This month, Cua, Fiber Industry Development Authority (Fida) officials led by by provincial fiber officer Lorenzo Tariman, and local officials headed by Mayor Leo Rodriguez spearheaded the demonstration of the spindle machine to abaca farmers in Bato town.

In asking for the support of farmers for his program, the governor revealed that the Fida has received a grant from the Spanish government, P30 million of which would be allocated for Bicol and Caraga region for the acquisition of spindle machines.

In Catanduanes, he added, each town would be initially provided one spindle machine in an effort to maintain the province's reputation as the abaca capital of the country.

The demonstration at Barangay San Roque was an eye-opener for farmers from outlying barangays as they expressed wonder at how fast the machine stripped fiber of fine quality.

Fida officials said the spindle machine can produce 100 to 200 kilos of S2 fiber every day, depending on the skill of the operator while manual stripping yields only about 10 kilos each day.

The Spanish grant would be coursed through active abaca farmers' cooperative in nine towns, which will have to provide a 150-square-meter lot and a building, locally called "hag-otan," to house the mobile machine possibly in areas near abaca plantations.

The machine is a common equipment of abaca farmers in Leyte, where abaca is harvested in the day and stripped at night in the farmers' homes.

The governor also asked farmers to "amokid" and other low-quality fiber-producing abaca in their farmers and to replace them with "abuab" variety.

In his brief address, Cua likewise downplayed the possibility of establishing a pulp and paper mill in Catanduanes due to to its high cost as well as environmentally-unfriendly wastes products.

The activity served as the launching of the Catanduanes Unlad AbakaMasa Program, which seeks to offer assistance to abaca farmers through disease eradication and rehabilitation activities in the light of findings that the dreaded abaca bunchy-top, abaca mosaic and bract mosaic diseases have already infected 15 percent of the province's 23,676 hectares of abaca plantations cultivated by 15,454 farmers.

The project is aimed at increasing farm productivity and sustain a production rate increase of two percent and to increase the supply of abaca suckers in the province.

Specifically, 1,184.05 hectares, or five percent of the total abaca land area, will be rehabilitated involving 772 farmers.

Aside from abaca rehab and disease eradication, the other components of the project are the establishment of a one-hectare abaca nursery, technical training on spidle stripping, hands-on training on abaca decortication, and monitoring and evaluation.

Government statistic show that Catanduanes produced 15,160 metric tons of abaca fiber in 2005, representing 20 percent of the country's total production and 76 percent of Bicol's harvest.

It has also the highest acreage planted to abaca 1t 22,384 hectares tilled by 15,333 farmers.