@Rosemary Parkinson: “Take up de darned seaweed (whoever in charge of cleaning de beaches) and take it to the Ministry of Agriculture for crying out loud…it is good stuff!!!

Kinda weird, isn’t it.

The gods bless us with compostable material (high in carbon, oxygen and nitrogen), and rather than use it, we complain about it.

@David: “Today’s press quotes the Coastal Zone Management as being concern that this is turtle nesting time and using heavy equipment on the sand is potentially hazardous to the little uns.

The turtles nesting do so on calm shores. Read: not on the east coast where a lot of this sea-weed has been appearing.

They know what they’re doing.

Do we?

@Rosemary Parkinson: “Here’s the recipe: Bend down, grab seaweed in hands, shake off as much sand as possible, place in large bags, take to farm/agriculture ministry/home gardens etc.

Thank you.

That, I agree, is the sustainable recipe.

The Sargasso Sea is that area of the Atlantic Ocean from which much of this seaweed comes from. It is hundreds of thousand of square miles in area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargasso_Sea

The Sargasso sea is not in any country’s exclusive economic zone. Is this a resource that is there for the taking? Mulch for our soils, food for animals, fuel for waste to energy incinerators?

http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y4765e/y4765e0b.htm#TopOfPage

Is God the Bajan trying to tell us something?

So now we can see that the seaweed washing up on our shores is indeed a sort of manna from heaven…so farmers get your trucks down to the shores…Ministry of Agriculture you too….perhaps even those living at Hotel Dodds could do some supervised work…they also have a farm. FREE COMPOST. FREE FERTILIZER.

MARIGOT, St. Martin – The fishermen are happy, but Vice President Pierre Aliotti called a press conference yesterday morning to alert residents and visitors about the health risks linked to the massive invasion of sargassum, a seaweed originating from the Sea of Sargasso, located between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico. Coming from the north-north-west, the seaweed had landed on French-side beaches like Orient beach and also the beach in French Cul de Sac.
Aliotti said that, if the situation gets worse, he may consider closing public access to certain beaches, but for the time being the Collectivité sticks to warning people to be careful. “In the water, the seaweed is harmless, but once they land on our beaches they start to decompose. During this process they emit hydrogen sulfide. Because of the local temperatures, the seaweeds decompose and dry quickly, usually within 48 hours,” Aliotti said.
Hydrogen sulfide is a colorless, very poisonous and highly flammable gas. It spreads an unpleasant odor much like the smell of rotten eggs.
Aliotti said that inhaling the gas in small doses could trigger irritation of the eyes and the respiratory system, especially among people who are sensitive to it. The groups at risk are people with respiratory problems, asthma patients, elderly people, babies and pregnant women. Aliotti added that certain animals, especially dogs, are also sensitive to the inhalation of hydrogen sulfide.
“We are here to inform the population, and especially people who belong to the risk group, to avoid visiting beaches with a high concentration of seaweed,” Aliotti said, adding that animals are prohibited on all beaches.
The Vice-President said that the Collectivité will take all necessary measures when situations occur whereby there are so much seaweeds in the sea that the water is no longer transparent. The Réserve Naturelle advises the Collectivité about the actual situation. Possible measures are temporary bans on swimming or on visiting affected beaches.
The Collectivité considers cleaning up an area around the pier in Cul de Sac where people board a small ferry to visit Pinel Island. Orient Beach is also flooded with sargassum, especially near Mont Vernon. A clean up crew cleaned the beach last week, only to discover that the sargassum had come back with a vengeance the next day. Elsewhere on Orient Beach, restaurateurs have their hands full keeping their stretch of beach clean.
Aliotti said that the operator of the Eco-site in Grandes Cayes is prepared to receive a certain quantity of the seaweed and to turn it into compost. “Our environmental teams are on the road every day to monitor the situation,” Aliotti said.
Romain Renoux, head of the Réserve Naturelle said that his organization monitors the situation at sea. We do not have our own plane, but we do get information from pilots who fly over the area,” he said.
According to Renoux, the situation is currently “not alarming,” but he added that there is still a large patch of sargassum at sea and that it is uncertain whether this will make landfall on Saint Martin.
Cleaning up the beaches where necessary will be done “lightly” Aliotti said and not the way it was done in Martinique where cleanup crews removed a lot of sand from the beaches with the seaweed. “Now there is a shortage of sand on their beaches,” he said. “We will be more careful.”
Aliotti explained that the sargassum poses potential health risks as long as it is wet. Once the weeds are dry they no longer emit the harmful hydrogen sulfide gases. Because there is so much seaweed landing on the beaches right now, it does not get time to dry before the next batch arrives.
“We know what we have to do to solve the problem,” Aliotti said. “We have to spread it out in thin layers to let it dry.”
That fishermen are happy is not surprising. Sargassum is an important habitat for a variety of marine animals in the open ocean. The sea underneath free floating mats of sargassum is rich in mahi mahi, tuna, dolphins, wahoo and billfish. Sea turtles and marine birds also make sargassum their home.
In 2033, a fishery management plan was put in place for pelagic sargassum in the South Atlantic region. The plan implements restrictions on commercial harvesting, as was done by a North Carolina company who used the seaweed for the feed supplement industry. The plan limits harvest to a maximum of 5,000 pounds wet weight per year. Harvesting is only allowed between November and June to protect turtles. Harvesting within 100 miles of shore is also prohibited.

