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 Coconet is a big help
UCANews
Turning coconut fiber into ropes that form what is called "coconet" is changing the life of many Mauraro farmers. It is also helping to prevent erosion around the world. The discovery was made by Justino Arboleda, a Filipino agricultural engineer, and it has been adjudged the best environmental grassroots project in the world.
Felix Bea used to make only about 10,000 pesos (US$178) a year from harvesting and stripping coconuts. Families in his Mauraro village traditionally cultivate coconut on one-hectare plots to earn a living as tenant farmers, and Bea's family is no exception. Mauraro village in Guinobatan town, 325 kilometers southeast of Manila, is no exception either with regard to its coconut plantations. Sixty-two percent of Albay province's total land area is planted with coconuts.
These days, however, Bea's family can equal its former annual income in about three months, still from coconuts but without growing or selling any more of them. Now, in addition to producing copra from harvested coconuts, Bea's wife and four children turn coconut fibers into twine. There is a market for this, thanks to a native of Guinobatan.
In 1995, Justino Arboleda, a former college dean and agricultural engineer who has since become a businessman, launched a community project in Mauraro to process coconut fiber into ropes which he calls "coconet." The geotextile nets are now used in various countries as protective cover to prevent soil runoff and promote plant growth on eroded slopes or degraded landscapes.
According to Arboleda, the combination of hilly terrain and frequent typhoons in the Bicol peninsula, where Albay is located, gives farmers few crop options and leaves them vulnerable to slumps in copra prices.
"Between harvests we can make at least 150 pesos a day from spinning the fiber into ropes that we sell back to the local coconut technology factory in a nearby village," Bea said. He estimates his family earns about 3,000 pesos a month from this home industry. The twining process is simple, so the children are able to help on weekends when they are not in school, he continued.
Promoting sustainable farming
Coco Technologies Corporation (CocoTech), co-founded and headed by Arboleda, buys husks from tenant-farmer families to produce the twine for the nets. The farmers get all the money for themselves because the landlords generally do not find the husks of value. After the husks are processed, villagers have another chance to make money by making the fiber into twine. According to Arboleda, an estimated 13 billion coconut husks are left to rot or are incinerated as agricultural waste in the Philippines each year.
Even so, Bea pointed out, the coconet-weaving program is subject to a fluctuating demand for the coco-fiber rope. Most orders subcontracted to his community by CocoTech are for markets in China, Japan and other Asian and European countries that have no coconuts.
In August, the Social Action office of the Legazpi diocese which covers Albay province launched planning meetings to find ways in which the Church can help uplift the lives of poor coconut farmers, Father Vita said.
The diocese has looked into cooperating with Arboleda on a coco-fiber venture with farmers, the priest continued, but lack of funds led the Social Action director to encourage local government personnel, such as the officials of Bea′s Mauraro village, to work directly with Arboleda instead. The project requires trucks for hauling, a machine that extracts the fiber from coconut husks and other capital outlays.
For its part, the diocesan Social Action Center runs an agricultural farm that teaches animal raising and sustainable farming, including how to plant crops between coconut trees so families can grow food to eat.
The Mauraro parish is supporting five farmers who are studying at the diocesan training farm, Father Vita said. The pastor explained that 11 of the 19 "barrios" or village districts in his parish have hilly terrain that is not suitable for rice or corn growing but where vegetables and beans can be planted between the coconut trees.
Meanwhile, a worker at the Social Action Center of the neighboring Sorsogon diocese said the Center is encouraging owners of handicrafts businesses to use coconut fiber as a substitute for hemp fiber which they have been buying from other provinces. The diocese, the poorest in the region, helps individuals obtain loans of 3,000-10,000 pesos from a local foundation in order to buy processed coco fiber to use for making mats. This gives the coco fiber produced in Legazpi a wider market.
Coco bricks and coco fertilizers
Coconet was among the 100 technologies recognized for overcoming global environmental problems during a conferment ceremony of the Global 100 Eco-Tech Awards on Sept. 1st in Nagoya, Japan. On November 17, Coconet won first prize in the First World Challenge contest sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation-World and Newsweek Magazine, in association with Shell. Justino Arboleda′s invention was adjudged the best environmental grassroots project in the world and received a $20,000 grant from Shell. It was among 456 entries from 90 countries.
After years of extensive research on alternative uses of coconut, funded by the Canadian government, Arboleda discovered, in 1994, that fiber from the outer covering of the coconut shell can be turned into erosion-control nets and other marketable products. Aside from coconets, rolls, wattles and interlocking blocks for erosion control, CocoTech also produces "coco bricks," "coco peat" (dust) for fertilizers and coir for horticulture, furniture, caps and bags. According to its website, more than 60 percent of the corporation's revenue goes directly to producer-families.
Arboleda completed his agricultural engineering degree and master′s studies at Tokyo University and his doctorate at Bicol University in Legazpi City, Philippines, where he later became the dean of the College of Agriculture. He resigned from Bicol University in 1996 and afterwards co-founded CocoTech to work toward "economic empowerment for marginalized communities" and ways of arresting land degradation.
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