Over 2024, we covered many people working to address these systemic issues. This collection is a look back over the year, at some of the most popular stories of people tackling these food system problems head on.

From local farmers planting native crops, to cyclists increasing food security in their neighborhood, to mycologists cutting down on ocean plastics using mushrooms, here are some of our most impactful changemakers of the year.

The post Top 12 Food Changemakers of the Year appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Americans crave salmon; the salmon industry is valued at over $14 billion, and even in less-than-ideal economic scenarios, families are willing to fork over the approximate $13 to $23 per pound for this pricey but versatile fish. With consumption rates of salmon rising, the industry is growing volatile as it becomes clear that both wild-caught and farmed salmon cause environmental and economic issues. 

Salmon have been historically overfished, and they are now endangered in many of the rivers they used to flood during their annual migration. NOAA Fisheries determined in 2018 that five Pacific salmon stocks are now “overfished” and one stock is “subject to overfishing,” including Chinook and coho salmon. 

In light of the environmental dangers of wild salmon, farmed salmon may sound like an ideal solution; propagating salmon to be eaten without being removed from the wild should both help populations and consumers, right? Sadly, farmed salmon is rarely ever environmentally neutral. In fact, the industry is incredibly destructive to wild marine life, even in well-managed operations. Organizations such as Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch have even noted that wild-caught salmon managed in a responsible way (the population is healthy, and the fishery has little or no impact on other marine life) is almost always a lesser environmental impact than farmed salmon.

In the US, all Atlantic salmon for sale are farmed fish, with no commercial fishing allowed for this species due to the dramatic drop in population size these salmon faced after previous overfishing. Unfortunately, farmed salmon are often a threat to wild salmon. But farmed salmon, kept in large nets in waterways, are prone to escaping—and when they escape, they’re more than ready to enjoy their limited lifespans and interbreed with their wild counterparts, negatively impacting the genetic composition and fitness of native salmon populations, and sometimes introducing diseases for which wild salmon aren’t prepared. Most farmed salmon in the US are produced in marine net pens intended to contain the salmon while utilizing natural waterflow; these systems inherently impact the environment. Even if no salmon were to escape, farmed salmon pollute the waters they inhabit with waste and chemicals used to combat disease and parasites. 

What’s a salmon lover to do? Today’s shoppers are looking for new sources of salmon that won’t leave them feeling guilty when they clear their plates.

One of the rising solutions to the salmon dilemma is plant-based alternatives. Oshi is an up-and-coming brand of plant-based salmon, primarily made from soy and mycelium (a fungus usually found in blue cheese or salami).

Oshi’s salmon isn’t indistinguishable from real salmon, but its texture is very close, and it maintains a mild salmony flavor that blends into traditional salmon dishes. More importantly, Oshi’s salmon provides an option without the guilt of farmed salmon’s environmental harm. “Commercial fishing is a leading cause of overfishing, which threatens the biodiversity of our oceans, while fish farming often leads to pollution and habitat destruction,” says Ofek Ron, a representative of Oshi. “For those concerned about environmental impact, choosing plant-based salmon helps support efforts to reduce overfishing and protect marine ecosystems.” Currently, Oshi’s products are only available in local retailers around Seattle and farmer’s markets, but it has plans to expand the brand to retailers nationwide. 

And, of course, there’s the most technologically advanced option for salmon lovers: lab-grown, cell-cultivated salmon. First, isolated cells are taken from juvenile Pacific salmon—a step that only needs to be completed once per species. Then, these cells are grown in large steel tanks resembling those found in breweries and fed proteins, fats, salts and minerals to help them grow. These authentic salmon cells are harvested and combined with several plant-based ingredients in order to lend them the flavor, texture and appearance of a traditional salmon filet. “While this method of making seafood may seem new, our technology would look familiar to anyone who’s visited a microbrewery,” says Justin Kolbeck, CEO of Wildtype, which produces cell-cultivated salmon. “We built our fishery in a former brewery that unfortunately didn’t make it through the pandemic. We repurposed and upgraded much of the equipment from the brewery including some mixing tanks, as well as the cooling and cleaning systems.” 

Kolbeck notes that while Wildtype isn’t yet a perfect replica of a wild-caught salmon filet, it is continually improving, and the current product is quite nutritious. “We designed our salmon to provide the same level of omega-3 fats as the most pristine wild salmon,” says Kolbeck. “We’ve learned that consumers are increasingly concerned about their exposure to toxins through the food they consume. We can offer a nutritious and delicious seafood option without the associated risk of exposure to high levels of these contaminants.” 

