DIY regenerative ocean farms: The future of food and fuel? | Future Explored by Freethink
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มี.ค. 2022
- DIY regenerative ocean farms: The future of food and fuel? With Future Explored host, Tom Carroll
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It’s a massive problem: We’re running out of good land to produce food, so we need to keep producing more food on less land.
Fishermen are turning to a solution they think can not only help provide more food more sustainably, but actually help replenish and heal the oceans too - a practice known as regenerative farming. Raising marine plants and animals together, called ocean farming or “aquaculture,” can help us grow food, fight climate change, and clean up coastal waters.
The aquaculture setups designed by nonprofit GreenWave are simple: using ropes, baskets, and crates, they cultivate seaweed, kelp, and shellfish. By using a variety of crops and creatures which all grow together in harmony, aquaculture can not only maximize space and yield, but is also more resilient than many forms of land-based farming, where reliance on one strain of one crop can lead to entire fields being wiped out with one disease.
Humans have relied on the oceans to provide food for centuries, with ancient Romans cultivating oysters in baskets - not too far removed from the 3D aquaculture GreenWave is helping to promote today. By turning again to the sea, and not only utilizing it but healing it with regenerative farming, we may be able to keep up the pace with less waste and a better world.
Read the full story here ►►www.freethink.com/series/futu...
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About Tom Carroll
Tom is the host and creator of our Future Explored TikTok and TH-cam series where he shares an optimistic view of the future to hundreds of thousands of followers.
With a degree in Biological Sciences Tom likes to focus on nature-based innovations and solutions that change the way we think about moving forward as a species.
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Read more of our stories on the future of farms:
Innovative vertical farming companies to watch
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New startup takes vertical farming underground - literally
►► www.freethink.com/environment...
Vertical farms could take over the world
►► www.freethink.com/series/hard...
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About Freethink
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This was a load of fun to make a video about! The future is looking good!
Lol, had to doubletake which channel this video was on.
@@NotHPotter haha welcome to Freethink!
Birthrates are _down_ not _up._
@@iamwhoyousayiam6773 it’s not just about population size, it’s about population lifestyles, which are shifting drastically and expected to continue to over the next decades - the type of food in demand will follow that shift
@@TommoCarroll We will own nothing and be happy. Lifestyle restrictions are _increasing._ Population is decreasing. There's plenty of land, but the key word is "available." Black Rock & Gates own it all.
I really like how this project is giving fishermen a way to pivot their careers to a more sustainable food production method, whilst still taking advantage of the skillsets (boating) and objectives (feeding people) that they already have - hopefully it should win-over a lot of people!
Not to mention they can also harvest the fish there too.
@@KRYMauL This one actually doesn't include fish in the system, but there are other ideas combining different organisms like fish!
@@TommoCarroll This one allows fish to live in the kelp, but what I'm saying is the fisherman can actually harvest fish as a by product.
Yeah, making it a way to existing fisherman to prosper is really exciting! Often the first reaction to new technology is "what about the jobs that will be obsolete?" and that is not only less of a problem with this, but at a time when overfishing is threatening jobs already, it could be a way to save them and help preserve local economies as well as the environment. Fingers crossed!
Bro fishermen don’t own the parts of the ocean they fish whereas the company doing this farming would own the farms. We have to be careful not to create an aquatic serfdom
This is actually super exciting, I can't believe we're not funding it immediately
I know! We need to fund them more.
It’s such a good idea, but the fact that many people do not eat shellfish (other than clams) or are allergic to them presents a pretty big problem with demand
Hopefully it gets the funding necessary to accelerate its adoption and rate of scaling up. Another nice thing is that since it aims to be profitable, fisherman may adopt it on their own without waiting for government funding as it becomes a proven model.
there is much more potential in algae than just food, they can be used to create carbon fiber-like materials, CO2 filters, bio fuel, and even medicine.
Here is a good documentary about this : th-cam.com/video/hjBfjWFwRes/w-d-xo.html
They can disrupt several industries overnight, that's why it will never get funding. Politicians will get fat bribes to stop this.
It sounds like a brilliant idea. If it is workable, it won’t even need funding. It will just take off.
