Seaweed earns money for liny atoll nation

Chances are sometime in the last couple of weeks most people in the devel oped world chewed into carrageenan and there is a reasonable chance it came from Kiribati.

It comes from a particular kind of sea weed that is being grown commercially in the Philippines, Indonesia and, increasing ly, in Kiribati. “This is the great economic hope for this place, particularly Christmas Island,” says Michael Tinne, a manage ment adviser to the Kiribati Government owned Atoll Seaweed Company Ltd.

It has bailing plants on Betio in Tarawa and Christmas Island which exports the seaweed to a Danish company. It extracts the carrageenan from the seaweed for use as an emulsifier in around 60 percent of all processed foods, toothpaste and cosmetics.

The seaweeds it come from - eucheuma cotonii and eucheuma spinosum - do not occur naturally in Kiribati but are imported as clippings from the Philippines - they grow very well off ropes staked down knee high in lagoons.

Tinne says water flow is crucial to the

operation and ensuring they are kept cov ered. But it grows fast and can be cropped three to six months after being put down.

“It is a cash crop which gives good returns for farmers provided they make the effort.”

In Kiribati it currently competes for labour from copra which is subsidised under the European Union’s (EU) Lome Convention. Because of the need for a reli able water flow the seaweed grows best within five degrees either side of the Equator which is the typhoon free area of the globe.

The world spot market price for the seaweed varies widely precisely because the market is vulnerable to the typhoons which routine ly roll through the Philippines. Cyclones killed prospects in Fiji several years back.

The operation in Kiribati is backed by the EU and the New Zealand Government. It buys the seaweed from farmers throughout Kiribati who, before they sell it, must dry it on the beach first, taking the moisture level down to 35 percent. It is then bought to Tarawa or Christmas where it is pressed into 50 kilogram bales and exported.

In 1996 Kiribati managed to export

around 1246 tonnes of seaweed and next year Tinne says he believes they may manage around 2000 tonnes.

The price varies from around US$55O to US$675 a tonne. The attraction of the operation is that once over the fixed costs of the operation, any surplus is all profit for the growers and Atoll Seaweed.

Kiribati’s contribution to the world trade of around 70,000 tonnes is modest but the Danish buyer likes the Kiribati supplier because, unlike the Philippines and Indonesia, it is a good deal more polit ically and environmentally stable.

Tinne believes there is no reason why Kiribati cannot lift production up to around 4000 tonnes per annum although as a relatively labour intensive crop it needs people in the right places to pro duce.

Seaweed’s future could, in part, depend on whether the EU’s stabex fund will continue to pay a big subsidy on copra. Currently there is an incentive to landowners to concentrate on copra, despite failing markets, rather than on sea weed. ■