At the global level, fish consumption is projected to increase by 14.8 percent by 2030. It’s not clear how an already stretched-thin aquaculture industry will rise to meet these demands, particularly with more public pushback on environmental damage. However, in a world already struggling with global food insecurity, overfishing, and the uncertainty of climate change, continuing “the way things have always been” simply isn’t going to work. We shouldn’t expect either farmed or wild-caught salmon to go anywhere anytime soon. As the most widespread and economically friendly options, they will still be the first choice for most consumers. But we can expect to see new options make their way into consumer’s fridges and onto menus—and our oceans will certainly be better for it. 

The post Farmed, Wild, Lab Grown, or Plant-Based: Which Salmon is Best? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“I am so excited I can have this at home,” says Allison Hepworth who just picked up her bag of fish. Knowing how and where the fish was caught makes a difference to Hepworth. Each package of seafood has a picture of the fisher who caught it, and where and when it was caught. It reminds members that when you become a member of Skipper Otto, you not only get delicious seafood, but you have played a role in supporting the livelihoods of small independent fishers.

Founded in 2008, by Sonia and Shaun Strobel, Skipper Otto is named for Shaun’s Dad, Otto. When Otto began fishing in the 1960s, there were thousands of independent small-scale fishers harvesting seafood along B.C.’s coast, and making a good living. Over time, changes in government regulations have allowed massive factory ships owned by large corporations to gobble up fish, which increased the length of the supply chain. In the United States, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that 70 percent to 85 percent of seafood in stores is imported. Imported seafood can either mean it was harvested from global waters, or caught in the US, but exported to other countries for processing and then returned to the US. This creates a lack of transparency for the consumer on the origin of their food and adds up to lower wages paid to local harvesters.

It’s also risky relying on imported seafood. Shocks such as extreme weather or geopolitical events can disrupt global supply routes and threaten the ability of seafood to be safely traded on a global scale.

“The fishing way of life is endangered, and local fishers are losing access to markets,” says Sonia Strobel.

This is where a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) model comes in. Or, in this case, a CSF. Similar to how a CSA model invites members to invest in a local farm and purchase produce before it’s harvested, a CSF model also pre-sells seafood before it’s caught, inviting members to invest in the livelihood of independent fishers.

The pre-sale of seafood removes the uncertainty as to whether they will have a buyer for their seafood and the price they will receive for the catch. Along with guaranteed income, the nature of a CSF and a local food system allows fishers to pivot their catch to match what is available and abundant. “If one year the sockeye salmon return is low and Coho salmon are abundant, then, that is what Skipper Otto members are offered,” explains Strobel.

Skipper Otto’s 8,000 members are supplied sustainability caught fish from 45 fishing families. This growing success over the past decade and a half has made Strobel a strong advocate for independent fisheries, something put to the test in 2021. For decades, independent harvesters in B.C. have frozen tubs of spot prawns in salt water while at sea to preserve them until they return to port.

Just before the start of the 2021 spot prawn season, a reinterpretation of a government regulation that all catches must be readily available for inspection caused Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to ban the sale of frozen-at-sea spot prawns. Frozen prawns, it was argued, weren’t readily available for inspection. This made little sense to Strobel or independent fishers, especially as they say thawing a tub of prawns took minutes. Strobel and the Skipper Otto team say the policy had the potential to collapse an industry worth $30 million to $50 million annually, and take away the livelihoods of independent spot prawn fishers, perhaps permanently. Strobel turned to Skipper Otto’s vast membership, asking them to sign petitions and write letters in protest. Skipper Otto’s influence played a role in the government reversing the policy.

Continuing to advocate, Strobel has spoken in front of Canada’s House of Commons and sits as a volunteer on the executive committee of Local Catch Network, a North American hub that advocates for local and community-based seafood systems. Through Local Catch’s mentorship program, Strobel was connected with Cadena Ragsdale, owner of Kauai Fresh Fish in Hawaii. When Ragsdale started her business in 2022, it was hard to find fresh local fish.

“We quickly realized there was a demand for fresh local fish and a transparency in where the fish came from,” says Ragsdale. As in B.C., independent fishers don’t always receive fair prices for their catches. That same story can be heard across North America.

