Why You Might Be Eating More Seaweed in the Future
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With artificial intelligence, creating an ethical foundation isn't just the right thing to do, is crucial to success. Join IBM of the break to hear why from federal binet eris IBM consult into global leader for trustworthy ai.

Good morning.

Back in november, I took a trip to port lines. Main IT was already starting to get cold, but I bundled up and took a three hour ride on a ferry that stops at many of the little islands off the coast into caso bay.

Yet, chance, see america, leo, of the side of great diet.

The eagles were cool, but that's not what I was there to look for. I was scanning the water, searching for something a little less fleeting. My source told me I should be looking for lines of bullies.

I don't think i've really seen any. Oh, my god, said IT. That was not IT. That wasn't IT for a pretty long time. But eventually I saw what I was looking for.

Okay, so here on the boat, and i'm looking at a little ways away from me, these rose and rose of colorful boots, I don't know, maybe fifty of them, these boots were holding lines of sewel growing underwater. They are still relatively rare in the U. S.

The country produced just point zero one percent of the world seed in to in nineteen. Most sewed in the world is grown in asia. Now farmers and entrepreneurs are looking to grow more sewed in the us.

It's the fastest growing segment of alcohol ture, which is basically the practice of farming and water. They want to do this because the weed is increasingly making its way into our grocery stores and onto our plates. Its in dietary supplements, permitted salads, remediation, ent of kim chi, even some vegetable gers. Here's healy flic, an assistant professor at the university of california, ana bara, who study alcohol.

What people are viewing sev at or cup as the next kale.

The world bank estimates that the global sea at market could grow by almost twelve billion dollars by twenty thirty, and proponents say we should be growing IT in U. S. Waters, not only to provide an economic boost to farmers, but also because C.

V. Could come with environmental benefits. From the wall street journal, this is the future of everything. I'm alexo sala. Today, we're looking at the growth of sweet alcohol ture in the us.

Some people and companies are bedding that will be consuming a lot more severe in the future. And so we should be growing IT here in the us. But before that can happen, there are research questions to answer and regulatory chAllenges to face.

Stay with us.

How do you start to lay the foundation for responsible AI in your organization? Here's fator. Bonnier is IBM consultants global leader for trust or the AI .

IT starts with asking the question, what is the kind of relationship that we ultimately wanna have with A I? The purpose of A I is not meant to display human beings that is meant to augment human intelligence. Students, you have a glimmer in your eye about how you're thinking you might want to use A I. Then asking the questions like what would be fired in order to earn people's .

trust in such a model.

When you hear the word seaweed, you may think of the stuff that ruins a beach vacation or that holds together your sushi roll. But holy flic, the professor at university of california, sana barra, points out that is a lot more interesting and diverse than you may think.

There are thousands upon thousands of difference with species that exist in comparison to, say, well based plant organisms. I haven't gardening as much interest in attention, so a lot of the stuff is very untapped in terms of how many are out there, even just in our local california waters, we don't have super good estimates of exactly how many species we actually have.

The weed is broadly grouped into three category, Brown, Green and red. Cup is a kind of Brown sewel, the way a square is kind of rectangle, though we use the terms somewhat, interchange ably in this episode. And though most severs are technically algie, many share plants like qualities.

They experience photosynthesis, and they're often crucial species to ecosystem. Also, like plants, C, V takes in carbon dioxide and produces oxygen in the ocean. Access carbon dioxide can lead to activation, which can weaken the skeletons of creatures like shrimp and coral. So see, we d can help with that. See, we'd can also take in nitrogen and forest, which can cause harmful algal blooms at high volumes and .

also sucks up a lot of nutrient. So people looking at at for bioremediation k, we have a whole bunch of nutrient pollution go into the water that could certainly y weeds suck up and help mitigate some of that.

These characteristics make sweet appealing as a crop too. I can improve the quality of the water around IT. So farmers have started growing sewel alongside other oculina like muscles and oysters to the benefit of other crops.

Researchers call this the halo effect. Now in the us, Fishermen are looking to farm C, V, D for its own sake, not just for how I can benefit other alcohol ture globally. This isn't a new practice.

Most series that humans use today is farmed, though that's only a fraction of the total known species. Most severe production comes out of asia. China alone accounted for nearly half of global farm sevier production in twenty sixteen.

