Dear D-listers,

This is a great forum topic, which has no doubt spurred just as much discussion off-line as it has on-line. (Personally, 3 different people independently forwarded the discussion to me).

I'd just like to add here that in the SW of Madagascar, Blue Ventures is actively promoting the development of seaweed aquaculture as an alternative livelihood for fishers. We are working in close collaboration with COPEFRITO, the regional leader in seafood product collection and export. Both BV and COPEFRITO are committed to the development of this industry in order to lessen overfishing pressure and alleviate poverty. While, we are still in the early stages but we have already succeeded in creating a secondary income source for more than a hundred fishers. We hope to grow this in the future both in terms of number of farmers and by raising production and therefor incomes, the importance of farming to each fisher so that farming becomes the predominant income source. So far, we have not seen the kind of environmental and social issues that seem to be happening in East Africa, although we recognize the need for vigilance.

Regarding the potential for value-added processing or fair-trade / eco-labeling- we have looked into this and decided that at least for the moment, it is probably not feasible. Seaweed and Carrageenan, the commercial extract from red seaweed is very much a raw material commodity as and it is almost never the main ingredient in anything. This discourages consumers or food processors (main buyers of Carrageenan) from differentiating seaweed products based on anything other than price. (Would you call toothpaste “fair trade” if the fair trade carrageenan contained within amounted to 0.05% of the contents?) However, there is some potential here, and indeed there is a group in Tanzania called Zasci (http://www.internetsolutions.co.tz/zasci.co.tz/) working on these solutions.

Regarding value-added local processing- Because of the low unit price and the very high expense of processing equipment, it is most economical to do processing in a few locations around the world (currently USA, Philippines) rather than a lot of smaller processors. Furthermore, seaweed and carrageenan are bought on the international commodity market in massive quantities. A smaller processor would likely struggle to process enough seaweed to meet the needs of even a single buyer. However, that being said- the WIO area is starting to become a major seaweed producing region. If East African production continues to rise and production in Madagascar also develops as hoped, then it could bring about the kind of economy of scale necessary for a major processing plant in the WIO. This could bring a number of advantages to WIO farmers including higher prices (to reflect lower processing costs) and a more favorable environment for smaller scale farms by making it economical for the export of small quantities of seaweed (several hundred tons) rather then containers (or multiple containers).

So I hope this is helpful to the discussion. I look forward to reading responses.

Best,

Shawn

Farmers of seaweed are poor due to the following reasons:

1. There are few companies dealing with seaweed so there is no price competation.
2. There is a lack of awareness of importance and value of seaweed farming to the community.

Company dealing with seaweed they provide important facilities for seaweed farming so during harvesting season they arrange the prices according to what they contribute.

Therefore the farmers are poor, and remain without capital.

regard
Gideon Zakayo
District Environmental Management Officer