Sustainable agro - fertilizers from marine plants in Pacific small island developing states (SIDS)
The effects of Climate Change are forcing farmers in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to find novel methods to maintain crop productivity and sustainability. Past practices using chemical fertilizers and poor waste management severely damaged many coastal areas, leading to an ecosystem shift towards algal dominance. A proposed approach to deal with both the loss of crop productivity and the overabundance of seaweeds in SIDS, is to devise methods that divert excess marine plant biomass into agricultural uses through the conversion of the biomass to solid and liquid fertilizers. Seaweed-based fertilizers have already been tried with much success on crops in developed nations such as the United States and in European countries, but these are very expensive to import into Pacific Islands, and beyond the means of most farmers in the region. By empowering local farming communities with the knowledge to convert locally-available marine plant biomass into sustainable, ecologically friendly agricultural fertilizers, they would be able to make economies on the purchase commercial fertilizers which are detrimental to the environment, while at the same time reducing the spread of seaweeds on their coral reefs, and boosting the production of subsistence and cash crops which will improve their food and financial security.