BREN SMITH
Seaweed was been eaten by the Japanese for thousands of years. Most other people do not view seaweed as an editable food. Yet it is quite nutritious, and Smith is breeding new strains that are even more so, very much as we have done with fruits ad vegetables on land. His view is that with Global Warming, over-fishing of the oceans, and higher and higher costs of food as we now know it, seaweed will become a major food staple throughs the world. Actually, Campbell’s Soup and many other companies producing canned and packaged foods, has been using MSG extracted from seaweed for years, It is a major flavor enhancer. But at this time they do not use the more nutritious leaves as the Japanese do, Smith argues that this will change as there is almost unlimited ocean farming “land” as seaweed can grow in 3 dimensions and requires much less labor, fertilizer and pesticides than land farming for equal amounts of healthy food.
Bren Smith, GreenWave Executive Director and owner of Thimble Island Ocean Farm, pioneered the development of restorative 3D ocean farming. A lifelong commercial fisherman, his work has been profiled by CNN, The New Yorker, NPR, Bon Appetit, National Geographic Television’s Future of Food series, and the Wall Street Journal. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic and The Atlantic. Called a “visionary” by Barton Seaver, Director of Harvard’s Healthy and Sustainable Food Program, Bren’s farming model is designed to restore ocean ecosystems, mitigate climate change, and create blue-green jobs for fishermen — while ensuring healthy, local food for communities. In 2015 he was awarded the Buckminster Fuller Prize for ecological design. In 2013, Smith was chosen as one of six “Ocean Heroes” by Oceana and Future of Fish’s “Ocean Entrepreneur” of the year. He is an Ashoka Fellow and Echoing Green Climate Fellow. Bren Smith is building a blue-green economy that will restore oceans, mitigate climate change and re-invent the fishing profession. Over the past 12 years, Bren has created the world’s first multi-species 3D ocean farms centered on kelp, one of the world’s fastest growing plants and also the most carbon absorbing. This new model moves from growing vulnerable monocultures to vibrant ecosystems, which work to re-build biodiversity and produce higher yields. The infrastructure is simple: seaweed, scallops and mussels grow on floating ropes, stacked above oyster and clam cages below. The farm model has the capacity to grow 20 tons of sea vegetables and 500,000 shellfish on each acre per year with zero inputs. In turn, these crops produce food, fertilizers, animal feeds, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, biofuels and much more. Importantly, the farms restore, rather than deplete, the ocean ecosystems. Oysters, mussels and other shellfish filter nitrogen out of the water column while their cages act as a buffer from storm surges. With a single oyster filtering up to fifty gallons of water a day, even small farms can have measurable impacts on water quality. Some farms are in heavily polluted waters with the intention not of food production but the rehabilitation of the water. The reduction in nitrogen pollution prevents the establishment of dead zones and acres of seaweed act as a massive carbon sequestration blanket (kelp absorbs five times more carbon that of land-based plants). Meanwhile, the farms create a natural reef system that enables hundreds of wild species to thrive.