This can change the world right now. Hope coastal countries jump on this!
Agreed! This is proof that even simple ideas can lead to big things and it doesn’t take all the money in the world to do it!
One thing that you missed is that feeding seaweed to cattle reduces the amount of methane that they produce. Methane is a key Greenhouse gas problem.
Mark from Melbourne Australia
Yep! We tried to stick to one main thread in this video - regenerative farming that can feed the world for the future - but there are so many more uses for seaweed that we didn’t get to mentioning! There’s a companion article to the vid that goes into more depth for some points in the vid :)
@@TommoCarroll Yup, kelp is a great big rainforest made healthy by the fertilization of fish detritus. Seaweed as oxygen?
Seaweed is also a great soil enhancement. My late Grandparents moved to a new home in a Bayside suburb and the soil was basically a dirty sand and wouldn't retain any water, so on their afternoon walks by the beach they would pick up a shopping bag or two of washed up seaweed and bring it back home. After washing it a couple of times they would chop it up and then put it in the compost bin to mix in with the other compost. The proof, they often grew award winning roses.
Mark from Melbourne Australia
Ants make more greenhouse gases than us and carbon dioxide is plant food
You know what will make the methane emissions better? Eating less meat in general.
And don't try to sell us lab grown meat. It's a dead-end technology that is just as energy and resource intensive as raising meat animals.
Love that there are loads of secondary benefits to this kind of farming. Had the pleasure of going to the San Diego aqua farm recently as they have just started doing tours. Their 3D farming has led to a whole load of endangered biodiversity returning to the area, and it sits upstream of the cities desalination plant so cleaner water is getting turned into drinking water, meaning less energy is needed. Plus we got to eat some of the oysters, which were delicious!
Sounds amazing honestly! Going to add it to the travel list and see some of these new-style farms first hand!
That's amazing, thanks for sharing! Hopefully if the idea continues to grow, the farms will be traveling to us soon enough :)
This is SO COOL! Love Tom Carroll's videos!
Except for people allergic to shellfish, this new method is great.
If others get shelfish and other things to eat then those alergics and others gets to keep their own "edible" food.
Hollow tall buildings were you can plant levels with trees and vegetables.
That can help with food and air quality in citys and towns to.
Very very very very very nice!
Now this is using your thinking cap!
This is so amazing. Every country have to think about it and also work this amazing thinking.
We are doing this in Puget Sound using kelp aquaculture and calcifiers in several places. It’s good for so many species and the amount of positive species interactions is great!!!
This video is good. How about a video on regenerative agriculture on land?
Good shout!
We should think about the food we throw away. If we can reduce that, we may buy more time to develop towards efficient food production method that would be sustainable.
I've seen this suggestion of ocean farming before and I approve, as long as there is a market for it and people wants it then it's a good filler for a world facing future difficulties.
My concern is that we have already polluted our oceans with vast amounts of microplastics. I'd want to be certain that those microplastics don't end up in the food chain, potentially causing more problems for society.
Yeah I didn't even think about that. And unfortunately since almost all of the plastic comes from India China and fisherman fishing in international waters. There's no way to lower the amount of plastic. The fisherman don't care they are on the poverty line just trying to survive. China doesn't care about anything but money India doesn't care about anything but money (speaking of the Chinese government and the India government not the people of China and the people of India who I am sure care very much). So until some system is put into place such as paying those fishermen who are on the poverty line you know 5 or 10 cents per plastic bottle or plastic item they pull out of the ocean and you know much more for bigger plastic items no one is going to clean any of it and it's just going to get worse.
@@WhitneyDahlin You just can't put blame on developing countries . Most of the wastes are created by Developed countries too .If you just ship your waste materials to developing and under developed countries to get rid off and blame them over pollution that's not development .
@@pratik2480 its not putting the blame on "developing countries". It's recognizing the source of the pollution, and sorry to say but it's statistically true.
I am quite sorry to have to tell you, but the fast majority of tablesalts already contain more than a 100 microplastic particles per kilogram. It's already in the foodchain.
