Bloggers' Mangrove Aquaculture Farm

How may we bloggers begin to act on the poverty problem? One way is to build model businesses that 3rd World employee groups will copy. Example: a model mangrove aquaculture and reforestation farm in the Philippines. Reforestation is not exactly popularly known as a profitable activity, so we have to design for profitability. One highly-profitable product line for a mangrove aquaculture farm cum reforestation is cage culture of crabs and shrimps. The Philippine mangrove crab, tiger shrimp, white shrimp and brown shrimp are all high-priced sea foods in local and export markets. Technologies exist in the Philippines for high-profit breeding and grow-out of the brackish water animals thru mangrove cage aquaculture. What discourages local investment is the relatively high initial cost of an aquaculture project. Lately, new technologies have been developed to rebuild denuded mangrove belts while providing space for floating cages and breeding facilities. To maximize profits, we feed caged crabs and shrimps with non-commercial fishes caught in the wild or raised in the same pond where the grow-out cages float. Since feeds are ‘almost free’ and prices stratospheric, profits rise to great heights. Philippine aquaculture experts as consultants provide the design and production procedures.

Brackish water pond operators in the Philippines are millionaires even though they follow old procedures that once almost devastated the Philippine aquaculture industry due to overuse of artificial feeds. We can go organic and rebuild mangrove forests yet beat the oldies in the profit-making game.

What are the social benefits? Our model farm’s highly attractive returns should encourage Philippine employee groups to set up copycat farms. Lacking capital, the employee masses shall press for state loans, thereby diverting billions of pesos away from corrupt politicians’ hands and into production. The loans should reforest Philippine river mouth coasts, which are 90% denuded of mangroves. The Philippine example copied all over the tropics creates millions of jobs for coastal poor while helping address global warming.

How may it all start? Just $5 or so from each of several hundred-thousand bloggers over some months can set up one mangrove aquaculture farm that yields returns way above average corporate dividends. Most profits should be recycled to set up another farm module to impress all doubters. As everyone knows, everybody flocks to any business that shows good profits. The profit motive should be our blogger army’s main anti-poverty weapon. What the wealthy did the masses and their allies can do.