About 15 miles north of Dili, the capital city of the small Southeast Asian nation of Timor-Leste, lies the tiny island of Atauro. Barely 50 square miles in size, Atauro is twice the size of Bermuda, but it is home to only 10,000 residents, whereas Bermuda’s population is six times that. Unknown outside of Timor-Leste, Atauro’s only real claim to fame is that it’s the seaweed farming capital of the country.
Most of Atauro’s harvest is consumed domestically, but a growing proportion is exported to Indonesia, South Korea, and China. Seaweed’s rising export value is thanks in part to a food processing and additive industry that uses carrageenan, which seaweed contains in abundance. Thanks to Atauro’s seaweed farmers, the island meets its food security needs while gaining more income through rising export earnings.
Easy, cheap, sustainable, and increasingly producing product suitable for export, seaweed farming is proving to be a boon to Atauro’s smallholder farmers. That’s why experts at WorldFish, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other top agricultural institutions think other smallholder farmers in Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Africa, and beyond should consider farming crops in the sea rather than on land, at least where feasible.
“The benefits and opportunities available from seaweed farming are manyfold,” WorldFish researchers say in a report they produced after a recent workshop they hosted in Dili. “[Seaweed] contributes to the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, both by selling seaweed locally and by tapping into international carrageenan value chains.”
Dreaming of seaweed
When we speak of aquaculture, we’re usually talking about fish farming, the practice of farmers feeding and raising various species of commercially popular fish in ponds, selling the protein to markets. A few years ago, a WorldFish researcher won the World Food Prize for her work popularizing fish farming in Bangladesh.
A frequently overlooked side of aquaculture is the raising of ocean plants in coastal seas, much as one might raise land-based crops alongside a riverbed. Experts are beginning to appreciate why seaweed farming could be the next breakthrough for food security and smallholder farm welfare.
One expert thinks Indonesia should follow in Timor-Leste’s footsteps, introducing more coastal seaweed agriculture to remote corners of the archipelago, like the eastern province of Papua, which currently only contributes about 1% to Indonesia’s seaweed industry. “Papua remains one of Indonesia’s least economically developed regions,” said R&D manager Chandra Dewanto. “The seaweed industry offers a promising opportunity to strengthen the region’s economic resilience.”
A study published last year sees coastal Tanzania as a promising future seaweed farming hub, particularly the famed island of Zanzibar. Calling seaweed farming “vital for economic resilience in Zanzibar’s blue economy community,” the authors argue that more needs to be done to entice women smallholder farmers to seaweed farming.
For better food security, health, and incomes
It’s not just WorldFish and FAO. Dozens of research institutions and nonprofit food security organizations are exploring ways to expand and improve coastal seaweed and kelp farming for impoverished communities.
These plants are packed with nutrition. For instance, Japan doesn’t bother to iodize salt because the population there gets all the iodine it needs from regularly eating ocean plants like nori, wakame, and kombu. Seaweed and kelp are also loaded with essential vitamins and minerals. Some studies link consumption of ocean greens to better heart health. And with rising demand comes better prices, and thus better earning potential for ocean plant farmers.
Recognizing the promise, the next step is to sort out how organizations can identify where introduced or expanded seaweed farming might benefit communities and how to help smallholder farmers interested in transitioning to farming in the ocean rather than on land.
The authors from the Zanzibar study believe a focus on improving opportunities for women seaweed farmers would generate net benefits throughout the country in terms of food security and economic growth. “To improve women’s economic empowerment in seaweed aquaculture, we recommend enhancing market access, diversifying income activities, and improving access to resources like equipment and finance,” they wrote.
Others see potential in using seaweed farming as a vehicle for women’s economic empowerment in India and the Philippines.
“With aquaculture, women farmers often experience barriers to earning equal incomes compared to their male counterparts,” wrote author Rachel Winks. “However, in one area of aquaculture—seaweed farming—women are excelling.”
And this movement is building steam. Winks cites a statistic by the UN Conference on Trade and Development that estimates some 40% of startup seaweed farming operations are run by women. They’re achieving their dreams thanks to the support they’re receiving from governments and NGOs.
Winks points to projects in Belize, Kenya, the Philippines, Tanzania, and India as proof of the global movement to support and empower women seaweed farmers. Male farmers are also benefiting from these initiatives. “The seaweed farming industry is becoming a model for gender-inclusive aquaculture and sustainable development,” she wrote.
It just so happens that most seaweed farmers on Atauro are women.
“In one area of aquaculture—seaweed farming—women are excelling.”
Room for innovation
Seaweed farming can be as simple as stringing a set of ropes from a shore to shallow coastal waters, providing seaweed with a medium to attach to and grow on. No fertilizer is used, and the plants, of course, require no irrigation as they’re cultivated entirely underwater. Some even see vastly expanded seaweed farming as a potent tool for mitigating climate change since the plants capture and store carbon.
However, seaweed and kelp farming are hardly perfected sciences. There is room for improvements and innovations that could lower entry costs and boost smallholder seaweed farmers’ yields.
The projects Winks discusses are exploring ways to use bamboo rafts in seaweed farming, allowing the crops to be cultivated in deeper waters. Other projects are experimenting with netting tied into tube shapes, increasing the surface area on which more seaweed can grow compared to basic ropes.
Though seaweed farmers in Atauro, Timor-Leste, are achieving good results, FAO and WorldFish say the farmers are having a difficult time expanding the size of their harvests to meet rising seaweed demand. Obstacles to greater success for Atauro’s seaweed farmers include “limited technical capacity, changing climate and oceanic conditions, and various marketing barriers,” the organizations reported.
Grow Further is all about connecting people and ideas to drive forward better agricultural innovation. Introducing more coastal smallholder farmers to seaweed farming is a promising idea. It would expand the supply of nutritious foods while boosting farm communities’ incomes, especially for women farmers. We hope to, within the next few years, fund talented researchers with innovative and promising ideas to achieve greater smallholder seaweed farming.
— Grow Further
Photo credit: Seaweed farming on the island of Nusa Lembongan, southeast of Bali, Indonesia. Jean-Marie Hullot/Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic).