A village on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is suffering from the effects of a bust in the global market for tropical seaweed, according to The Wall Street Journal.
It's not the kind of seaweed that is wrapped around rice in a sushi restaurant; it's the kind that is ground up and used as a thickener in foods and other products.
As oil and other commodity prices spiked, so did the price of seaweed. Villagers enjoyed the boon, but now prices have plummeted. The Indonesian Seaweed Association is telling farmers to stay calm. There's talk of industry reform and new regulation. No word yet of a bailout.
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