Sea grass weavers build own niche in export market

24 September 2007
By Ephraim Aguilar
Inquirer Southern Luzon

LIBON, Albay—Turning the seemingly unusable sea grass (Rhycospora Corymbosa) into profitable crafts has been a traditional home-based enterprise in Barangay Del Rosario in this town for many generations.

But how could humble workers with simple raw materials and only their bare hands as their tools create their own niche in the local and foreign markets?

Creativity and hard work are their only capital as they rely on government and nongovernment help to establish their business, attests Rey Seda, president of the Del Rosario Handicraft Producers Association (Delrohapa).

Locally known as the “agas” or “ragiwdiw,” the sea grass grows to about one meter high with distinctly triangular stems and leaves that are broad and long.

The sea grass can be found mostly in marshlands and rice paddies in Southern Luzon. It grows well in irrigated lands as when a rice paddy is left for fallowing.

Under the ingenious hands of Del Rosario’s weavers, dried sea grass stalks and leaves are fashioned into baskets, hampers, boxes, containers, bags, place mats, bowls, floor mats, decors and other useful items.

Sea grass products from this town have already reached Italy, Canada, Thailand, Austria, New Zealand and other parts of Europe and the United States through exporters who ask the community crafts association to produce the products for them.

From individual family enterprises, sea grass-weaving became a communal industry with the rise of the Delrohapa in 1997.

Weaving tradition

Seda, 41, recalls seeing his mother weave agas during his childhood years when the craft was a common form of livelihood for almost every family in the village.

Even though sea grass-weaving has evolved into a communal enterprise, weaving traditions in families has been preserved to this day.

Seda says that normally, in a household, women act as weavers while their husbands serve as gatherers of raw materials. Husbands usually have other forms of livelihood like farming and livestock raising.

Emalyn Sazon, 39, Delrohapa finance officer, started weaving when she was 12.

She says she learned agas weaving from her parents and elder siblings. Earnings from the sea grass craft help her send her three children to school.

Sazon adds she has passed on the skill of weaving to her children just as her parents taught her and her siblings the trade.

In the village, raw materials and woven sea grass items are queued on roadsides for drying while housewives weave right in their homes or would meet in groups to weave with other housewives to enjoy a good conversation.

Still existing

In 1997, the municipal government and the regional Department of Trade and Industry saw the market potentials of the sea grass products in Libon.

They organized village-based cooperatives, one of which was the Delrohapa, and gave them technical inputs on how to improve and market their products.

Now, only the Delrohapa of 57 members exists while the other cooperatives in other villages have been dissolved.

Seda recalls that many associations were formed before the Delrohapa, but all failed due to mismanagement.

“The people at that time lost confidence in the associations being formed and chose to work independently without any affiliation.”

Around 70 percent of the weaving households in Barangay Del Rosario are members of the existing association.

The Delrohapa is a member of the Community Crafts Association of the Philippines Inc. (CCAP), a nongovernment association that uses development marketing as a socioeconomic development intervention.

Providing its affiliates with purchase orders from domestic and foreign markets, CCAP is one of the established domestic buyers of sea grass products from Del Rosario.

Biggest earnings

The Delrohapa recorded its biggest earnings this year from the association’s first purchase order of P6,000.

Seda says that in the first two quarters of 2007 alone, from January to July, they already have a total of P1.5-million purchase orders from different buyers combined.

He recalls that in 2005, the association earned a total of P100,000 and in 2006, P300,000.

“Our annual income would depend on samples we created the previous year. The designs are usually prescribed by potential buyers.”

In 2004, their designs failed to meet the requirement of the buyers and caused a decline in sales the following year but this did not deter the Delrohapa weavers.

This all the more inspired the weavers to improve the quality of their work by implementing quality control measures. “We learned that quality is always more important than quantity,” says Seda.

He says they thoroughly screen the finished products being submitted by the weavers.

Direct export potential

Prices of sea grass products vary depending on the size and design.

Small and simple boxes and place mats can be bought for as low as P5 each. Floor mats that are 124 centimeters by 122 centimeters in size are worth at least P250 while bigger sizes and more complicated designs are worth up to P1,500.

The most marketable products are hampers and laundry boxes.

In 2004, the Delrohapa through the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) received a grant from the Canadian International Development Agency (Cida) to fund the installation of facilities and buy production tools.

This was used to help “what was once a poor association without capital and enough means to expand business,” according to Cynthia Olaguer, business development division chief of DTI-Albay.

The DTI is now slowly implementing a development plan for the sea grass industry in Libon with the goal of increased production and market expansion.

Rodrigo Aguilar, assistant regional director of DTI-Bicol and concurrent provincial director of DTI-Albay, says that DTI will continue to give technical inputs to the cooperative to make them fit for direct export. “They must continually work on new designs, improve the quality of their work and increase their workforce.”

Libon is a second class Albay municipality with a population of 66,213 people in 12,572 households. It is regionally known as the “Rice Granary of Albay” but it has identified sea grass as its town product.