In northern Saskatchewan, Indigenous fishers are losing markets for their freshwater catches of walleye and pike. Skipper Otto hopes to add these fishers as suppliers, offering guaranteed sales and fair market value. In Nunavut, Inuit lake fishers drive out on skidoos in the middle of winter to frozen freshwater lakes, drill holes and, using gill nets, pull in by hand their catch of Arctic char. The fish is processed, frozen and available to Skipper Otto members.

Despite expansion, Strobel doesn’t see Skipper Otto as competition with the industrial fishery. “None of us wants to catch the last fish,” she says. What Skipper Otto offers is insurance that fresh local seafood remains available and there is a robust network of small-scale fishers to catch it.

Back at Fisherman’s Wharf, Hepworth completes her order with freshly harvested mussels. At home, she will pull the frozen fish out of her freezer, as needed, and pan-fry it with butter and lemon for her family.

“We are reconnecting people to food,” says Strobel.

The post Spotlight On a Community-Supported Fishery appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“I initially sought them out because they are delicious,” says Standridge, the James Beard Award-winning chef of The Shipwright’s Daughter in Mystic, CT. But after learning the crabs are invasive, as well as the damage they cause, “it was just one more good reason to use them as much as possible.”

Originally from Europe, commercial ships likely carried the first green crabs to North American shores some time in the 1800s. The non-native species has few predators, reproduces quickly, outcompetes many local species for food and habitat, and, through certain behavior, can destroy saltwater habitats such as eelgrass. They are commonly caught and used for fishing bait.

“I was shocked to find out that they were everywhere,” says Standridge. That is when his quest to find food-grade green crabs began.

Across the United States, chefs including Standridge and Charlie Ray in California, as well as tournaments such as the Emerald Coast Open in Destin, FL are seeking out invasive species for restaurant menus, attempting to put a dent in invasive species such as green crabs, lionfish, and black mustard while building up new income streams for vendors and educating people about the impact of food choices.

Building a supply chain for invasives

Plants and animals are considered invasive if they are non-native to an area and if their presence causes harm to the environment, health of local populations, or to the local economy. Green crabs are just one example, but invasive species range from wild fennel mainly in California to garlic mustard now found throughout much of the US.

Last spring, with the help of Eating with the Ecosystem, a nonprofit that promotes sustaining wild-caught fisheries in New England, Standridge was introduced to fisherman Jason Jarvis, who agreed to put green crabs on his catch list. This opened up a supply chain and made the restaurant the first in Connecticut to use the crabs regularly.

“In Connecticut, we have very little opportunity for people to fish commercially,” says Standrige. “All fish that are regulated under a quota are federally regulated, and the quota is divided by state based on territorial waters. Connecticut has very limited waters, so our piece of the pie is very small. Connecticut fishermen can’t make a living on the limited quotas of fish like fluke, black bass, and scup, so developing markets for lesser used species that don’t have harvest quotas can help them diversify their income streams.”

Since then, with the help of the Green Crab Organization, Standridge and Jarvis have expanded to additional sources for green grabs in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. As the ocean warms in many places along the New England coast, the number of these invasive crabs has been growing, but no one knows quite how big the problem is. The Green Crab Organization is performing harvester surveys to get an estimate of how many crabs are out there, but until then, it is working on getting fishermen licensed to harvest them in Connecticut, and to help get green crabs on the menus of other restaurants.

And it’s not just crabs.

“We still get a lot of ‘is this safe, are they good to eat?’” says Brady Hale, marketing director for the Emerald Coast Open, the largest lionfish tournament in the world. “But most people know about lionfish, and they know they are bad and that they are hurting native species.”

The open was born out of a Florida statewide initiative to raise awareness about lionfish and the importance of their removal. Native to tropical waters in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, the fish have become a massive problem in the Atlantic Ocean, where they have been invading since 1985, posing a threat to the overall ecosystem. The fish, which have powerful stings thanks to their venomous spines, have no known predators and eat basically anything that moves—areas that lionfish heavily invade have seen fish populations reduced by more than 90 percent.

Every year, fishermen and harvesters are encouraged to catch as many lionfish as possible as part of the pre-tournament between February and mid-May, and a three-day-long tournament during mid-May. They can sell or donate the lionfish, with most of them sold to local chefs during the tournament’s end event.

“The demand is huge; the problem is a consistent supply,” says Hale.

According to Hale, that’s not because there aren’t enough lionfish but because it’s not quite lucrative enough for harvesters to catch lionfish full-time, so the supply chain for restaurants isn’t predictable.

