I've got big big news I've said this so many times and I'm going to say it again just because it is so shocking the Philippines has one of the longest coastal areas in the world and we import 93% of our salt consumption it's so it's crazy if you've been watching feature for a while now you'll realize that we've done a lot of documentaries about salt long story short a bill was passed a law was passed decades ago in the Philippines that basically made it illegal to sell salt that hasn't been iodized so basically any non-iodized salt was being sold illegally by our salt Artisans salt is something that you don't necessarily think about that much but it is the Cornerstone of any cooking all around the world that's why in Australia us and France you have specialty salts that are being sold really expensively and in the Philippines we have those specialty salts it's just you couldn't buy it and the people who were selling it were getting discouraged so this is the big news I was telling you about and I'm going to read off of this if you will indulge me Republic act number 11 1985 also known as the Philippine salt industry development act mandates the designation of public lands as salt production areas in a bid to increase salt production in the country it is also no longer illegal to sell uniodized salt in the Philippines I'll read you something that to me is music to my ears iodization of artisanal and nonfood grad salt and salt intended for export is hereby rendered optional in the country so it does not stop here yes the law has passed it's finally been signed there's going to be a salt ccil that needs to be put together where they can kind of map all these salts and help these salt Farmers develop their products and get them to export so that's why I kind of wanted to put together all the documentaries that we've shot over the years to show you how special these salts are and for you now to be able to legally buy these salt salts from the salt Farmers all their contact details are in the description below you can buy all of their salts by texting them or now it's available in Lazada and different places I'll put all the links just please support your local salt farmers and enjoy this really long now documentary about salt in the Philippines e salt is the unassuming hero in every kitchen the Philippines being in archipelago has a variety of heirloom salts yet they're being forgotten this is the pukin sand salt and T of the Locos Nar Rachel kinas learned how to make pukin Sal when she was just 7 years old it has been her source of livelihood for the last 20 years it's around 3:00 in the afternoon under the scorching Heat Of The Sun Rachel starts to gather some sand a step that they called P good good Rachel transfers the sand to a woven basket called bakar she repeats the process until the bakar is filled to the brim Rachel pours some sea water in the sandfield Bata just below it a small container catches the sea water filtered by the sand this is the concentrated liquid which will eventually be cooked and be reduced to salt or what they already call Kat n Rachel shows us the patapa it's a rock which she says comes from a honeybee in the mountains bapa is a tool that they use in determining the cinity of the seawat or katas that they have filtered if it floats there's a high chance they're going to be making a lot of salt from it if it sinks the water collected isn't Salient enough to Produce Salt the bapa has been passed down through generations by her ancestors h [Music] Rachel prepares the firewood or the pangat she puts enough firewood to ensure it would produce a powerful but consistent fire she pours in the filtered salt water the constant heat dictates the amount of salt she would be able to produce the less fire the less salt that there is Rachel skims the remaining impurities from the salt water to make sure it comes out clean and white Co she leaves the salt water to boil guarding the fire for three additional hours [Music] after 3 hours the salt is reduced from the filtered sea waterer Rachel Scoops the salt places it in the basket to further dry it out 20 years Akila the drained water from this process over a couple of salt processing Cycles about 3 months piles into a stalagmite like mound of salt called D the water drops dries and forms in the Sun and is usually ready when it's the size of an adult leg the 3-month process gives them 2 to 3 kilos of tud which they usually sell for about 1,200 pesos or around $20 after this process Rachel and other salt makers grilled the solidified salt to further bring out its flavor even sometimes adding sukang loo to make it softer and more palatable when times are hard this salt is often consumed with rice for sustenance for [Music] ano na pagawa NG Ain dito s kaga [Music] being an archipelago the Philippines has more than 36,000 km of Shoreline the fifth longest in the world with large bodies of seawat come the abundance of salt we used to have a thriving salt industry today salt making in the country is a dying tradition an ironic and sad reality this is our love letter to the beautiful irans or salt beds of the past and the few ones that remain today