Bamboo Propping…
Here’s an interesting method of propping that I saw being used by one of the bigger commercial farmers of banana…
Propping is the method of holding up the banana bunch with two stalks of bamboo to prevent it from toppling over, from either the weight of the fruit or during strong rains (don’t really know it works well against typhoons since we never experience typhoons in Mindanao.)
Bamboo lasts for up to 3 uses, then it has to be replaced because it becomes brittle already. So you can just see the income one can earn from supplying bamboo to the commercial farms. Bamboo propping died out with the advent of the guy-wire method of propping, wherein you have steel wire suspended over wooden posts on each end row of a block and twine tied to the banana, since it is cheaper because the wood used is sturdier than bamboo. However with the scarcity of good wooden posts due to the logging ban, the commercial farms have shifted back to bamboo propping.
Now back to the picture above, seems that the commercial farms have come back to use the guy wire method of propping, but with a twist. Instead of the sturdy wood, they used bamboo in it’s place. The individual propping is being used only now in inclined areas.
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