Seaweed gives Davao del Sur fisherfolk income boost
DIGOS CITY — Forty-one-yearold Vilma J. Albarico, who has lived most of her life in the coastal community of Punta Biao, Davao del Sur, where she was born, knows only a livelihood bound to the bounties of the sea.
She has not made millions, but through small assistance programs, life for her, the family, and the community has been better than when she was young.
“While my family fished these waters, we started seaweed farming a long time ago, as an alternate livelihood to add to the family income,” Ms. Albarico told Busi-nessWorld in an interview.
With minimal capital, they bought propagules of the seaweed variety euchema, known locally as guso. They started a farm that, with hard work, proved income-generating.
“Very early in the morning, the whole family starts the work day, because once the seaweed is set on the rope, we also need to check on it after planting,” she said.
In 2004, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources in Davao Region ( BFAR- Davao) started providing seaweed propagules to fisherfolk in the area, allowing them to expand the farm areas.
The community has since formed the Punta Biao Fisherfolk Association, of which Ms. Albarico is a member. It consists of 45 groups, with at least five members per group.
The association aims to venture into processing, and there is a proposal under the Department of Trade and Industry to build a P700,000 seaweed processing plant in the area through the Bottom-Up Budgeting program.
“Demand for guso is always high in the market, not only for food but also for industries that process the seaweeds into candies and even chips,” Ms. Albarico said.
Euchema is used to make carrageenan, a product used in food processing and cosmetics, among other industrial apllications.
“Nothing goes to waste,” Ms. Albarico, said; damaged seaweed is dried and sold at P50 per kilogram. The fresh seaweed sells at an average of P7/kg.
Ms. Albarico said the community’s major challenges are thieves who steal the seaweed, especially when prices in the market are high, and diseases such as one they call “ice-ice,” a condition caused by changes in the water’s salinity and temperature.
This disease produces a moist substance that whitens the seaweed and attracts bacteria in the water. When taken for granted, Ms. Albarico said, this will lead to the detachment of the seaweed from the rope, which means losses for the farmers.
“When our seaweed farms are attacked by ice-ice, this is when we need the support of government, especially in terms of the seaweed propagules,” she said.
The Punta Biao fisherfolk are among the beneficiaries of the Accelerated and Sustainable Anti-Poverty Program (ASAPP), a government inter-agency initiative intended to help the poor by stimulating local economic activities.
The Department of Agriculture has allocated P705 million under the ASAPP for two of the poorest municipalities of the province, Hagonoy and Magsaysay, as well as Digos City, the capital of Davao del Sur.
“The ASAPP aims to ensure that economic growth will translate to increase the income of the poor by creating quality employment and livelihood opportunities for the poor,” BFAR- Davao Director Fatma M. Idris said.
Among the projects lined up under the program are farmto-market roads, shared service facilities, and sustainable livelihood projects.
Davao del Sur, which the most competitive province in the National Competitiveness Council’s Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Index last year, is one of the ten poorest provinces in the country.
FISHPONDS IN MAGSAYSAY
Helen P. Carampatana, agriculturist of Magsaysay, said the municipality largely depends on rice and corn farming, so they have introduced diversified organic systems to the area, including for fishponds that have become important alternative sources of income.
“We were into corn farming before the establishment of the Albatana irrigation, which provided us water and allowed us to develop our fishpond,” said Lorna B. Silvano, one of the beneficiaries of ASAPP.
Ms. Silvano said her whole family extended a hand to manually dig the pond, after which they were able to get 1,000 tilapia fingerlings from BFAR to start the fish farm.
Like her seaweed farmer counterpart, Ms. Silvano said the pond “did not make us rich... [ but] the fishpond improved our lives... we were not only able to sell the tilapia we harvest but it also served as our food supply.”