It’s not a problem that is unique to seafood. In California, Ray, who grew up foraging for wild mushrooms in Sweden and the United States, spends each spring foraging for Black and Mediterranean Mustards, two of California’s most invasive edible plants. Still, Ray admits that, financially, it doesn’t often make sense for foragers to sell or for chefs to gather independently, as it’s very time-consuming to gather and harvesters aren’t able to sell it for very much.

“Each seed or spore picked is one not being planted,” says Ray.

Ray uses them across her cooking: The Mediterranean mustard goes in salads, where they taste like broccoli, and adds a pop of color and texture, while the Black Mustard, which has a horseradish-like taste, is whipped into butter for steaks or sushi.

Can we eat our way out of the invasive species problem?

While chefs like Ray and Standridge know it’s unlikely we’ll eat enough of the invasive species to eliminate them, they still see it as beneficial.

“Years ago, we might have said we could never eat enough lobster, and now they are basically gone, but also, there is the benefit of eating them over other species that are not so prolific,” says Standridge. “The only way we can manage our blue food resources effectively is to diversify our options.”

The post Building a Market for Invasive Species appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Sherman is no stranger himself to the environmental and economic challenges of running an aquaculture business. Island Creek is a vertically integrated oyster operation, meaning it both farms and distributes its own oysters. But he’s still intent on turning the tides of the canning industry. In July, Sherman announced the launch of his latest venture, the Island Creek Cannery, the first ever single-origin canning facility of its kind in the US.

Long before the pandemic sent American appetites seaward, stoking our interest in convenient, high-end canned fish, Island Creek—a primarily fresh seafood business—had its eye on the tin. “We’ve always been interested in democratizing oysters and shellfish in general,” says Sherman. In 2016, Island Creek opened The Portland Oyster Shop—the company’s first full-service restaurant—in downtown Portland, Maine. But the raw bar-only concept was running lean, and Sherman quickly realized he needed another food option to bulk out the menu that wouldn’t require a setup to make hot food. Taking cues from already-established tin-centric restaurants such as NYC’s Maiden Lane and Boston’s haley.henry, Sherman opted for serving conservas, a culinary delicacy popular across the Mediterranean, whereby seafood is preserved in brines, olive oils, and other flavorful sauces. Conservas store indefinitely and require little back-of-house labor, an operational boon. But would the market find them satisfying? “I was convinced at that point that it was just not going to work, but people really responded to [the conservas],” says Sherman. “That gave us a pretty good indicator that this thing has some legs.”

To meet the newfound customer demand for tinned fish, Island Creek began importing, distributing, and co-branding its own line of conservas for Conservas Mariscadora, a collective of independent female shellfish harvesters—or mariscadoras—in Galicia, Spain who harvest fully traceable seafood from the waters of the Cantabrian Sea. While relatively new to the US market, in Spain, conservas are ubiquitous. “The Spanish eat a ton of seafood,” says Sherman, who began traveling the country researching sustainable fish farms on an Eisenhower Fellowship in 2018. “When we eat french fries, they’re eating shellfish.” Thus, canning became a necessary innovation, entrenching itself into Spanish culture. Sherman noticed this most starkly while shopping at El Corte Inglés, where tin after tin of conservas stocked four full aisles’ worth of grocery store shelves. “The octopus section was bigger than the soup section at most American grocery stores,” says Sherman.

That’s when things began to gel for Sherman. For Island Creek, a company familiar with the challenges of manufacturing a seasonal product, packing seafood in tins presented a shiny solution. By canning stateside, they could pack their seasonal product at peak quality while creating inventory that could be sold year-round at a good value. Additionally, the growing popularity of conservas in the US meant the demand for high-quality fish aligned with the company’s own standards.

Located in the historic fishing community of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the Island Creek Oyster Cannery is a small operation with big ambitions. Blending Island Creek Oysters’ already established brand of sustainable aquaculture with the American market’s newfound hunger for high-quality, shelf-stable seafood, Island Creek is resurrecting a dormant US tradition that’s existed since the 1800s—albeit repurposing it with Mediterranean ideals to meet the needs of the contemporary market.

