Onshore algae farms could feed the world

The paper is open access in Oceanography magazine.  I appreciated the various benefits that are discussed (land use, nutrition, climate impacts), as well as some remaining technological challenges.

Here is a summary article posted by Cornell

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/10/onshore-algae-farms-could-feed-world-sustainably

“We have an opportunity to grow food that is highly nutritious, fast-growing, and we can do it in environments where we’re not competing for other uses,” said Charles Greene, professor emeritus of earth and atmospheric sciences and the paper’s senior author. “And because we’re growing it in relatively enclosed and controlled facilities, we don’t have the same kind of environmental impacts.”

Even as the Earth’s population grows in the coming decades, climate change, limited arable land, lack of freshwater and environmental degradation will all constrain the amount of food that can be grown, according to the paper.

“We just can’t meet our goals with the way we currently produce food and our dependence on terrestrial agriculture,” Greene said.

With wild fish stocks already heavily exploited, and with constraints on marine finfish, shellfish, and seaweed aquaculture in the coastal ocean, Greene and colleagues argue for growing algae in onshore aquaculture facilities. GIS-based models, developed by former Cornell graduate student, Celina Scott-Buechler ’18, M.S. ’21, predict yields based on annual sunlight, topography, and other environmental and logistical factors.  The model results reveal that the best locations for onshore algae farming facilities lie along the coasts of the Global South, including desert environments.

“Algae can actually become the breadbasket for the Global South,” Greene said. “In that narrow strip of land, we can produce more than all the protein that the world will need.”