those postcard worthy scenes of Gallant salt makers waterb Birds eclipsing the sky their skins glistening with sweat as they toil under the incessant heat a view that is Vanishing along with the precious salt that these Artisans make this is the a Luman of kawi kavit [Music] [Music] in the early '90s salt harvesting was a well-rewarded practice there were five major salt producers in the country Pangasinan bulakan idental mendoro and Cav the Philippines was self-sufficient in salt but with import liberalization years of urbanization and the subsequent Asin law passed in 95 this allowing uniodized salt to be sold salt Farms began to dwindle in number in kawit kavite we met one of the two remaining mangas families or salt makers among them was 55-year-old narly who learned to harvest salt as a young boy in the80s for speech speech for due to the shortage of workers some salt makers like that dini have to tend to the Salt beds in their land on their own the process is long tedious and labor intensive the harvest season happens strictly during the dry season when the sun is at its peak but the preparation of the salt beds begins way before that from December until the beginning of Summer around March salt makers clean the salt beds shallow artificial basins meant to extract salt from seawater through natural evaporation once done they pile mounds of mud on the banigan to establish a flat base for the salt when the soil dries up they sweep the dust off the salt beds add more water let them dry and clean it tediously until it's ready to be used for the salt making season it's important to accomplish the whole process in a timely manner before the monsoon season takes over over and puts their hard work to waste in the next part of the process the salt makers transfer salt water from a Dam to the depository and fill the gaps in the salt beds with rocks This Is How They store sea water to ensure that it absorbs the level of salinity needed to produce the salt this step takes as much as 2 months soon after more sea water is transferred through pipes from one depository to another the salt makers utilize different basins to store water in different stages of cylinder to heighten the richness of the salt this is carried out simultaneously as they clean the salt beds narly explains the different depositories and how they use them to maximize the solidity level of the salt water the initial water collected goes into the deposito and is then transferred to Primera when its salinity level reaches five from Primera they transfer it to Sea and let it sit for 2 weeks to a month at this point the water salinity level reaches about 6 to 7 after this the water is moved to the next depository Tera then finally to Ultimo the saltiest of the bunch with a cly level of about 8 to 10 each depository is also cleaned before any water is transferred one depository at a time and not all at once at every stage the salinity level is measured with a tool or for veteran salt makers like nly they can tell by the taste once the water reaches its Target salinity inside the Ultimo it's ready to be transferred to the banun one of the most crucial parts of this process is drying the salt water it takes days or even weeks after it solidifies the salt is ready to be harvested the sequence at which the salt is harvested affects the color of the salt and its uses the first harvest more grayan color is used for preserving fish making salted eggs curing Kabal meat or in the Filipino shrimp paste called bong in France this gray salt is also known as s it's actually quite prized in kitchens all over the world saying that it contains more flavor and minerals the next Harvest which yields cleaner and wider salt is sold to bakeries or in the local market while the best ones may be eaten as is for about 8 months of hard work the salt makers earn 200 to 300 pesos for every sack of [Music] salt it was in May when our team first visited the salt makers but despite being in the middle of summer they were plagued with rain it was clear as day they are on the front lines of climate change fore speech for speech speech spee [Music] speech for another salt maker explained how this affects the quality of their salt when July came we returned for another visit in the hopes of seeing the full potential of ass salt harvest in sunnier weather unfortunately the weather still did not cooperate trying to save what they can The Artisans harvested some produce albeit not as much as they expected which meant more loss than profit spe fore speech speech fore ano gas foreign speech speech foreign foree speech speech [Music] besides the challenges posed by unpredictable weather and the season caused by climate change salt makers also reeled under the impact of the passage of the Asin law in '95 the act for salt iodization or Ain mandated that all salt sold in the country be iodized while intended to combat the incidence of iodine deficiency among Filipinos it doomed a thriving salt making industry and the communities and families that depended on it without training and support to iodize their produce the salt farmers were forced to leave their craft behind as selling