- [Narrator] We are running out of land to grow food,
and every day there's more people to feed,
but there's a solution
that you might not have heard of that could
feed everyone and fix our broken oceans for the future.
Let's explore that.
So here's the problem.
The world's population is growing so fast,
and people's diets are changing so much,
that we'll need to produce around 50% more food
than we do today to feed everyone in 2050.
We have a bunch of issues with how we feed everyone today.
But one of the biggest,
is the simple fact that we're running out of usable land
to grow more food,
and the land we're already using
is being degraded faster than it can recover,
which means it's gonna basically be useless
to grow food on in the future.
So what about using the oceans?
Obviously, using the oceans for food isn't anything new,
but a lot of the time, it's pretty unsustainable.
So something that I think is pretty cool
is that there's a solution
that takes the best bits from what we know now,
and combines them into something
that not just steps in to solve the issues
of how we use the oceans for food,
but it also fixes the oceans at the same time.
It's called 3D ocean farming.
Here's how it works.
First, ropes of seaweed are strung across the ocean surface.
Then, hanging beside them on floating long lines,
you've got socks of mussels and baskets of scallops.
And then below all that, at the bottom of the structure,
are crates with oysters and clams.
So ropes and crates.
It might seem pretty simple,
and not exactly the most technologically futuristic thing,
I know, but the idea
is to approach it in a three-dimensional way,
where you take a certain area of ocean,
and then use the entire vertical water column below it,
and fill it with a mixture of organisms
that can live and grow well together.
And with all that precious space being utilized,
it adds up so that ocean vertical farms like this
can grow up to 30 tons of sea vegetables,
and 250,000 shellfish per year in every single acre,
and that's a lot of grub.
The person behind the idea,
Bren Smith and his company GreenWave,
have created a model that allows anyone with a boat
and a small bit of investment cash
to create their own 3D ocean farm,
which means it's a relatively simple way
for even seasoned fishermen
to pivot to a new way to get food for the masses,
and at the same time,
they get a nice little financial return,
like lobstermen in Maine
that have added around 25 to $57,000 to their pockets,
annually, since trying out this system.
But there's more to it than just growing
a lot of food in a smaller amount of space.
But first off, it's a really clean way to grow food.
The beauty of all these animals and sea plants
that are grown in 3D ocean farming,
is that they're essentially zero input.
You just place them there and let them get on with things
until they're ready to harvest.
They don't use any fertilizers, pesticides,
antibiotics or fresh water like land-based agriculture does,
and the mixture of organisms
leads to a resilience that you don't get
in farms made up of just one single crop
that could be wiped out by, like, a single disease.
But this whole system is also regenerative,
which means it leaves an area
in a better condition than it was in,
before the farm was even put there,
and they manage to do this in a bunch of different ways.
The farms actually act as habitats for sea life,
and they've attracted over 150 different species
into areas that were barren before they were installed.
So they could help to provide a foundation
for biodiversity to thrive.
Then there's the massive impact they have
in improving water quality.
Seaweed and shellfish are natural filterers,
with oysters being able to filter through
up to 225 liters of water a day.
So together, they pull out excess carbon,
and nitrogen, and other pollutants
that are killing marine life around the world.
But seaweed also absorbs more carbon than land-based plants.
So the farms can act as carbon-capturing powerhouses,
which leads me nicely
on to the next benefit of 3D ocean farming,
the amount of uses for the things that are grown.
Because seaweed isn't just useful for food.
It can also be used
as a fertilizer on land-based farms,
as an alternative to plastic,
and also as a source of biofuel,
and this part is huge,
because it could provide a source of carbon-neutral biofuel
that takes almost zero inputs,
and is so efficient that in just one acre,
you can get around 2000 gallons out of it each year,
and all of these benefits
is why it's not exactly surprising
that there are a bunch of these farms popping up.
There's already over 15 farms
in development in North America.
But with GreenWave's simple model,
they've managed to attract
a massive waiting list of over 7,000 people
from a hundred different countries,
that wanna jump on board and give it a go,
and GreenWave itself has said
that it wants to help to create
over 10,000 of these farms in the next 10 years.
So you and me will probably start noticing them
a lot more, pretty soon.
There are similar ideas out there
that use different crops
and different animals together to maximize harvests.
GreenWave isn't the first to try something like this,
but what sets this idea apart
is its focus on sustainability and regeneration,
and its mission to be accessible
to as many people as possible, big or small.
So it's a great idea
for fishermen to try out a more sustainable route,
but it also lets smaller communities
take control over where their food comes from,
whilst also improving their local environment
and the health of their fisheries for the future,
which, obviously, is a long list of good stuff.
But surely this all sounds too good to be true.
What's the catch?
Well, we're talking about seaweed and shellfish here.
Two things that don't exactly make up a massive part
of at least the Westerners diet,
and especially not mine,
because shellfish are objectively gross,
but also only 3 billion people worldwide,
rely on seafood as their main source of protein.
So it's a big shift to make,
to find the demand for the type of food
that 3D ocean farms grow.
But demand for things like seaweed
has actually grown massively in recent years,
and there's a lot you can do with it,
like even making a meat-free kelp burger
that, honestly, looks pretty good.
So if GreenWave can figure out
how to make their model work
in ocean waters around the world,
we could see a lot more of the sustainable
and regenerative 3D ocean farms
cleaning up our waters,
and growing the food that we'll eat every day.