The cultivation of seaweed was introduced in our village by WWF through Mr. Gaëtan Tovondrainy, the WWF project manager for Toliara. He gave us the seeds to plant and trained some of us on how to cultivate the seaweed,? one farmer said.

The program is run collaboration with Copefrito, the biggest seafood collector company in the South West Region. WWF contributes seeds and materials and Copefrito provides technical support, training for the farmers and buys the products.

The seaweed farming was introduced as a sustainable alternative to the cultivation of maize, cassava sweet potatoes and overfishing which was damaging the local marine environment. The local people are now able to rely on more than the daily catch to provide for their families, but life in this region is hard and the farmers can still find it hard to provide three square meals to their families.

Farmers say they need another extra income generation activity to promote their wellbeing.

Zafy is the man who now trains the farmers to cultivate the seaweed. He also tests the farm sites in the sea and nurses new seeds for the farmers. Zafy describes what it means to be a seaweed farmer.

A farmer can earn 50 000 ariary in 45 days if he/she cultivates 30-40 lines of 10 meters each. When we cultivate this plant during the off season, it is often attacked by a disease called ?Ice-Ice?. This attacks the plants and gives us extra work. We are forced to use 2 to 3 hours of our time every day to clean the lines of the seaweed farms. A line of seaweed can take us 5 to 10 minutes to clean off all the bacteria and remove all the bad seaweeds