their salt technically became illegal fore speech forch speech foreign forign speech foreign speech for [Music] dogged by threats of arrest most salt Farmers have given up on their livelihoods in the next two decades the Philippines turned more towards importing salts that were already iodized at a price lower than what was locally produced while the Asin law responded to the country's health problems which up until today is quite unclear whether or not the majority of the population suffers from a lack of iodine in our diet it also presented two fronts that needed more foresight helping the local salt industry to Produce iy Salt and giving consumers the choice to buy the kind of salt that they want artisanal salts at the end of the day should be more expensive than table salt and will unlikely be used by the majority of our population there is good news though the amendment to the law carving out artisanal salts from the law and allowing them to be sold has recently passed in the lower house and will soon go to the Senate next the bill seeks to address the challenge for small local farmers to compete with large salt producers especially in the global market it also wants to revive the practice of making salt with different processes unique to certain locations in the country pushing further the ultimate goal of geographical indication for our local products and produce the question remains can we still bring back the glory of aasan and are we willing to do what it takes to do so we urge you to support your local salt producers in any way you can not only will they bring flavor to your table but will spark much needed conversations about the state of our agricultural systems [Music] process bosi is very unique [Music] located in the province of Iloilo miaga is a coastal town with a salt making tradition that dates back as early as 1823 in its Glory Days the town produced up to 10,000 sacks of bub or salt annually in the salt Farm spread across the coastline of its 21 Villages always the heirloom tradition would be a sight to Behold a process that cannot be seen anywhere else in the world today niaga salt making tradition is on the verge of becoming a distant memory several Asos have turned their backs on it after shorelines have become more sparse because of climate change and the establishment of seaw wolves the younger generation also lost interest in the art due to its laborious process 195 years have since passed after miaga began harvesting salt today only one woman remains to take the helm in Reviving the town's dying bub sea salt industry AK L pagalan noada isang registered social worker 47 years old T sea [Music] salt salt 1820 okay balos an Langan balapan [Music] [Music] organize elderly loving mothers proposal minda [Music] form8 so G grab opportunity for [Music] [Applause] [Music] for 2 to 3 months aftering and then and after that after one [Music] week sration house BL drums BL drums Nam IL bamboo beds and after a day or two daysala solidify so napaka very observant May bamboo beds oan mag Harvest na after harvest whole night ano basa P Yan and then after a day ano PA nilagay namin SA dry facility for one day and then roasting house roasting housef Asin to kill the impurities and then [Music] paging 500 G is uh 100 [Music] pesos 2018 202 parang tal May ano na May seaw wall so Wala na silang Shoreline na pagawaan NG Asin very significant shorten Yung Shoreline at Saka Yung seaw wall control it's summer [Music] time profess University of the Philippines and the visayas DTI coine 5023 [Music] f [Music] registered social worker Inda [Music] I'm proud and it's a [Music] [Music] privilege Asin TI is known for its sharp taste with Smoky and fruity under tones and has been described as the purest and cleanest artisanal sea salt but for something deceptively simple it takes several months of preparation and requires meticulous care and vigilance as it can only be made from March to December due to the Sea [Music] salinity this is why it finds itself on the brink of Extinction with only a few families having the patience and grit to continue bringing it to life one of these is the manongas family one of the last Aeros of Alber Bol Manas [Music] this is one of the few surviving precolonial practices when Inland bound rice Farmers used to trade with Aeros in need of rice each obtaining their staple for the Year tester's brother father Chris manongas shares more about the rich history of salt making in their family in my my memory when I was born I was already born in that in that tradition and I was told that um even before my grandfather my material grandfather uh started the the tradition or contined it there was already that uh practice of that way of making salt uh the asent process EXP for it's rious it's just imagine to produce 100 units of it takes us uh 3 months to do that [Music] coconuts first have to be harvested used and then husked after that they're soaked for 3 months to act as a vessel for seawater they are then chopped and dried out in the sun at no point can these be rained on if they do they have to start from scratch as this would reduce the overall salinity of the product after 5 