There were so many powerful learnings for us at the Blue Food Innovation Summit in London (and opportunities for Natalie Longmire-Kulis and Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed to connect with others in this space like Mauricio, pictured below). As investors in innovative seaweed solutions, this was a main focus for our team. Here's a few takeaways that we had on the challenges and opportunities in this space: • In Korea, China, and Japan, near-shore cultivation is saturated, so there's a need to go off shore. • In Southeast Asia, seedlings and monoculture present a great risk to the seaweed farming industry. • In the West, the seaweed industry is a nascent space with increasing demand, but regulations and permits can be a bottle neck towards scaling. • Dr. Jang Kim estimates that there is a 30-40 year technology gap between seaweed farming in the East and the West. • Vincent Doumeizel points out that we should be striving for food innovations that are not just sustainable (because our current climate situation is already so alarming), but regenerative–trying to build back and restore climate health. This makes seaweed an appealing branch of aquaculture for many reasons, including its regenerative properties. #seaweed #aquaculture #bluefoodinnovation
Sorry I couldn’t make it to the conference this year. Re: your posting Dr. Jang Kim estimates that there is a 30-40 year technology gap between seaweed farming in the East and the West. Did Dr Kim specify what those technology gaps were? And which way was the gap favoring? I can see arguments going both ways to be honest…
Natalie and Tessa, it was fantastic connecting with you both at the Blue Food Innovation Summit! I truly appreciate our insightful discussions and look forward to the possibility of collaborating to drive forward innovative seaweed solutions. #BlueFoodInnovation #SeaweedSolutions #Collaboration
Co-founder & CEO @ Coast 4C | The Earthshot Prize Finalist 2024!!!
6moPotato Impact Partners sorry to miss you Tessa Charupatanapongse, M.S.Ed and Natalie Longmire-Kulis, and great you met with Mauricio Castillo! I can't speak to Korea, China and Japan, but I believe there is quite a lot of misinformation circulating about Southeast Asia! Access to seedlings is a problem for individual farmers at the start of a season. Specialised seedling providers cannot solve that challenge because farmers need about 2 tonnes each (and each village will have 80-200 farmers), and seedling demand is highly seasonal so a very difficult business model by itself. It needs more creative thinking and making use of a large network of farmers and nurseries is the only way to address it. And it's not accurate to describe it as a monocrop. There are many species grown commercially in Southeast Asia, including at least 4 just in the eucheumatoids, with many varieties below that. There is a need for more breeding and selection work such as that done by Michael Roleda , as well as more understanding of genetic diversity. But the biggest problem is that there has been no R&D to support small holder production systems in the face of climate change - it is a testament to their skills that....