Clearing our own Ikalahan path
Experiences in marketing multi-purpose tree products in the Philippines
by Delbert Rice
Who and where are the Ikalahan?
The Ikalahan are one of several tribes from the Cordillera and Caraballo Mountains in Northern Luzon, Philippines, which are commonly though carelessly lumped into a social led generic term 'Igorot'. The northern members of this same tribe go by the name Kalanguya.
Although very individualistic, we Ikalahan have a strong community life. Frequent celebrations reinforce the sense of community and help even the youngest children to identify who 'belongs' and who is 'outside' the community. The tribal elders who serve by ascription. represent unity, righteousness and justice in the community. Most crimes and community disturbances give rise to the calling of a Tongtongan which serves as a tribal court, presided over by the elders. Every concerned person is free to take part in the discussions. Judgement is finally rendered by the elders and the punishment, if such is appropriate, is designed to bring about reconciliation between all parties concerned. Most problems can be solved in a matter of a few days or a month, at most. They go to great lengths to be sure that everyone in the society is in good relationships with everyone else. They will even intervene, uninvited, in marital disputes if it seems that the community is likely to be disturbed. Their interventions are usually successful.
The Tongtongan concludes with the butchering of a number of pigs served with rice to make appropriate meals for the community. The number of pigs will be determined by the difficulty involved in accomplishing reconciliation. Folk dancing always follows the eating and individuals and groups who were formally in conflict and brought together in the fellowship dances. The combination of punishment followed by fellowship is very effective in making peace. The openness of all meetings serves as a very effective means of education which deters other people from repeating the same mistakes.
Frequent communication between the Ikalahan and various lowland societies, especially the Ilocano, have shown the mountain people that the social and legal systems which the lowland societies adopted from the Spanish and the Americans are neither effective nor efficient. It is certainly more fun and educational to have the whole community join in an open discussion of the problems and then follow it up immediately with eating and dancing. The alternative seems to be sitting stolidly in front of a paid judge while paid lawyers seem to play games and drag out discussions for months and years while missing the goal of reconciliation entirely. It seems to be a poor alternative.
The Kalahan Educational Foundation, of which I am Executive Officer, was established by the tribal elders of the Ikalahan in 1973 in order to acquire a legal personality. Through it we were able to establish our own high school, the Kalahan Academy for our young people who desire to obtain additional education. This we did in order to prevent emotional and cultural damage.
We were also able to get control of nearly 15000 hectares of Ikalahan tribal lands with an instrument now known as Communal Forest Stewardship Agreement, although at that time it was simply called Memorandum of Agreement Number 1, being the first of its kind. Figuratively the Ikalahan have had to clear the brush from every meter of their path to development in the uplands because it seems that no one else has walked the trail ahead of us. We are honoured however that many have chosen to follow in our footsteps.
What have the Ikalahan done with their ancestral lands?
Before the people obtained their land security there was no motivation for them to protect or improve any part of the land. They knew' like many others' that the more they improved the land the sooner someone would come to take it away from them. Even so, they had to fight off several land grabbers, but fortunately they succeeded without resorting to violence. After having finally obtained their Memorandum of Agreement, however, the situation changed dramatically. They knew that they could now invest their time and energies in developing their land with assurance that their grandchildren would benefit from the investments. Again they had some land grabbers to fight off but it is easier now that they have the legal documents to support them.
They first established regulations and policies for protecting the forests, especially the critical watersheds. In the first year they did not distinguish between primary forests and secondary forests because their primary concern was watershed protection, not biodiversity. This was uppermost in their priorities because it is explicitly required in the Memorandum of Agreement.
Another primary concern was of course to provide a good livelihood for the population. It was finally decided that they should continue to produce their own food supplies and building materials and as many other things as possible from within the Reserve so that they would not become too dependent on the cash economy, which is often dangerously unstable. They also decided to try to produce what cash they needed from the forests rather than allow anyone to change forest lands into agricultural lands for the purpose.
What about forest fruits?
As we studied the resources we discovered many wild fruits within the forests, several of which made good jellies or preserves. The most obvious one was the common guava from which we eventually produced three products, jelly, jam and butter. Next we discovered that the fruit of the 'weed' tree known as dagwey (Saurauia subglabra, Merr .) could be processed into a raisin-like preserve. People loved it, so we expanded our processing activity only to find out that many of the trees had been destroyed because people did not know their value. Now we are planting thousands more.
