Joost Wouters is an unusual farmer. He does not have a tractor to prepare the soil. There is no barn on his farm. He does not even have land. Wouters grows seaweed in the ocean. He is a blue farmer.
Seventy-one percent of Earth's surface is covered with water. However, most initiatives searching for new solutions for food, energy and health are focused on land. Some are even fixated on the exploration of outer space.
In 2020, a UNESCO report voiced concern that countries, on average, devote only 1.7 percent of their research budgets to sciences of the ocean. It seems that humanity has mostly forgotten where life started 3.5 billion years ago.
Joost Wouters is an unusual farmer. He does not have a tractor to prepare the soil. There is no barn on his farm. He does not even have land. Wouters grows seaweed in the ocean. He is a blue farmer.
Seventy-one percent of Earth's surface is covered with water. However, most initiatives searching for new solutions for food, energy and health are focused on land. Some are even fixated on the exploration of outer space.
In 2020, a UNESCO report voiced concern that countries, on average, devote only 1.7 percent of their research budgets to sciences of the ocean. It seems that humanity has mostly forgotten where life started 3.5 billion years ago.
Joost Wouters, who started The Seaweed Company in 2018 in The Netherlands, belongs to a small but rapidly growing global tribe of entrepreneurs cultivating the fastest growing biomass in the world: seaweed. These blue farmers are finding that seaweed can help solve many of the challenges humanity faces today. Seaweed can be used to produce food, fuel, fertilizer, textiles, and pharmaceuticals.
There are some 12,000 species of seaweed. They all grow for ‘free’. Wouters: “Seaweed does not need fresh water or fertilizer. It takes nutrients from the salt water in the oceans. It needs sun and CO2. We have plenty of all of that.”
Before the invention of chemical fertilizers a century ago, farmers used seaweed to fertilize their lands. Since the Green Revolution of the 1960s that practice has been all but abandoned around the world. However, as the ‘side effects’ of the widespread use of chemicals in agriculture have become clear, scientists are now searching for more sustainable and environmentally friendly ways to grow food.
The Seaweed Company is reintroducing a common practice of farmers prior to industrial agriculture and uses seaweed for applications to support farming on land. Biologists of the company have developed products that improve the soil, make crops grow faster, and sustain the health of livestock.
Seaweed contains all essential soil nutrients—sodium, phosphorus, iodine, and potassium—as well as a full range of trace minerals. The latest agricultural science focuses on how soil can absorb more carbon. The challenges of climate change are an important driver for that research. But there is more. More carbon means that soil can hold more nutrients. More nutrients in the soil leads to healthier plants. And more nutritious plants offer better food as a critical step towards better health of people.
Experiments by The Seaweed Company show that adding specially formulated seaweed extracts allows the soil to absorb an additional twenty tons CO2 per hectare. Wouters: “We see crops grow faster and becoming more resistant to stresses like heat and drought, but also to pests. The crops need less energy for bigger yields and bigger fruits. That is extremely interesting for farming.”
Other tests of the company demonstrate that adding seaweed extracts to the feed of livestock has a big impact on their health and performance. Animals get stronger immune systems and need less, or even no, antibiotics to fight disease. Pigs need up to ten percent less seaweed-fortified feed to grow. Wouters: “Ten percent less feed means that we need ten percent less soil to grow food crops for animals. Ultimately, that even has an impact on the Amazon rainforest.”
Seaweed offers more solutions for the environment. Livestock contributes as many greenhouse gases as the transportation industry. Nearly 40 percent of that is produced during digestion: cattle, goats, and sheep belch and pass methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. One variety of seaweed contains bromoform. This ingredient inhibits the formation of methane in the rumen of livestock. Research shows that a small amount of this supplement cuts the methane production of animals by 60 to 80 percent.
Not only farm animals get healthier on a seaweed diet. The scientists of The Seaweed Company have also developed supplements to support human health. Initial research confirms the same impact on the immune system as with livestock: Seaweed balances inflammation and supports healthy digestion. The company introduced a skincare product to maintain the health of the skin, “the largest organ and the body’s first line of defense”, says Wouters.
It should not be surprising that the oceans—where life started—have so much to offer to support health. The Chinese recently extracted a drug from seaweed to treat Alzheimer’s. The active ingredient of the drug oligomannate is drawn from algae and early experiments suggest that it reduces inflammation in the brain. The drug has been approved in China while last year further research on the drug was started by researchers in the US.
Seaweed cultivation can help reverse much of the damage created by industrial production. In the modern economy, we have become used to the concept of hidden or ‘externalized’ costs. These are the expenses that society and nature pay for the impact of manufacturing and transportation. For example: Driving gas-fueled cars increases global warming and creates pollution that deteriorates public health. But manufacturers and drivers do not pay for the resulting costs; nature and society do.
