

Eighty percent of the province’s 232,000 inhabitants depend on abaca, and strippers, who are landless, are among the poorest, according to Tariman.

The collapse of abaca prices has led to a drop in the enrollment rate among children of strippers. Lenlen Taño, whose father is a stripper in Barangay Summit in Viga town, where the main livelihood is stripping, said many high school students in the village “did not enroll this school year.”

She herself had to stop for one year and work as a household help in Manila, so her sister could finish high school. Taño, 19, now a freshman at the Catanduanes State Colleges on a scholarship, has six younger siblings.

She said families of strippers, including her own, were also facing the constant threat of lack of food.

About 15,500 farmers raise abaca and about the same number is engaged in stripping the crop planted in 23,810 hectares in the province, according to Fida.

Production skyrocket

Spurred by strong demand and high prices, production on the island zoomed to 62.5 million kilograms in 2007 from 6 million to 7 million kilograms yearly in 2003-2006.

“The increase in volume was due to high global prices. The area planted to abaca also expanded due to high demand, and many engaged in stripping,” said Domingo Panti, a fiber development officer. Among the provinces, Catanduanes has the biggest land area planted to abaca.

Panti said the decision of Chingbee Trading to put up a pressing machine (an equipment for making bales) in Sta. Cruz, Virac helped push up production.

Nationwide baling of abaca fiber rose 33 percent to 67,636 metric tons in 2008 from the previous year, “an unprecedented level in 34 years,” says Fida’s Fiber Market Report.

Organic

The demand was partly driven by the global movement to go “green” and “organic.” Fida says abaca’s superior qualities as a natural fiber are suited for industrial and commercial applications. (See Uses of abaca.)

Abaca is considered the strongest of natural fibers. It is three times stronger than cotton and two times stronger than sisal fiber. It is also more resistant to salt water decomposition than most vegetable fibers, making it ideal for making rope and cordage, according to Fida.

Buying frenzy

Josephine Regalado, Fida deputy administration for projects, said the past two years saw a buying frenzy that pushed up the price of S2 fiber to up to P70 a kilo.

“Buyers were acquiring all the abaca they could get their hands on,” Regalado said. ‘‘They stockpiled fiber and semi-finished products.”

Demand weakened at the start of the year as the global downturn took hold and the country’s main export markets like the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan slipped into recession. Buyers released old stocks, further depressing prices, according to Regalado.

The slowdown led to the suspension of the operations of Pacific Cordage Corp., a hemp producer in Sto. Domingo, Albay, in December.

Abaca prices may not recover anytime soon. Stripped of the wherewithal, abaca workers are not expected to frequent the cockpit arena as they struggle to scrape a living.

By the numbers (2008)

86 percent
Share of world abaca supplied by the Philippines

77,066 metric tons
World consumption of abaca fiber

$99.46 million
Export earnings of raw fiber and manufactured items

1.5 million
Filipinos directly or indirectly depending on abaca for a living

100,597
Number of farmers involved in abaca production

152,706 hectares
Area planted to abaca in the country

77,389 metric tons
Abaca fiber produced in the country

79 percent
Consumption by domestic producers of the country’s abaca fiber output. Mostly for processing into pulp, cordage and handicrafts.

Buying price of hand-stripped abaca
(in pesos/kilo)

 Grade 2004 2007 2008 2009 
 (Jun 17-19) (Jun 27 to Jul 3) (Apr 23-29) 
 S2 38.21 43 64 37
 S3 19.62 26 42 17 
 I 36.97 41 62 35
 G 32.52 32 52 25
 H 15.51 23 41 13 
 JK 27.48 28 48 20
 M1 12.98 21 40 11
 Y 18.44 25 40 17
 OT 0.81 0.50 0.50 1