After marketing the preserved fruit for a short time we discovered that we could also make jelly and marmalade from the by-products. That was when we decided to promote food processing as a basic source of income and looked around for other faults, both wild and cultivated, which could be processed. We now have a total of 15 recipes which we are marketing.
The marketing specialists insist that we did things backwards because we should have studied the market first, but we didn't. We started with the raw materials, developed the products and then sought out the market. At first we sold only to personal friends and contacts. When one of our funding agencies sent a food processing consultant to visit us he observed: "You have good products but you are too big to be small and too small to be big. You have to go one way or the other." We did not see any sense in getting smaller so we started getting bigger but we still had trouble marketing.
We finally convinced the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) to submit our marketing problem to a class on marketing. When they finished the marketing study for us' we knew the size of the markets in Metro Manila. We knew who was buying, where they wanted to buy it, who was eating it, what type and size of containers they preferred, and who the competition was. With that information we could focus on our primary target' which was clearly the elite of Philippine society, and we knew that the market was big enough for us to find our niche. That was when our marketing began to move. We are still not producing at full capacity but at least we know we are going in the right direction.
We also discovered a small grape-like fruit known locally as biho-lak which produces a very rich flavorful jelly. Most people, unfortunately, have trouble pronouncing it so we finally found a Tagalog equivalent and now sell it as dikay jelly. We also developed recipes for ginger, bignay, tamarind, santol, passion fruit and several others.
Value added not replaced
As we look at the food processing business we see several very important values.
First it makes the forest itself valuable. The secondary forests, many of which are fallow fields can produce all of the fruit that we need. If they are not producing enough yet we can easily integrate additional plants into them by encouraging the indigenous species to multiply. People are no longer likely to destroy these forests to make extra fields because they would be destroying a source of income. There are already about 150 families that get most of their cash income from this activity.
Second the farmers formerly prepared swidden fields of about 2/3 hectare per family. Half of the output was usually for family food and half for cash. Now that their cash is coming from fruit, the families have voluntarily reduced the size of their swiddens. This has enabled the Ikalahan to let almost 1000 hectares of fallow land revert permanently to forest.
Third using local raw materials to produce a finished product usually requires a higher level of education which provides employment opportunities for the educated youth within the community. When young people get higher education they want to use it. If there are no village opportunities they will leave for the city, leaving only the uneducated. This can be disastrous for future leadership.
Food processing, however is a difficult business and is not for the faint-hearted. It requires a lot of planning, capital, and storage space. It also requires very strict attention to quality control and standardization of the product. Recipe development alone, is a difficult task and we found we need to revise some recipes nearly every year because the amount of acid, sugar and pectin in the fruit tends to vary due to differing weather conditions.
Our next project is to let our chemist improve our recipes to reduce the sugar and increase the fruit to further improve the flavour. We want also to increase the number of 'jam' and 'extra jam' products which have a growing demand. There are some new fruits which we wish to study also to expand our product line. In most parts of the world, people have become very 'sugar conscious' so we are hoping to develop a new line of 'low sugar' products to meet that demand. This will require more research and development, but that is just an ordinary part of any business.
Although our rate of production has not yet reached that critical level which would make it financially profitable, it is moving up very satisfactorily and other communities are now interested and are requesting permission to join us in similar enterprises. We are seriously considering the provision of assistance to other upland communities which may then establish their own food processing centres and, perhaps, we could enter a franchise arrangement with some of them so that their products would be added to our Mountain Fresh product line to make the marketing easier for both of us.
Are there other forest products that could also be marketed?
We are now beginning to look at other forest products which could be developed. Although we do have some very interesting biological and historical areas within our Reserve, we have rejected ecotourism because of cultural and social pollution.
We formerly made a large quantity of soft brooms, both for the local and export market. On that item the competition is very keen and we can no longer afford to make the quality product we were making because our price, of necessity, would have to be higher than the market will allow.
In 1989 we received a good quantity of castor beans to plant. We grew them and the quality was good but when we finally delivered the beans to Manila the price did not cover our harvest costs. We still have the plants but we are not harvesting them.
We are integrating some high quality citrus and spices into our forests as we are able to obtain planting materials. Most of them, like American lemons, will be processed and added to our product line but perhaps we can eventually sell some of them as fresh fruit.
