Tandubas, Tawi-tawi Province – To answer the long clamor of better infrastructure support, three warehouses with solar dryers are now being constructed in barangays Silantup, Ballak, and Tapian Sokah amounting to P14.871 million. While another project on Seaweeds Production and Marketing Enterprise under PRDP’s IREAP component worth P3.2 million is now ongoing.

“Our main problem here is we don’t have drying facilities that can accommodate large volume seaweeds. We usually stock our seaweeds while waiting for available drying area. This resulted to damages and low market price,” said seaweed farmer Jubaira S. Ampugan.

Through this support from Philippine Rural Development Project, the Kasambuhan Ma Kauman Tapian Sokah proponent group will have farm inputs for the production of seaweeds and other farmers in Tandubas will also have access to solar drying facilities for their seaweeds.

Current progress on the ongoing construction of Brgy. Tapian warehouse with solar drier with 33.40% physical progress as of Oct. 01, 2018. (Photo by Gian Enrique, PSO Min)

“We lack capital in our seaweed farming but with the support received by our cooperative from PRDP, we can now expand our production. We are also thankful with the solar drier because we no longer have difficulty in drying our seaweeds,” said Mustapha H. Adjirul.

“We are happy to receive assistance from PRDP. With this project, we will have better drying facilities for our seaweeds, and the additional farm input will be an additional help to our livelihood,” said Ampugan.

By using the vulnerability and suitability assessment, it has been identified that the municipality of Tandubas ranked as one of the municipalities where seaweed commodity can be best grown. This scientific tool developed by the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Soils and Water Management (DA-BSWM) is a guide that helps in determining the vulnerability and suitability of a particular area that could affect the production of a particular commodity.

Seaweeds is now a priority commodity in the Province of Tawi-tawi which targets on the buy and sell of dried seaweeds. Based on the Value Chain Analysis, the province has a total seaweed production of 294,595 metric ton per year. (Joy M. Montecalvo)