As everyone works to transition kelp farming from a nascent to a financially sustainable industry, inefficiencies that are overlooked when operating at a small scale can become major bottlenecks overnight. Drawing from GreenWave’s on-the-ground work with a collective of nursery operators, farmers, and processors in Prince William Sound, Kodiak, and Maine, this presentation will focus on the challenges that have surfaced when scaling up production to meet market demand. Unfortunately there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to creating a financially sustainable industry, but rather each region must work to fine tune the details of production and smooth the interfaces between different roles in the value chain to build synergies that contribute to overall success. GreenWave’s work thus far has focused on challenges at the three critical interfaces: nursery/farm, farm/processor, and farmer/buyer. We’ll highlight how community-driven collaboration can support throughlines of communication up and down the value chain and increase the likelihood of long-term regional success. We’ll also share tools and resources Greenwave has developed to address these novel challenges of meeting kelp supply.
Collaborators: Sea Greens, Alaska Ocean Farms, Kodiak Island Sustainable Seaweed, Kelp Island, Noble Oceans, Royal Oceans, Wild Blue Mariculture, Prince William Sound Science Center, Prince William Sound Economic Development District, Maine Family Sea Farms