While Island Creek has built an entire business out of fresh oysters, it hasn’t yet canned any. “Oyster supply has been pretty tight,” says Sherman, which drives the prices up. “They’re also the most difficult shellfish to can well.” Instead, the company is focused on farming clams, as well as sourcing from other New England seafood producers it’s met and vetted, such as Cherrystone Aqua-Farms in Virginia. “We’re definitely branching out, but we’re trying to keep everything single-origin, single-producer, and we’re trying to keep everything working with responsible harvesters and farmers that meet our standards,” says Sherman. The term “single-origin” is used broadly across the specialty food and beverage space (think chocolate, coffee, and whiskey) and refers to foods from a specific farm, location, or source. The same is true in aquaculture. It’s a strong marker of fish and seafood traceability—and thus, quality.

Having a cannery in the US that sources seafood exclusively from American shores presents a significant opportunity for American seafood producers. Island Creek is confident that this venture will support coastal communities across the United States by providing a stable, year-round supply of seafood. This steady inventory will benefit the numerous seafood-related businesses that are a major part of the East Coast’s fishing economy.

“Since we’ve publicized the cannery, I’ve had half the medium- to small-scale seafood producers in the Northeast reach out to me about handling their product,” says Sherman. “We just now need to connect the dots and make the demand there as well. I think we’re doing that, but it’s brick by brick.” To boost the lowbrow reputation of canned fish that still dominates much of the US market, Island Creek is choosing to can in European format tins—generally wider and shallower than a typical tuna or cat food tin—which he hopes will telegraph the quality of the product and justify the premium price point.

With little in the way of tradition in the United States, the tinned fish market is still finding its sea legs; Sherman notes there is “some chaos in the market” with tinned fish prices ranging anywhere from $4 to $30, but the company is making strides towards its goal of democratizing shellfish. “I didn’t think we would sell to 800 chefs around the country every week…but honestly, we sell a ton of tin fish to chefs and restaurants that aren’t tinned fish restaurants. They’re using them as an ingredient in a pasta dish, or on rice. And they’re using it because they don’t have the labor and the shucking and the steaming and the sauce making,” says Sherman. He is confident that other canneries like his will follow suit, especially along the East Coast where fish stocks and shellfish farms are abundant.

However, Sherman is candid about the challenges that lie ahead: In countries such as Spain and Portugal, where most canneries are run by generations of families, labor costs are a fraction of those in the United States. Nevertheless, canning has long been, and continues to be, a revolutionary process with a significant impact on ensuring sustainable aquaculture practices and preserving local fishing communities that rely on canning during the off-season. It also benefits consumers, who can enjoy high-quality seafood at a more reasonable price point than fresh seafood. Says Sherman, “We’re blazing the trail—for better or worse.”

The post Spotlight On a Cannery Trying to Revive A Dormant Fishing Tradition appeared first on Modern Farmer.

They are tulip snails, a mollusk found in the sandy bottoms of shallow pools along the south eastern coast of the US. And while they may not be the typical fare you expect at a swanky seafood restaurant in the US, at Seabird, they sit proudly alongside menu classics such as crab, yellowfin tuna and oysters. 

Seabird, in Wilmington, NC, is a sustainable seafood place that utilizes foraging to get many of its ingredients—and to act as an opportunity for education. Rather than rely only on farmed fish or wild caught fish that is shipped from ports across the world, Neff tries to work with local food, which can create a bit of uncertainty in the menu. Ordering 50 pounds of swordfish from a distributor is a fairly straightforward process. But with local fishing and foraging, you’re working with a wild population, and you’re not guaranteed to find what you set out for. You’re also limited by the seasonality of the food. 

 “I think everybody knows that tomatoes or okra or cabbages are seasonal,” says chef and owner Dean Neff. “But I don’t know that everyone knows the seasonality of oysters or speckled sea trout. Being able to have conversations about that and about sustainability with seafood was important to us.” 

Neff opened the restaurant in 2021 with his partner, and he started working with foragers to access local ingredients at sustainable levels. That’s when he met Ana Shellem of Shell’em Seafood, a coastal forager and sustainable fisher who works along the coastline of Masonboro Island. Shellem began foraging five years ago, after many years of harvesting wild shellfish. As a conservationist, Shellem is careful when and where she harvests, only bringing in what is in season and in small quantities. “When you eat wild and in season…I only eat oysters in season, even though with farmed oysters, you can eat them year round. But I think everything is at its finest when it’s in season. Eating a tomato in the winter is not as exciting as eating a tomato in the summer and appreciating the flavor profiles.”

