SEAWEED FARMING at sea is proving an increasingly competitive biomass production alternative for food and related uses. Farmed seaweed output has been growing exponentially, reaching 24 million tonnes by 2012.
Remarkably, 99 per cent of this production occurred in merely eight Asian nations. Most of the remaining 150 countries and territories with coasts are yet to begin seaweed farming.
With current technology and extensive available sea areas, requiring no land, freshwater or fertiliser, seaweed production can expand sustainability to the scale of agriculture, while providing a variety of valuable eco-system services. Seaweed farming is relatively simple, quite productive, eco-friendly, requires low investment and technology already exists to replicate and escalate at much larger scales.
This is all very good except for the fact that it has to be conducted at sea, something that has through the ages kept humankind away, and for good reasons. Living and farming on land became practical after thousands of years, yet the sea is still untamed.
Consequently, the potential of the sea to sustainably provide for humankind has remained sorely under developed while it has largely been used for indiscriminate extraction and as a dump. In reaction to such destructive practices the current trend is promotion of conservation.
Lack of knowledge about seaweed farming and its uses may help explain why it is seldom mentioned during major events and in publications addressing the expansion of food production and the closing of the food gap, even when discussing aquaculture.
Yet seaweed farming and generally integrated and sustainable approaches to marine use and management need not be at odds with conservation. Just a small percentage of total ocean area is needed to double world food production at sea; the rest can well be devoted to sustainable enhanced fisheries and conservation.
An iterative process that breaks the cycle of ‘there is no production because there is no use and there is no use because there is no production’ is being fostered, though mostly on a case by case basis as scientists and business people here and there decide to enter this field.
A well drafted consensual policy could break the other cycle that stems from that, particularly related to economic development, that there is no funding and no markets since production is limited because there is no funding and no markets.
Diverting even a small fraction of public funds currently devoted to marginal increases in agricultural productivity in tropical countries toward seaweed farming could be handsomely rewarded by a quick development of this alternative agriculture.
Considering that over 1.3 billion people live on tropical coasts, primarily in developing countries, development agendas should consider fishers and coastal families together with agricultural producers and rural families as communities in need of assistance and with potential to improve and contribute if provided proper support.
Of particular importance, the expansion of seaweed farming and use as a viable solution to growing food and freshwater limitations, particularly in the context of climate change adaptation, must be communicated to decision makers.
• Ricardo Radulovich is a professor and director of the Sea Gardens Project at the University of Costa Rica. These views were captured from a report co-authored by Amir Neori (National Centre for Mariculture, Israel), Diego Valderrama (University of Florida), CRK Reddy (Marine Chemicals Research Institute, India), Holly Cronin (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama) and John Forster (Forster Consulting Inc, Washington)