They que there already you have been eating microplastics for years dude we all are
awesome idea, i really hope it catches on, we´d need way tougher laws against poluting the ocean though - far too many countries still dump even industrial sewage completely untreated into the ocean.
If they start industrial farming of ( I believe red kelp) that helps cows reduce methane by 90% then it could also be an alternative feed crop to corn and millet.
Despite all the doomsayers, Humanity is actually quite innovative and very capable of designing a future for everyone to thrive...
Love this types of simple,sustainable and easy to implement ideas. What about 3d farming what are the best options? The ocean is deep, vast and almost no one is there
I recently heard some specialist talking about how ancient humans all used to eat seaweeds. For some unknown reason europeans populations suddenly stopped and thousands of years later, with colonialism and globalization, they led many other cultures around the world to also stop eating seaweeds.
Nice to see its comeback since it’s a superfood
probably because people started going inland with the advent of irrigation.
I might be late to the comment section, but I would love to see more of this. Many waterways have been neglected and suffered from the damage; I'd love to see this as a method for food and help restore fish populations and the environment, especially in places like the Hudson River or even the St. Lawrence
Love it - keep sharing the knowledge! Helps us all progress
This video is amazing. Thank you for sharing
Thank you for this 🌟🌟🌟🌍🌏🌎🌟🌟🌟
Good to see, ty!
I like it he’s helping the environment and he’s looking after people
Hi, this is the first time I watched your video. It's great to hear these type of news, I love it! Keep it neutral and positive 🥰
This is brilliant, the implications are monumental.
I finally know what I want to be when I grow up! This is a future I can get Zelensky about. We need to usher in an age of regeneration and solutions like this are so encouraging! Wonder if Elon Musk would like to be involved? It will take large scale models like this if we are to ever colonize other planets but also we will be healing and learning more about our Oceans. May all this enthusiasm spur 100,000s of these in the next few years
I think the Mars program will use more aquaponics than kelp farming seeing as we don’t exactly if the water on Mars is salt water. Also, we’ll have to start with Solar and Nuclear power to get the energy required to melt enough water to fill up tanks of this size. Mars is literally a desert and so we need to warm it up.
Probably, the best thing we can do is make a geothermal power plant next to a volcano that is rigged to blow on our timer.
Love this idea!
"We're running out of land to grow food"
Sahara desert: 3.55 MILLION SQUARE MILES
Deserts cover 8.9 Million square miles and are large enough
Let us not forget In 2020, there were approximately 151,000 warehouses all around the world with an average size, sufficient for 35,000 acres of rooftop growing.
Great video, ideas like these give me hope for the future of agriculture!
Currently starting a spuralina algae business to feed fish farms for 1/2 price! 1 month extra harvest time, but allows for larger harvests w larger upfront purchase on actual fry for raising.
It's the biggest "Too good to be true" I ever saw since 30 years ago "vertical taking off/landing airplane promising technology" ... but...I'll bite again I'm very excited to see how and where this beautiful idea will go.
Best of luck !
Wow!!! Una pregunta, aquest sistema tindria un impacte en les rutes migratories de la fauna salvatge? Per cert, molt bon video!!!!
I saw Bren talk about this several years back and was super excited, I worked for a big global investor at the time and forwarded the info to a few people who focussed on relevant industries and they weren’t interested at all, think they’ll come to regret that!
Seaweed can also be added to cattle feed, and it stops them from producing methane in their digestive systems--a greenhouse gas much worse than CO2, at the scale industrial farming operates on. This needs to be scaled up, ASAP.
Wow. Awesome stuff.
You, and your channel, remind me of a younger me that tried to do what your doing. I failed. But I'm glad you, and others have not. Keep up the good work!
This is great. This regenerative and natural food production process exists in agriculture too. Masanobu Fukuoka showed it the world decades ago.
“Not enough land” is not the problem, how we use land (soil) is.
This is great! Im totally on board with a diet change for sustainability!
Do we need 50% more food than we produce currently, or than we consume? Because a lot of food gets wasted, usually before it even gets to your fridge
That increase % takes into account the fact that there are some terrible logistics and use of food right now
Good for people's living in poor areas on yhe ocean though. Like places they sell yhe dwindling fish they can find, feed their kids something else without vit A, and get blind kids.