Most shellfish seasons have to do with their cycle of breeding and molting, normally coinciding with water temperature. For instance, stone crabs along the east coast are out of season in the summer months, when the crabs will molt, shedding their shells and pumping the warm sea water in and out of their bodies to create new exoskeletons. It’s when the crabs have shed their shells that they can mate, creating nests for their egg sacs. That mating and molting will be done by October, and the season will pick up again then. It’s similar for lobsters. Over the summer, lobsters will migrate into warmer, shallower water to feed and molt, which makes them easier to catch. However, a lobster without its hard shell is trickier to transport, so the peak of lobster season is often earlier in the springtime or in December, before the waters get too cold. 

Each organism in the ocean, just like on land, has a season of rest, regrowth, or stasis, followed by a season of abundance. As consumers, we’re often used to eating strawberries in January or oysters in June. But to truly be aligned with seasonality, Shellem and Neff say, is to widen your palate and embrace other options. 

“It’s amazing to work with James Beard chefs that are educated and able to experiment with obscure things, like the tulip snails that Dean’s been working with, or North Carolina whelks. The seaweeds I get to bring him are really fun, like the sea bean or prickly pear cactus,” says Shellem. “I’ll even drop off samples so they can make a staff meal, just to educate their staff as well. It is so much fun to see so many people so passionate about the same thing with the same goal.”

But here’s where it gets tricky. Eating seasonally or prioritizing local foods is not just about trying new things. It’s also about learning what the limitations are and sometimes, living with disappointment. Foragers on land, for instance, will only take a certain number of mushrooms in a patch, to ensure sufficient regrowth. For Shellem, the same principle applies to seafood. She gathers what she needs for her restaurants and leaves the rest to flourish. That can make for an uncomfortable conversation at the dinner table. “When we were first opening, we explained to the servers that we’re going to run out of a particular fish tonight, and for some people that gives them anxiety,” says Neff. “But I think that should make you happy. Because that’s the nature of a sustainable restaurant; supplies are limited. We will be constantly changing.” For Neff, leaning into that change, and getting his customers used to it, is key. 

For Shellem, the lesson is more blunt but arguably more widely applicable. “I think if people could be more comfortable with being told ‘no’ sometimes, that would be awesome.” 

As for the tulip snails, Neff says they’ve been popular, and they’ve even had customers come in specifically looking for the snails. “We had people come all the way from France, not too long ago, and they said their main agenda was to eat at the restaurant,” which Neff concedes is a lot of pressure on one dinner order. However, it also means his message is spreading. “It meant so much to them to try [an ingredient] so unique that they’ve never had before.” 

The post Meet the Modern Chef and Forager Duo Bringing Snails to the Menu appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Buoys are a key component of aquaculture and fisheries—there are hundreds of thousands used in the United States alone. The buoy market, already a multi-billion-dollar industry, continues to expand by 5.5 percent each year thanks to increased interest in aquaculture farming. These buoyant orbs come in all shapes and sizes and help to moor lines, mark objects, and signal navigation. In the long history of ocean farming and exploration, we’ve used wooden buoys, cork ones, and iron ones. But today, the majority of buoys on the ocean are made from styrofoam or other polystyrene and polyethylene plastic compounds. There are thousands of buoys in use for weather and navigation alone, and every lobsterman and oyster farmer uses several dozen at a minimum.

Lost plastic buoys float on the currents and join the tonnes of plastics that now cover as much as 40 percent of the world’s seas. Bits and pieces of plastic buoys break off or disintegrate in the ocean sun, joining billions of pieces of microplastics that end up in our seafood.

You cannot have aquaculture without buoys—but you can have buoys without plastic. Sue Van Hook had a lifetime of expertise in fungi when she joined Ecovative Design as the mycologist in 2007. Ecovative Design is a technology company focused on using mycelium—the fine white vegetative filaments of fungus—to solve human needs. After discovering early on in her research that mycelium would float, Van Hook quickly realized the potential for creating buoys.

“My grandfather turned his lobster buoys on a lathe in the ‘50s and ‘60s on North Haven Island,” says Van Hook say, remembering her very first introduction to aquaculture’s wooden floatation devices. “I watched him do all that, all those years ago, and we helped paint the colors on and all of that stuff. And then I watched the whole ocean turn to Styrofoam, which at the time seemed fine, right? It was cheaper. They didn’t have to go through all of that labor of crafting this beautiful thing individually, and they lasted a long time.”

As an adult, Van Hook had become a professor of environmental studies and focused on mycology, which she taught at Skidmore College for 18 years. Now observing the buoyancy of mycelium, it didn’t take her long to remember her grandfather’s lobster buoys and their shift to Styrofoam—and to realize the environmental impact of an ocean full of Styrofoam buoys. She set to work designing and growing mycelium buoys.

