Image: Cyanotech Corporation/Anthropocene
There’s an opportunity to feed the world by farming fast-growing, low-resource, photosynthesizing algae on marginal coastal lands globally, researchers show in a recent study.
These nutrient-rich algae, farmed along coastlines in pounds of seawater pumped up from the ocean, could produce enough food to feed 10 billion people in the next 25 years—“while simultaneously reducing our demands for arable land and freshwater,” says Charles Greene, lead author on the new Oceanography study and professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University…
Algae could do this using one-tenth of the area required by conventional food sources to produce the same amount of food. Meanwhile, much of that land would be in places, like coastal desert environments, where it doesn’t compete with other uses.
Greene et. al. “Transforming the Future of Marine Aquaculture: A Circular Economy Approach.” Oceanography. 2022.
