According to NOAA, seaweed is the fastest growing aquaculture sector in the United States. The global seaweed market is expected to surpass $95 billion by 2027, up from $40 billion in 2020. While this nascent market represents prospective economic and environmental benefits for coastal communities, and provides a scalable zero-input food source, the realization of these benefits requires collaboration across the value chain. A wave of interest in seaweed has resulted in the misconception that the domestic industry is relatively established. However, seaweed entrepreneurs enter an emerging market, with uncertainty about production capacity, regulations, food safety, and processing capabilities. The industry requires resources and right-sized value chain support to align respective motivations and simultaneously scale supply and demand.
Value chain coordination is the development of relation-based infrastructure for a supply chain, including the creation of networks, information sharing channels, and direct partnerships. Over the past five years, GreenWave has emerged as a connector for seaweed farmers, processors, and buyers. Initial value chain coordination efforts were a natural outgrowth of informal and ad-hoc introductions, which proved difficult to track and resulted in limited outcomes. To address these challenges, GreenWave shifted its programming to incorporate formal high-touch support, intentionally uncovering supply and demand, and working directly with suppliers and buyers to facilitate right-sized connections. Although fruitful, limited access to these services created an unintentional bottleneck. To encourage further collaboration, GreenWave developed Seaweed Source, a web-based application that enables buyers to browse profiles of active seaweed farmers and reach out to request information about their supply. By understanding the needs of stakeholders through interviews and user research, GreenWave is expanding programming to engage farmers, processors, and buyers more effectively. The Market Development Program is focused on building resources and curriculum for buyers and processors, plus piloting accelerator partnerships, a sampling program, and industry cohorts. Through the Kelp Climate Fund, the organization is providing direct climate subsidies to regenerative ocean farmers, incentivizing the industry to scale.
In this session, we’ll share lessons learned from the evolution of GreenWave’s value chain coordination efforts and how values-aligned partnerships create space and opportunity to build the domestic market for seaweed.