Great topic from the top.
Let me add my grateful voice to the farmers who are hoping that the Minister of Agriculture’s statement on using a centralised planning and purchasing system for all food crops will be implemented by the technocrats and foot soldiers in the Ministry.

We in the organic farming movement have felt that this is the way to go in order to have better control of our food security and to reduce crop theft.

What we would ultimately like to see is a facility that actually handles the farm produce, sorts, cleans, grades it (to World standards) and then redistributes the products to the areas which the Minister mentioned. The Holding company can be used to pay the growers on delivery, according to the quality of the produce.

All vendors (from the street to the restaurant) should have to use this facility, from which they buy their fresh produce and receive their receipts. These in turn can easily be checked by the Police or another agency and where a vendor cannot satisfy the source of their produce, (anything not listed on the receipt) the produce should be confiscated until they can.

We would humbly suggest that the Minister maintains the momentum of his statement by facilitating a series of Parish meetings, One or 2 evenings per week, where everyone growing food of any sort, from short cash crops to fruit trees, comes together and registers their crops by filling out a form.
They can also express their interest in taking part in the programme and give the Ministry tangible information on just what is being produced on the island. The extension officers can then set up a timetable of visits to meet with the growers in smaller groups or individually to get first hand visual knowledge of the producer.

Such a process of information gathering is essential. Many people may have a couple of fruit trees in their backyard, that if managed properly and having the fruit presented to an assured marketing scheme could perhaps pay for their land tax each year.

For some time such a system was used in Haiti concentrating on mango trees, to the extent that Haitian mangoes was a major crop imported into the USA.

I had a visit last year from a consultant working for the EU who specialised in agricultural production all over the World. A part of his task was to assess farming in Barbados and the region and he wanted somew information on organic farming. We shared information and at the conclusion of his study we met again to discuss his findings. He was candid in telling me that Barbados and the region was at least 15 years behind Africa in agricultural development.

Only last month I was speaking with the Managing Director of a company that grows and process’ healthy foods in Senegal Africa, and she explained that Senegal has a very good centralised purchasing system and that their farmers Credit Union is one of the strongest in the country.

Such a centralised purchasing system can encourage farmers to invest in themselves more by with holding a small percentage of the growers payment as a saving fund for their agricultural credit union account. This money can grow into a nice sum that can be used as a revolving loan scheme. Such a scheme can, after a couple of years take the burden off central government for financing agriculture.

Maybe five years ago, three or four monitors for a European Union program came to my small acreage to see what we were doing as an organic operation. One of the gentlemen, an Englishman, farmed in Kenya. One of the other men there mentioned that this Englishman’s farm had one field of several, that was bigger than Barbados and that he had to use a helicopter to get around his land effectively.

It made me see that all agriculture in Barbados can be managed as one farm if we really take the blinkers off and centralised our operation.

Lots more to share, but for now

Peace