World War II was a major issue that led to the collapse of the abaca industry in Davao. Nearly all prewar plantations were flattened by aerial bombs. Some of the farms were intentionally cut down and transformed into runways, their warehouses converted into hangars.
The condition of this once-flourishing Davao industry further worsened in the absence of government support. To populate Mindanao and revive its thriving economy, proclamations were issued encouraging migrants to settle in the region and open new agricultural ventures in areas the state had declared as alienable and disposable.
On April 2, 1951, President Elpidio Quirino signed Proclamation No. 247, which excluded a 1,023.8574 hectares from the Davao Prisons and Penal Farm (Dapecol) estates in favour of Tagum Agricultural Development Company (Tadeco).
Tadeco, registered and incorporated on December 20, 1950, is owned by the late Don Antonio O. Floirendo and his family. To Floirendo’s credit, the lands covered by the proclamation were cultivated and developed into a flourishing abaca plantation, arguably the most productive and the largest in the post-war period. In fact, the prestigious Fortune magazine dubbed it as the “single biggest abaca plantation in the world.”
While Floirendo saw golden opportunities in abaca, the rest of Davao region was pessimistic. The state was scrounging for funds and there was virtual breakdown in public finance. Foreign exchange income coming from Davao hemp was choked due to the difficulty of transporting abaca fibers from farms due to bad roads for which the government had no funds for repair.
The American Chamber of Commerce Journal dated February 1951 reported that after the Liberation, there was low abaca production in Davao, which affected the income of the province.
The report said: “This low production, brought about by the destruction of the war, the over-stripping of what was left, and the lack of new plantings, is being rapidly, and one may say, triumphantly, overcome by wide-spread new plantings, fostered, to no small degree, and to its credit, by the Central Government.”
The problem of over-stripping, which also affected abaca farms of Dapecol, translated into losses for the government. This went on for years and created uncertainty in the industry. For Tadeco, the stockpile of excess abaca stalks was a good source of profit.
Using his good business, Floirendo, on May 16, 1956, through his agricultural firm, signed a contract with the Bureau of Prisons (now Bureau of Corrections), represented by Director Alfredo Bunye, to decorticate the surplus abaca stalks on a 60-40 sharing basis in favour of the government. The deal was approved by then acting Executive Secretary Catalino Macaraeg, Sr.
The journal made a clear take on how the mounting abaca stalks, unless processed into marketable fibers, would affect the economy, explaining that:
“When abaca cannot be marketed, it naturally is not stripped, but this does not merely postpone the harvest. If the stems, as they mature, are not stripped, they rot, and the waste is truly heart-rending to those brave pioneers who have labored so mightily to bring wild virgin forests under cultivation. The work involved is perhaps the hardest in the world.”
Before the conflict, the journal reported, “the bulk of the abaca in the province was grown in areas close Davao City; the hauls were short, the roads good. These old plantations, even those not destroyed, or ruined by overstripping, or badly infected by the mosaic disease, are now slowly going out of production because abaca cannot be advantageously grown for more than perhaps from 15 to 30 years on the same land.”
Beyond harvesting the stalks and decorticating them into hemp, the issues of preparing the lands, clearing them of trees, securing hills for planting, and cultivating the abaca until they are ready for harvest are only some of the challenges a plantation owner had to face. Floirendo’s ordeal in transforming the lands granted to his company was best depicted by the journal:
“The dense forest jungle is first cleared of underbrush, which, afterward, may or may not be fired, depending on the amount of the cut brush which in places may lie many feet deep. Then, surprising enough from the city man’s point of view and his ideas about forest-clearing, the hemp plants are planted in rows, the correct distances apart, with the towering forest trees still standing. Only after the planting of the hemp, are the trees hewed down.
“The trees are allowed to lie where they fell and the stumps are not uprooted. In a few years, what with the heat and the rain, the ants and other insects, molds and fungi, all this wood has rotted away, the substance adding to the fertility of the soil. Oddly enough, too, the ground on which a great forest once stood and now bearing countless rows of abaca plants, is seen to be fairly level, almost as level as it would have been had it been plowed and rolled and harrowed.
“There is also the very hard work of ditching to obtain the necessary drainage, for hemp growers say that while abaca requires rain the year around, it should be planted on a permeable and well-drained soil because it does not like ‘wet feet’. Then there is the further hard work of plantation road-building, and, of course, the weeding that must be kept up until the abaci plants are high enough not to be overwhelmed by returning jungle-brush.
“It is estimated that it costs around P1,000 a hectare to bring a new abaca plantation into production, which, in Davao, because of the wonderfully rich soil and the plentiful rainfall, will begin in around 18 months from the time of planting.” (Paragraphing mine)
Today, it costs hundreds of thousands to lucratively develop a hectare of abaca, and nearly PhP2 million to cultivate, from clearing to packaging, a hectare of banana ready for export.
