A poor Boholano islander with only third grade elementary education has written on the seawater that he farms for guso a national agricultural life success story. His struggles intimidated by poverty and meager learning steeled the will of Silverio Cabanero not just to survive together with his wife Eulogia but educate up to college their all children numbering to “bad luck” 13. The guso or seaweed farmer on the island barangay of Hingutanan West in Bien Unido was all praises from the national agriculture agency when the triumph of his raw determination and tireless diligence was featured on national television IBC-Channel 13 Saturday night. The episode was part of a series of success stories of ordinary Filipino farmers selected for national television feature program Maunlad na Agrikultura of the Department of Agriculture (DA). The episode also aired the agriculture and food sufficiency thrusts of the Bohol administration of Gov. Edgar Chatto, himself inspired by Cabanero's story to inspire other Boholanos. Documentaries of a successful rice farmer and actual farm harvesting in Bohol will also be featured in another episode on the same national television, according to Remy Regacho, fisheries division head of the Office of the Provincial Agriculture (OPA). Raised in an island settlement where illegal and dangerous dynamite fishing used to be an easy option to earn and survive, Cabanero, then a boy of 12, began to gather seaweeds of eucheuma kind from the wild for sale due to a sudden market opportunity. But he engaged in deadly blast fishing at the same time despite his morning age.

In 1960s, the culture of seaweeds was yet an absent livelihood in Cabanero's place simply because of the abundant guso in the wild. The seaweed, a marine algae which soft body is light brown to light green, grows on coral reefs and rocky and sandy bottom of marine waters as well as n inter-tidal or sub-tidal zones where seawater is clear and fast moving. The eucheuma kind and another type called kappaphycus are commercially important as they are sources of carrageenan, a substance used in products that need gelling, emulsifying, binding agents as in medical and surgical materials, and suspending, thickening or water-holding properties. The two types of seaweeds are also sources of valuable extracts for food, pharmaceutical, personal care and other industrial products. Carrageenan is the most sought-after additive component worldwide. In 1969, there was a widespread use of carrageenan and demands started to grow in both the local and international markets. While gathering seaweeds from the wild, Cabanero would introduce the marine specie to where they were not growing.

In 1972, a seaweed processor from Cebu, the GENU Philippines, applied for a farm area on Hingotanan island and brought guso seedlings for test planting there from Zamboanga. Cabanero became the overseer and caretaker of the farm. Observing the profitability of seaweed farming, Cabanero decided to stop from dynamite fishing and focused on his own guso raising while still caretaking the GENU farm. Cabanero had to double his effort in earning from seaweed farming, what with the 15 mouths to feed, including his and his wife, and the education of their 13 children. Seaweed farming gradually earned good income for the island family, so that all the Cabanero children have been able to finish college. Seven of them are now practicing their professions. Seldom can a big family with only farming as the sole source of income send its all children to higher education. Three Cabanero children have chosen to be full-time guso growers, utilizing the six-hectare sea farm shared to them by their father. He is now physically slow at 72, but elder Cabanero still visits their marine farm, his passion and value for the seagrass of his life unsalted and ever fresh. For obvious reason, he named one of his daughters Eucheuma. (Ven rebo Arigo)