Worldwide, the amount of farm sewed nearly tripled between two thousand and twenty eighteen. Observation has grown so much in part because we started to, you see, with for a lot more things, it's a fertilizer in traditional farming. It's in pet food and cattle feed. And it's a human products too, like face lotion .

having seaweed victim to the product doesn't new. I think what is new is kind of a reemergence of interest in what's seaweed can do.

And we eat IT on a zone or as an ingredient. Seaweed is increasingly popular as a food in the U. S.

In fact, in a recent stroll around my local whole foods, I was struck by the sheer number of products that contained seaweed. Part of the reason for some of our popularity, maybe sev ds positioning in the U. S.

Food scene. As a health food, many types are rich in neutral, like fiber, I and potassium, though sometimes foods containing several have access sodium. And like with many other foods, consuming excessive amounts of seed can also harm health. As we heard earlier, a lot of people are viewing the weed as the next scale. But if you've never tried seaweed before and you're not sure what a taste leg, I decided to conduct a little taste test, and I enlisted some familiar voices to help.

It's charlet.

It's me, danny.

First, they tried those sault dry sheet of nori. If you don't like running ing sounds, you may want to fast forward a little.

See, we smells like ocean, right? Like, see, we is essentially ocean. Let us.

This is great. I love that. I mean, it's like soft a tae sort of almost like sessile makes me think of sushi and other delicious things.

Then they tried to type of chip that has severed as one of several ingredients.

I still get a little bit of that, almost like smoky C, V D, taste on the back of my tongue. It's settled .

like area versus the sheet. You have to like to them up in order, get a real good crunch out of them.

And finally, they try to a fermented sweet salad of the three snacks. IT definitely looked the most intimidating.

So, you know, I was just at the beach over the weekend, and like the stuff that was in the water with me, maybe there is some like scallions, are like a little bit spring onion or something, and some cessile seats. But yeah, overall.

this is plants small.

like ocean vinegar, is smells funky, IT smells fermented. Now, the moment of truth.

Oh.

I actually like this.

Oh, this is great, really.

I saw the jar. It's like, got a little bit of liquid. I am like, okay, it's going to be sly me. IT is wet, but it's not fly me. And IT still has a crunch, which i'm surprised about.

That's that's really good. Yeah, I really like that. I'm very much a pickle girl so IT tastes I can too. It's just very nice, informative. And like, has that no little bite to IT? And yeah, I would totally throw this on the pokey ball or something.

or a bad worst. That last food, the secret salad, is from a company called atlantic sea farms. And unlike the vast majority of the CBD at the grocery store, which is imported, these companies s products are grown in U.

S. waters. More on what the company is doing after the break.

On that visit of main last year, I went to the headquarters of atlantic sea farms, one of the companies looking to expand the .

domestic David industry. Are you first?

I SAT down with a CEO briona. Warner.

seaweed has really been rocked in like food category for about fifteen, twenty years, but it's only in seaweed snacks first and sea with salad. And so we're looking at the other fifteen and three quarters of the IOS and saying he see, we could be in all of these. So we're making sea vegan burgers were making cup cubes for smoothes. We're making fermented seaweed salad, really looking into the ways that we can diversify offerings outside of those traditional channels.

Warner took over a CEO in twenty eighteen, but the company existed before then.

The company, gino was called ocean and IT was the first commercially viable see, we'd form in the country in around two thousand and nine. And the founders of the company spent a lot of years just trying to figure I had a farm kelp in the united states.

Here's how its business works. Atlantic sea farms works with some forty farmers. The company helps them apply to lead a plot of ocean from the state, usually around four acres, once they figured out the design of the farm.

Based on the location and shape of the plot, the company grows spores of the weed in an in house nursery on long sports of kite twine. That's right, the stuff. You attach a kite too.

We give those balls to our partner farmers for free. We help them deploy those lines if they need IT. And then we audit IT throughout the year. We got to check their farms. We work with them to make sure that we're measuring, understanding the water temperatures, nigerien levels, all of that. And then when IT comes to harvest time between April and june, we pick up at the dock and then we bring IT back here to process and we guarantee purchase of every single blade .

cup that they grow. Many of those bombers are also loves. Jeff putnam is one such farmer who works with atlantic sea farms. I talked to him in his wife on their boat, which was docked right importance and old port.

