Socio-demographic profiling and asset indicators of Gracilaria dura farmers from northern west coast of India useful for longitudinal analysis

Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Government of India, has recently rolled out its flagship scheme ‘Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY)’, aimed at ambitious expansion of the domestic seaweed sector. Consequently, it gave emphasis on diverting the focus from a monoculture of Kappaphycus alvarezii to other candidate species, Gracilaria dura—which yields high quality agar—is an ideal example. Furthermore, currently agar requirement for the country is 400 tonnes year⁻¹ and 4,000 tonnes dry of feedstock is needed to cater to this demand. With this backdrop, commercial farming of G. dura has been initiated along the northern west coast of India. We interviewed 20 households from two coastal villages, namely, Simar and Rajpara to document their socio-demographic profiling and computing livelihood asset index. The total literacy rate of Simar was found to be 25% and Rajpara was 20%, with population of 7445 and 12,000 respectively. Demographic analysis revealed equal gender participation; a higher proportion of seaweed growers (30%) were under the age group of 21–30 years; 15% exclusively dealt with seaweed farming (while others relied on additional livelihood source); spending from earning had positive implications on various aspects, namely, household food security, improving their purchasing power to meet daily requirements (50%), education to their children (30%); followed by savings (10%) and medical and other expenditure (10%). The ‘human asset index’ was found to be 0.487, while the ‘natural asset index’ was 0.376; the ‘physical asset index’ was 0.69; the ‘financial asset index’ was 0.205; the ‘social asset index’ (SAI) was 0.557, while the ‘total livelihood asset index’ was 2.315. To the best of our knowledge, asset indicators have been first time recorded for seaweed farmers from anywhere in the word for longitudinal analysis. The data will be useful to researchers and policy-makers for household welfare dynamics studies.