Salt: An Important Economic Mineral

Salt is considered as one of the important economic mineral that is widely distributed on all the continents that occur in large reserves (Affam and Asamoah, 2011). The production of common salt is one of the most ancient and widely distributed industries in the world with nearly 120 countries have salt producing facilities ranging from the primitive solar evaporation to advanced, multi-stage evaporation in salt refineries (Hossain, et al, 2006). In 2017, world salt industry has a total production of 257,000,000 tons, while the Philippines only produced 140,000 tons.

The Philippine salt industry is actually fast shrinking. Imports are taking over due to climate vulnerability and other factors (Pacific Farms, 2016)

In the Philippines, salt production was once a vibrant industry. In 1990, the provinces of Bulacan, Pangasinan, Occidental Mindoro and Cavite could supply almost the 85% of the country’s annual salt requirement. In 1994, the country produced 300,000 metric tons of salt. However, in 2010, salt production drastically dropped to less than half and significantly resulted to the importing of salt (Hontucan and Acedo, 2017).

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Occidental Mindoro was once one of the biggest salt producers in the country.

In 1990, it produced and contributed about 60,000 metric tons of the 338,000MT or 18% of the country’s total salt production (Business Mirror, 2017). The province, being an island and surrounded by water, has one of the longest coastline but is greatly affected by the climate change and decimated the salt industry. The traditional method of producing salt used in the province depends primarily on solar evaporation is affected adversely by erratic weather patterns.

Occidental Mindoro , an island province has one of the longest coastlines in the Philippines, making it one of the biggest salt-producing provinces in the country. The province, once known for its vibrant salt industry has suffered shrinking production , due to a number of factors which include production losses, poor logistics, poor production and organizational management, water pollution, lack of research and development activities on salt productivity and few policies in place to support the industry. Today, while Occidental Mindoro still supplies salt in the neighboring provinces in Southern Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, only 12 percent of the national salt requirement comes from the province with the biggest chunk of the demand supplied by imported salts. (Duque, 2019)

The Tamaraw Salt Producers Cooperative (TAMACO) leads the salt production industry in the province of Occidental Mindoro consisting of almost 3,500 salt farmers (Atkinson, 2011). Salt is produced using traditional solar evaporation in the municipalities of San Jose and Magsaysay . Seeing the potential of the salt industry to drive the local economy of the province, a multi-sectoral council was created in 2018 which pieced together a roadmap for the Occidental Mindoro Salt industry with the end view of developing a salt industry that meets the domestic and international standards in order to provide equitable benefits by using socially responsible and environment-friendly practices.

The roadmap envisioned that by 2022, the province of Occidental Mindoro shall be known as the Salt Capital of the Philippines producing high quality salt products at competitive prices for the domestic market catering to the consumers, food processors, industrial and agricultural users. (DTI, 2018). The Roadmap, provided the strategies to address the constraints identified, such as, Production and productivity improvement to increase production volume, Product and market development, promotion and access to finance, capacity development and creation of enabling environment.

Production and productivity improvement PPAs include: research and development on salt production technology, identification of good manufacturing practices, establishment of automated weather stations, and adoption of relevant salt technologies by salt producers. This Program will address the research and development needs on salt production technology with the following components:

Characterization of the physical and environment systems of the major salt farms in Occidental Mindoro using the data harvested consisting of: air temperature, wind direction, solar radiation, barometric pressure, relative humidity and evapotranspiration from the weather stations installed in major salt-producing farms in San Jose and Magsaysay ;

Application of scientific prediction of salt yield by using parameters such as brine concentration, brine depth at the concentration pond, rate of evaporation, soil seepage rate among others, to provide baseline data on the expected salt production per unit area to be used in production planning and improvement of yield .