Now the founder and CEO of her own company, Mycobuoys™, Van Hook has pioneered the fungus alternative to plastic buoys. To make her buoys, Van Hook will take a rope of pasteurized hemp and inoculate it with a low percentage of mycelium wood rot fungus. The fungus will then grow, spread and take up whatever space it is given to fill. Originally, she used empty soda bottles, and today, she has prototypes up to the size of mooring buoys more than two feet in diameter.

Van Hook has run into challenges finding the perfect fungus for the job, and she continues to work on the durability of the buoys. “We use wood rot fungus,” she says, explaining that the type of mycelium that creates sturdier, more perennial mushrooms like reishi is more suited to the job than the lawn fungus that grows many culinary mushrooms. She has tested dozens of strains of fungus, and she continues to work through varieties in buoy trials.

Currently, Van Hook’s Mycobuoys™ are being tested at 11 oyster farms, shellfish hatcheries, and ocean schools throughout New England and New York. Her goal is to be able to guarantee the buoys for a full season before offering them for retail sale.

Abigail Barrows was one of the first oyster farmers to trial Van Hook’s Mycobuoys™. Barrows has a background in marine biology and studies ocean microplastics. In 2015, she bought the lease on Deer Isle Oyster Company with a goal of turning it into a plastic-free oyster farm.

“We were blown away by the process,” Barrows says of her early experiences with mycelium buoys. “It was really exciting to grow something and then have this product which is so functional. And we were pretty excited about the potential application as we started our sea trials.”

The greatest challenge for Mycobuoys™ and those trialing the buoys is their durability. In addition to their hard plastic bodies, many of today’s buoys have thick toxic paint shells. To create a durable shell for a Mycobuoy™, both Van Hook and Barrows have experimented with natural paints that will protect the buoys from the sun, curious birds, and the hard use inherent in ocean farming.

“We are still looking for a more rugged coating,” explains Barrows, who has used pine tar and linseed coatings and linseed based paints on the buoys. “That would give them more robustness, because boats are going to bang into them, so we need to protect them for more than a season.”

“We are trying to find that beautifully environmentally friendly coating to prolong the life of the buoys,” says Van Hook. Today’s plastic lobster buoys do not last forever—at least not as functional aquaculture tools. Most lobstermen and oyster farmers will use a buoy for 20 or 25 years. Van Hook’s goal for Mycobuoy™ durability is a little bit shorter.

“My ideal business plan is that we grow the buoys every year,” she says. “You buy your buoys at a reasonable price, you have it out there floating your cages for a year, and at the end, we buy it back from you and dry it, grind it ourselves for fertilizer or you could compost them in your own garden.” Van Hook uses old mycelium buoy prototypes in her garden, where she never has to add fertilizer or composite thanks to the nutrition of the fungus. 

“You wouldn’t have to store [the buoys] in your driveway or your yard,” Van Hook continues, referring to the large piles of buoys that spring up on fishermen’s lawns during the off-season, “where all that UV light deteriorates the polyethylene plastic that they are currently using faster.” 

Recent legislation in South Korea will ban the use of styrofoam buoys by 2025, and Van Hook believes that other nations will soon follow. Van Hook hopes her buoys will retail around 10 percent to 20 percent above current plastic buoy prices and believes increasing restrictions on plastics will only make the mycelium option for buoys more appealing. Styrofoam and plastic buoys average between $20 and $50, depending on size, while the cost of Van Hook’s buoys will depend on the ability to scale up production and the solution to the problem of a durable coating. Those interested in helping Van Hook trial Mycobuoys™ can reach out to her via her website for 2025 buoys.

As oyster farmers such as Barrows continue to trial buoys and Van Hook expands to more shapes and sizes, the future of Mycobuoys™ is bright. On her quest to reduce ocean plastics, Van Hook may have stumbled on to an answer for more than just buoys.

“There is just so much potential here,” says Barrows.

Plastics can be found in almost all fishing gear, from nets to floatation systems in boats. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is almost half what is called “ghost gear,” fishing plastics lost overboard or abandoned. In addition to Mycobuoys™, Barrows works on prototypes of wooden oyster cages, and she sells her oysters in compostable beechwood bags from a new company called Ocean Farm Supply. “We need to think outside of the box, in terms of using them for mooring balls, other kinds of floatation, other marine systems such as replacing styrofoam boat hulls and marine docks.”