days they are burnt and reduced into Ash or what they call gang which needs to be white the gang is then filtered into a funnel-shaped bamboo called the sug sag this is lined with some leaves to act as a [Music] strainer sea water is continuously poured to leech out the salt or t From the Ashes this step usually takes 3 days and nights with little to no sleep at all after this the TK is poured into special clay pot usually hundreds of them all lined up in rows over a special furnace these are left to simmer continuously replenishing the evaporated liquid as they go also making sure to tend to the fire and making sure that it stays at the right temperature the whole time this goes on for a whole day and is repeated as more and more solid Mass accumulates at the bottom of the pot until eventually it cracks hence its nickname dinosaur egg [Music] all the clay pots are then finally put to rest to cool down before you're able to use them the process is long and arduous but is it all worth the time and effort for traditional salt makers like that dinor currently Asin TI only sells from 400 to 700 pesos in the market a far cry from the common table salt that anyone can get for less than about 80 pesos but if you compare its price point with its International C Parts you will realize that it's actually in the same range if not cheaper than some of the most expensive salts in the world okay white rice [Music] Nik so when we were growing up we were talking among ourselves those who were involved in that the family the Sons and Daughters of Asin of making families we are talking among ourselves and saying uh we cannot just stay here with the same in the same uh livelihood until we grow up until we die because then we will have no economic progress with that the Young Generation in our generation we slowly lost interest in that after making the salt they still had to go to the farmlands and mountains to trade their yield with the farmers the cycle became way too much to bear and so the siblings pursued different paths the eldest who was the last one to make the artisanal ass salt in their family became a carpenter that destor became a plumber while father Chris went on to become a priest in Zamboanga the salt making tradition in the family came to a halt their salt making Hut was destroyed by the typhoon and forgotten in 1983 that was until the '90s where father Chris saw an opportunity in the '90s towards the turn of the century uh there were only just from 200 salt making families uh there were some like two or three families left aging uh salt makers at the turn of the century there was only one left and he can only produce like 50 to 80 pieces once a year and then um around 2010 um there was no more production no nobody is interested anymore and so I thought of why not revive it and give it a new life using some kind of machine generates to help uh ease the hard labor in the [Music] production foreign for speeech for [Music] foree fore for [Music] foree Fore speech [Music] [Music] he was able to convince his siblings to revive the family tradition of making salt but it was just one of the many hurdles that they had to overcome facing all the difficulties at the beginning I have to make a loan I have no money for all myself I a priest that no income it it took us almost 5 years to to repay the loan with so many penalties I just cannot uh live [Music] it because of my love for the tradition my my love for it to always remember my father my grandfather all the people who have been working with it [Music] thankfully their sacrifices have been slowly paying off the Asin got Global recognition as it got listed in the slow food Arc of taste catalog of endangered Heritage Foods in 2016 what makes me happy now is that people have noticed that so many people we never imagine that our asenti will reach the United States and will reach Australia and will reach uh Europe and it has because some people got interested they bought it and now many other old asend now they're getting interested again they're organizing so they can go back to doing it well there has growing interest in the salt the ultimate question remains who will continue the tradition when all the Aging Aeros are gone for speech fore speech2 years old [Music] while nobody from the younger Generations have expressed interest in continuing the family salt making Legacy hope is not entirely lost because there's still someone Al B not someone from the family who's willing to do so and that person is pong TTI nestor's assistant who has been helping him out since [Music] 2010 foreign foreign speech spee for for a tedious and tiresome process yes but without a doubt painstakingly beautiful and yes this Bohanan Legacy is worth all the time effort and sacrifice whether the younger generation sees this and acts on it no one can tell for sure but our hope remains that from fire water and Ash this tradition will not lose its spark and instead burn brighter before it's too [Music] late there are many ways of harvesting local salt and it varies from one Province to another in zambales they have Ain sauo a traditionally harvested sea salt that comes in a buo a woven