There are several types of high quality fibres in our forests which will enable us to produce hand-made paper for the speciality market. We have the equipment now and are beginning the necessary research and training.
More likely to be profitable is the production of orchids, truffles and mushrooms. These are indigenous to our forests and we are hoping to obtain planting materials for unique varieties from within our primary forests and produce them within our secondary forests near our residences. We can also produce other cut flowers such as gladiolus which may not be indigenous to our area but grow well. We are just beginning in this enterprise, also. One young man was in the gladiolus business in 1989 and 1990 before the earthquake but all of his planting stock was buried under two or three meters of rock and silt by that calamity, so he had to abandon it. This year we were able to start commercial production again.
Is there no place for wood products?
Forests are meant to reprocess the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere, sequester the carbon and release oxygen to keep the life cycle going. The best way to encourage this is to encourage the production of wood and to use the wood in ways which does not return the carbon to the atmosphere. We are doing this through a technology known here as Timber Stand Improvement (TSI).
When a logger looks at a forest he sees the trees which will produce the largest amount of wood most economically and he removes them. Hopefully he leaves a few to serve as seed trees for harvest in the distant future. This gives a sawed-tooth cycle of cutting followed by slow growth. The forester practicing TSI, however looks at the same forest but with a different attitude. He looks to see which trees he needs to remove to improve the forest. At first he removes only those which are diseased or defective unless they are needed as seed trees. When they are removed they can produce usable lumber although it may not be first class. The forest is better, however, for their removal and the harvester has a little income. This can be repeated yearly and as the forest continues to grow and develop, other trees will need to be removed but the rate of wood production in the forest continues to increase. This will be true until the forest canopy closes. Then the forester must choose the mature trees which are no longer growing and carefully remove them to allow light to reach the forest floor and stimulate the new growth which is there waiting its turn.
According to the official documents, loggers expect to produce about 4.5 cu. m of wood per hectare per year in Philippine forests on a 30-year cycle of 'cut and wait'. A forest dweller using TSI methods can produce as much as 20 cu. m of wood per hectare per year without building roads and other infrastructures that cause erosion and other damage. The wood will be of higher quality and the forest will never be exposed to erosive influences. Instead of a saw-toothed production curve, TSl technology produces lumber steadily every year.
The wood which is removed from the forest in the Kalahan Reserve under TSI principles could be sold but most of it will be utilized by some of our local carpenters to produce high-quality furniture. One of our local residents went to the lowlands for about 2 months at his own expense to work in a furniture factory. He learned the technique of designing and finishing furniture and is now making very high quality products. Hopefully this can be further expanded as time goes on and the market improves. He is already teaching some of the students in the high school and they are also doing a good job.
What of the primary forests?
There are two primary forest areas within the Kalahan Reserve. These are surrounded by secondary forests and fallow fields. As early as 1975 the tribal elders set them aside as Forest Reserves and watersheds to prohibit agricultural activities. In 1993 they decided that one of the areas should also be a wildlife sanctuary. By providing many sources of adequate income from the secondary forests we are hoping that the temptation to enter the primary forests will be reduced to zero and that eventually some portions of the secondary forests will become a part of the primary forest.
There are probably hundreds of valuable species within these primary forests but we do not know which ones will be the next to be developed. We already have examples of this phenomena in the dagwey and dikay which were both considered to be 'weeds' before we began processing them. We will continue to protect the primary forests as a gene bank within which to discover new resources as time goes on.
The Ikalahan people are historically and culturally forest dwellers. If we lose the forests we lose our own identity. It is our commitment to improve our forests while we improve ourselves.
Delbert Rice is Executive Officer of the Kalahan Educational Foundation Inc. Imugan, Santa Fe, 3705 Nueva Viscaya, Philippines. This Foundation is a people's organization composed of the total population in this area. Its Board of Trustees is elected from among the tribal leaders of the five communities within the Kalahan Reserve.
He presented this paper at an international workshop, Baguio City, Philippines, December 1993 and it has now been published in the workshop proceedings 'Marketing of multipurpose tree products in Asia' edited by John B. Raintree and Hermina A. Francisco, 1994, by the Multipurpose Tree Species Research Network in Asia. Copies are available from: RECOFTC, Kasetsart University, P O Box 1111, 10903 Bangkok, Thailand.
