Despite the ravages of storms, seaweed farming is transforming the lives of Filipino families in traditionally male-dominated fishing communities, turning women into family breadwinners who are paying for their children to go to college.
The Cherish Fisherfolk Cooperative of 120 seaweed farmers in the Palawan village of Balintang is named after the 1984 hit “Cherish” by U.S. band Kool & the Gang.
“Cherish means to protect and care for what we have,” Mardy Montaño, president of the cooperative, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as she rested after a day’s work on a floating house in the midst of Palawan’s turquoise waters.
“That’s how valuable seaweed farming is for all of us.”
Seaweed farming is the world’s fastest-growing form of aquaculture and the Philippines is the fourth largest producer globally. More than 1 million Filipinos benefit from the seaweed industry, according to the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.
In 1995, when Ms. Montaño settled in Balintang, only a few women in the village farmed seaweed and their earnings were marginal.
Increased support from the local government and private funders led to an uptick in production in 2017 when Ms. Montaño and other women formed the Cherish Fisherfolk Association to grow their farms together.
It is now a lucrative business. Balintang seaweed farmers earn 20,000 to 40,000 Philippine pesos ($358 to $715) a month, compared to about 5,000 pesos made by small-scale fishermen
Unlike fishing and rice farming – both capital and labor-intensive – seaweed provides an income every 45 days, the typical cultivation cycle.
On a typical day, Cherish women gather in a small nipa hut – a thatched house on stilts common in rural Philippines – to attach seaweed cuttings to long nylon ropes. The men then take the lines offshore to farms of about 2,500 meters squared.
Some six weeks later, the seaweed is harvested and the women set it out to dry in the sun for two to three days, then sell it locally for processing into crisps or noodles or to export as carrageenan – a valuable additive in food and pharmaceuticals.
Last year, the Department of Agriculture developed a five-year seaweed industry roadmap to help the country become the “global market’s preferred seaweed and carrageenan supplier.”
The Philippine Rural Development Project, assisted by the World Bank, has also identified seaweed as one of eight commodities of national importance, or priority crops for development and trade.