basket made from BD or Palm bamboo and ratan mixed together that's both sturdy and completely biodegradable today Ain sauo is produced by the locals in the Panay yunan community at the sambali beach Farm but their story began over 120 years ago when Nicholas Kamara acquired a piece of land for harvesting and trading rice u based on our family records um my uh great great uh grandfather Nicolas Kara uh purchased uh this property which at that time was 21 hectares in uh 1888 after he purchased it he wanted to uh make it productive and um figured the best way was like through a partnership uh with the local uh [Music] famili at the turn of the century the land would be used to gather salt through through this partnership Nicholas Kamar divided the 1 Hector salt beds into 25 families in the area with each family tending to 500 M under the fair trade agreement Kamar received 25% of the profits while the farmers got the rest of the 75% and were allowed to sell their harvest in whichever way they saw fit for [Music] SI n ell SI n po n May today nanaa who descends from pioneering salt makers continues to preserve the tradition as she works with AA a group of salt makers and fishermen in ban zambales fore foree like n adeda n Helen is a generational self maker she learned to harvest it from her mother in 1968 [Music] the long and arous process of making Asin sauo starts with lining the tatab Bagan or the v-shaped contraption with ashes once the tide reaches the mangrove the seawater infused mud is tediously gathered by the Asos in the taban after filling it with more mud more fresh water from the mangroves is is poured to filter out the precious salt water that slowly drips into the pah Aeros then cook the salt water the whole day to produce a pure fine sea salt full of minerals while that's being made they start weaving the boy oh or cidan a tradition that conveniently answers today's issues with the overuse of plastic packaging [Music] [Music] spee speech fore at present the second generation descendants of the original 25 families continue to work with Philip Kamara Nicholas kamara's great great grandson and his wife Ching we had this piece of property that we bought from Phillip's aunt and um and we decided to build a beach house right so we built this house and then I got to know the community around I found out because they sent me as a gift um package salt so I said wow this is so nice right since I was attached to the Organic Market in maati so I'll order order salt from you and then if you can package it that way and then so I would order a lot of salt and then they they produced it and then I would sell it in Manila so it became very popular with orders coming in aging salt makers like Naya needed all the help they could get luckily some of them have children who are willing to learn about the family tradition proud po AK Kasi po ano there is so much promise in Asin bu yet the tradition hangs by a thread as the salt makers are reaching their Twilight ears and there are less young people like me who are willing to continue the art seeking opportunities elsewhere for [Music] hello forch spee spee [Music] for this could be one of the most unique salts we found in the Philippines tulul is an organic solid cooked salt made in bangai husin hordan it is one of the community's longstanding traditions and one that entails a tedious process AK Pala SI shley Pino alas n 63 years old [Music] Ma [Music] [Music] 14 years old [Music] for skin uh actually Kami support [Music] 11 years old [Music] [Music] [Music] Nan nanan and her children begin the process of making tul by selectively Gathering Thea an assortment of driftwood from the beach these have been soaked in salt water for long periods of time which gives them their salinity the gathered Dua is then burned in large quantities this step can take up to a week depending on how much Ash is generated from the Driftwood [Music] sea is poured again on the cing and the strained water is collected in containers underneath it the process is repeated several more times to develop a hyper concentrated solution she mixes or coconut milk with the strained water and then pours it into a hor noan or cooking pan small amounts of the strained water from the cing are continuously added after several hours all moisture from the solidified salt completely evaporates resulting in brick-like lumps of salt or Baretta that are then packaged and so while Nana n and her family take take pride in their tradition they once met hurdles that almost threatened your livelihood spee pakal Ang ano Kam sir Lang Kami m lang po po po NG pasayan po thank you po sir Kasi [Music] M SA or sa Kam [Music] [Music] fore [Music] for speech [Music] forain [Laughter] for luckily there is soap on September 11 2023 a priority Bill seeking to revive the Philippine salt industry was approved on its final reading which means it is only a signature away from becoming a law while we have been seeing small winds for the salt making industry it can be expected that there will be more challenges along the way talk about our traditional salts honor The Artisans behind them and support them in any way you can [Music]