Salt, not only for food ingredient

          What’s your idea about salt? Your image about salt may limited an ingredient to food. That is actually what I think about salt before I had a trip to a salt farm located in Samutsongkhran province, Thailand. During the trip I find that the function of salt is far beyond of food ingredient: salt can be used for beauty building, salt can be used for health massage, salt can be used for industry purpose, salt can be used for preserve food, salt can be use to product marine fishery. More interestingly, a waste of salt production “dog skin” can be used as fertilize.

          I was informed by Mr.To, the owner of the salt farm in Samutsongkhran that “dog skin” is kind of waste of salt production which normally be discarded in the past time. But with exploration of Mr.To, he find that the “dog skin” can be used as fertilizer for orchard with salty soil. Now he can sale the “dog skin” as fertilizer to local people and make profit. Even some foreign companies require Mr.To to export the fertilizer.

          Beside successful exploit the utilization of “dog skin”, Mr.To also conducted several experiments on salt production. He developed several products with different function mentioned above and improved quality of local production. To transfer his technology he also spent 3 million Baht to construct a training school to teach local farmers on salt farming and salt production.

          Mr.To gives us a very good example to explore more function of agricultural production using local wisdom, and to produce more value-added sale products. Like salt, all agricultural produce has multi-functions other than food or raw industry material. For example, we can produce various kind of rice with different function with modern breeding technology: high iron rice, high vitamin rice, high GABA rice etc and to expend the function of rice other than a staple food. That is the future of agriculture.