True, and also reducing meat consumption alone will give you enough food for a few billion more people.
A very large portion of our arable lands is used for animal food, whether grazing or growing corn/etc for cows and pigs.
I love this.😊
Perfect!
This was definitely 🔥 I would love to see more things to do with the ocean.
This is why I love the Japanese. Probably the only country that manages to be technologically advanced but still preserves culture and environment. One is not a detriment to the other; they coesxist. They have always been ahead of the long-term sustainability movement. Just look at Okinawa. Now, I just have to convince myself I like seafood. LOL.
This is quite interesting.
I like the way you explain it, as a new person who working in land based aquaculture, this information is usefull
I've been saying to do this for as long as seasteading has been a thing
I love this idea
Beautiful
amazing video guys
I remember being on an outing with primary school kids and the teacher made sure to let them know that words like gross would not be tolerated to describe things and that better words such as interesting could be used instead. Your choice of words to describe shellfish is, well, you can put it together I'm sure. You can do better!
Living on the coast, not too hard to find seafood eaters… 🙏💜
So could this be applied to existing/ planned offshore structures such as wind farms?
Bren Smith also inspired the start of our company - Wavy Wonders - that makes seaweed & seed snacks in Denmark.
Sounds cool .. but how long does it take for shellfish to reproduce?
Seaweed is delicious. In soup, wakame salad, in sushi, as chips. There's even specialty products like seaweed bacon now. I think once this takes off, we'll find a use for the seaweed and shellfish.
This is a very good video by far
I’d love to invest in one of these!
Check out www.greenwave.org/!
Absolutely Tom, it's a very promising aquaponics technique! Though I would consider adding sources for general added credibility to claims. But I digress, here's my 2 cents.
Land usage, yes, we have finite capacity. And it can only be so efficient. And to make more we have to either condense urban areas, or demolish more ecosystems. Both have pros and cons. But we also have a lot of untapped ocean to work with. However, not without complications.
Regarding environmental impact and biodiversity. These open water farms may unbalance an ecosystem as we'd be fundamentally changing the "landscape" and available resources. Which could lead to some species outcompeting others. Likewise, without careful regulating, companies *will* trample coastal ecosystems if monetarily advantageous. Challenges to overcome.
As far as biofuels, grains of salt. Traditionally these require more energy to produce than the fuel it produces. And they require energy intensive refining processes to make plants into fuel. Making them less eco friendly than expected. They are by extension less energy dense per gallon, among other "catches". Now, if some strides are made technologically? Godspeed, but as far as I know, they are not yet the de facto choice. Though seaweed could be a promising candidate. And it's carbon capturing is spot on, even if that alone is just a small part of the whole solution of climate change.
In conclusion, an engaging sampler on the future of food production. Thank you for giving the topic well deserved attention Tom. It's a fascinating topic.
This is a great idea. The one weakness I see with this solution is it assumes that people will be more intelligent and manage dwindling resources wisely.
Unfortunately, the people that are breeding the fastest are the least intelligent. So it's more likely that war and famine are in our future rather than great ideas like this.
Wow
Ok this, plus iron powder for algael growth, plus saharan solar farms… We have a chance right?
I buy dry seaweed for a daily iodine source, so that's part of the income
Nice
People won't eat that much seaweed but we could feed it to the cows and other animals
If they think of it as a vitamin...a particular brown seaweed has the 71 things in it that are perfect food to thrive. Less diseases. And if they can sell beet shots, then eating seaweed isn't unbelievable.
There are pros and cons to them one is boat and maintain cost. Two you need men more crew to maintain water and position and is that area you own require paid or not? Plus is that water or everyone need for travel or warning signs.
YES
We have to keep doing this, soon when this method becomes more widely used, we won't even be affected too much by the Russian/Ukrainian oil supply chain snapping
Double the farm on the top or underground
👍👍
We don’t have to change our diets to increase demand. Kelp and shellfish can be processed into fertilizer for crops or feed for livestock.
If you like this check out regenerative farming.
I guess we don't have to eat the seaweed and shellfish. Just use them to clean the water.