So I go lots and full time, doing through january, really the the bulk of our catch then IT slows down a little bit after that. And that's where called fits in nicely as we put in a handful of days getting the line seated in november. But the harvest is all in the spring, really in may, when the obstacles are are real slow. So that fit real while with my love song schedule.

Warner says more farmers may follow suit as warming temperatures threaten names, lobster population with .

four thousand plus lobby licence holders, and as the golf main warms, no matter what we do from a conservation perspective on lobster, those luxor, we are not onna survive with the rate that they are now. So we're not only creating one of the most neutral, intense foods on the planet, but we're also allowing Fishermen to adapt to climate change through diversifying their income source and absorbing some of the shock of .

that industry looking towards the future. Warners hops, that atlantic c farms can expand its business.

Our biggest customers in retail right now, our whole foods, vegans, bouts Albertsons. You know some of the big chains, some of our biggest of incoming clients are in bioplastics, cosmetic ics and pet.

The company also sells helps as an ingredient to a handful of companies and says it's in the research and development stage with some major food companies to see how they can incorporate health into more of their products. Warner says he would like to see farmers growing other species of sea native to main, and SHE wants more U. S.

Farmers to be growing more severe overall. Her goal is to have a hundred farmers growing a hundred thousand pounds each by twenty thirty. By comparison for the twenty twenty four hard this season, identically farms forty years.

So farmers harvested a total of one point three million pounds, or about thirty two thousand, five hundred pounds performer. But in order for other companies to join in, some other things have to happen. One thing, proponents say there needs to be clearer regulation.

There's currently no standalone federal regulation around the weed in the U. S. A spokesperson for the national oceanic and atmosphere ic administration, which regulate s fiery in the U.

S, said in an email that a number of make the rules for U. S. agriculture. And those differ if the project is in state or federal waters. Laws and regulations also vary from state to state. Holy ferlie, the professor who studies agriculture, who we heard from earlier, says maine is farther ahead than most states.

Maine has a very clear permit process. How the permits differ, how things are released. So main is starting off with much more structure and standard artizan then pretty much on the other state at the moment, certainly on the west coast.

there are also scientific questions about the effect of large scale sewed alicante on nearby ecosystems.

When you put something in the water, it's going to interact with the wild for sea way. In particular, you can have a higher biodiversity effect, but whether .

that's in that positive location will have a could negatively impact ecosystems or they could act as defective marine preserves and protect species that might have either wise been at risk. What impact a lot of sea with alcohol ture could have on those ecosystems is something scientists are expLoring now with a pilot program off the coast of california. But there are other questions.

So a major concern around C, V D will IT end up sucking a bunch of neutrons out, depending on scale. That takes IT away from the micro algae of the final plank kn, that we really care about in the water column. That can be the base of the food web that now is competing for those nutrient. And there's some work that is coming out to going to show like, yeah cup is definitely Better add a simulate and converting nutrients than microloan, right? So that might be really important to consider depending on where you are .

free like a skeptical that seaweed will ever be grown at scale in the U. S. But atlantic c farm's Warner is hopeful that I can happen. Not only IT has her company found new ways to get people to eat, c read SHE says the environmental questions shouldn't stop the industry from growing.

So we can say here, be afraid of something that's not even plausible or possible, or we can really invest in a blue economy with fish and oysters and muscles and scalloped and seaweed, and create a much, much bunch Better food system.

By doing so, the future of everything is a production of the wall street journal. Steph anie algan fritz is the editorial director of the future of everything. This episode was produced by me.

Alexo sala, our fact checker is a party, a thing, Michael level, and just offending our sound designers and what our theme music, caffeine milk, is. Our supervising producer we had held from section editor dogma OLED I shah, a muslim, is our development producer. Scott sway and Christensen are the deputy editors, and philon a patterson is the head of news audio for the wall street journal. Like the show, tell your friends and leave us a five star review on your favorite platform. Thanks for listening.

Earlier, we discuss what responsible, A I looks like in practice. Here's fator able energy from IBM consulting, again, on why that begins with data.

My favorite definition, the word date up. It's an effect of the command experience. A I is like a mirror that reflects our biases back towards us. But we have to be brave enough and interested cof enough to look into the mira.

Does this reflection actually line to my organization values? If IT allies be repeated about why did you pick the data that you did? If IT doesn't align that when you know you need to change your entire approach.

learn more about IBM artificial intelligence consulting services and IBM outcome flash consulting.