Yeah steak & shellfish,mmm. But really a huge rainforest IS the kelp beds. Seaweed could make oxygen. Fish sh*t and it fertalizes the kelp , so it's is symbiotic.
This is basically fishing reinvented, and it's excellent.
This deserves so much more attention!
Tho I do understand the western diet problem I hope that soon, with the whole health revolution, we get more of everything in our diets and therefore this becomes even more of a win!
Imagine Sea Yams or Sea cheesy baked potatoes that BLEW YOUR SOCKS OFF!
Maybe you could followup once a year to see who is actually using the products and how the ocean farm growth is progressing. (Just who buys the seaweed?)
That's a really weird image to use at 3:35... That's some fisherman's catch.
I want to invent stuff like this
The fuel is a net negative process right now. Meaning, it takes more energy to produce the fuel than the fuel yields.
I know there are many researchers working on developing new stations of algae and other plants, but the research takes years.
Tom and his dreamy eyes. Swoon.
Seaweed used in cattle feed cuts their methane emissions by over 90 percent.
Is that really true? Or are you 'funning'?
@@belbal5004 google for red seaweed reduces methane in cattle or something to that effect. Its a type of red seaweed and yes it is true. Some environmentalists made a company and are trying to monopolize it though.
What's the diff btw sustainable and regenerative? Sustaining keeps it the same; regen puts it healthy like it was
Can fish be added to the mix?
Thomas ❤️
were not running out of land the land simply needs phosphorus for which we need good phosphorus reclamation ,
So, you can do a 3d farm next to a fish farm to balance things? Or some number of 3d farms? That's cool.
More oysters would mean we could have them all year round instead of just in the winter months in Canada.
Anyone else notice 3:53 is just some trout on a stringer
cool
Interesting video suggesting lots of potential, but I have to ask - What are the rights/regulatory issues related to farming in the ocean? Can anyone just find some open ocean and farm? If not, who controls allocation of ocean space or what sorts of licenses or permits are required and by whom are they issued?
Not a lawyer but I would guess this would fall in t the Exclusive economic zone. 370km (200 nautical miles )from the land a country has complete control over the all economic resources. but it cannot prohibit loitering in the area.
The next border is the 44.4km (24 nautical miles) border with is the Contiguous zone.
Territorial sea is 22km (!2 nautical miles) which you can go through as a foreign ship but that is it.
So I would guess the rights/regulatory issues would depend on which country you were closest too and within 200nm
Permits from the respective controllers of the water space. Most of the farms are in cold water, also a point of consideration.
nice, now lets try growing staple food in there like grains
K so ocean farming IS something that's been done often enough. Fish farms spring to mind.
But here's a problem with the Mussels/Oysters (and other clam-esque foods): Algae blooms. Think "red tide". As filter feeders, those toxins mentioned around the 3:40 mark, end up inside them where they MIGHT be broken down, but often are simply stored where if they're then again not purged before we eat them get transferred to us. Which can lead to sickness and further poisoning.
A partial solution is to reduce the pollutants in the waters, but might simply just be part and parcel of filter feeder farms (as certain algae can produce their own toxins and then be eaten by those animals) and we might just have to be willing to discard those "crops" of oysters/clams/mussels in much the same way we discard blighted crops.
Additionally, those scenes of otters eating clams near the farms? that's just one how many of them get to gorge on the "crop"? when do these start creating dependencies? On the fish farm I've been to they had to shoot a seal trying to get into the pens to eat the fish. Are they going to have to do similar things to protect these farms?
I hope these things work real well and can be used for more other food types. Vertical farming would be nice to replace many vegetable farms and such but the large bulk grain staple crops so far are really only economical using the large farmland tracts. Perhaps more focus can be put on the regenerative farming practices for those areas.
There's plenty of land and population is decreasing substantially not increasing.
However longer 5billion hectars of ocean bottom scrapped can hold up. Making 30% of oil with ethanol would also be amazing.
So we'd be eating a used water filter? this might need some tweaking
He should have also mentioned that she’ll fish shells trap a huge amount of carbon.
this made me look for stocks to buy... couldn't actually find any to invest in... Any advice of who is seeking funding through the market?