The post Meet the Mycologist Stopping Ocean Plastics, One Mushroom Buoy at a Time appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Kieffer founded Shifting Tides in February 2023 to teach people about intertidal ecosystems—the unique space where the ocean meets the land, which transforms hour by hour as the tide flows in and out—and how they impact our day-to-day lives, especially when it comes to what we eat.

Kieffer leads visitors on tours of the Oregon coast, where she harvests and then prepares a meal with wild seaweed and shellfish right on the beach. I had previously obtained a state license for the right to harvest with her-/rather than merely watch—so, after she demonstrated the proper technique, I was handed a small knife and we worked side by side to carefully remove mussels and gooseneck barnacles from a massive triangular rock slick with saltwater. Enthusiasm radiated from Kieffer as she offered advice and information, but it was frilly neon green seaweed that caused her to truly light up. 

“In Oregon, the seaweed harvest season is from March to June 15th, with a limit of a one-gallon bag of seaweed per day and only three bags per year,” says Kieffer . “The regulations are such that you need to use a knife or scissors to remove seaweeds, and it is actually illegal to pull the holdfast, or root-like anchor, from the rock. This allows them to regrow year after year. It does regenerate quickly, but we should never be harvesting all of what a given area has and should be leaving plenty intact for wild species to utilize.”

Seaweed is a key component of what Kieffer considers to be “climate cuisine,” which includes foraged and farmed foods that positively impact our climate. A primary example is the wild bull kelp pickles that she makes and serves to those who join her with Shifting Tides, which have a pleasantly vinegary, spicy flavor and firm crunch. Participants also have a chance to try the dulse seaweed that she farms and pan fries in olive oil for a delightfully crispy, salty snack. During my tour, I sampled the dulse before and after Kieffer cooked it, and I liked it in its raw form, too—mildly briny in taste and slightly chewy; reminiscent of the sea, but not so different from terrestrial leafy greens. Given the versatility of this specific seaweed, she uses it in and on all kinds of foods, including homemade pasta, vegan Caesar salad dressing, and everything bagel seasoning. 

Seaweed is the primary focus of Kieffer’s work as an educator, forager, and farmer. When she is not leading Shifting Tides tours, Kieffer works as part of a small team at Oregon Seaweed, a local seaweed farm where she has been helping to grow a variety called Pacific Dulse since 2021. Much of their seaweed is sold fresh (about $15 per pound) or dried to nearby restaurants and home cooks, but it is also available for worldwide shipping. As plant-based and environmentally conscious food trends become more widespread, Oregon Seaweed is well poised to address the growing global market demand for seaweed, which was valued at more than $17 billion in 2023 and is expected to double in the next decade. 

“One of the things I love about both of my jobs is that there are not two days in a week that look the same,” says Kieffer. “With Oregon Seaweed, some days I’m outside on the farm all day, cleaning tanks, drying and packaging seaweeds; others, I’m at restaurants teaching chefs how to cook dulse, or at markets talking to customers about it; others, I’m on the computer all day answering emails or dealing with online sales. For Shifting Tides, it’s the same—there’s so much time outside at low tide teaching people and cooking with folks.” 

Kieffer’s schedule ebbs and flows depending on both the tides and the tourism season. In good weather, she may have tours scheduled 10 days in a row and a workshop every weekend. Each of her roles has its own particular responsibilities, but there are clear throughlines between them. 

“Being that seaweed is a less popular food in our culture, a lot of my work with seaweed is teaching people how and why to use it,” says Kieffer. “The topic of eating seaweed is a segway into so many other amazing conservation efforts around food. 

“Regenerative aquaculture is giving back to the environment, rather than just taking from or having a neutral effect on it, and requires no or very minimal inputs to grow food,” explains Kieffer. “Seaweeds, for instance, require sunlight and natural nutrients; no freshwater, herbicides, or pesticides. They are removing carbon dioxide from the water through the process of photosynthesis as well as excess nutrients like nitrogen, which can have positive effects on the local ecosystem.”

The dulse that Kieffer farms at Oregon Seaweed, for example, has the capacity to sequester one pound of carbon for every four pounds of seaweed grown. Out in the wild, Kieffer harvests about 10 different varieties of seaweed, including: nori, kombu, wakame, sugar kelp, pepper dulse, and sea spaghetti. Several of these will be well known to sushi lovers, but few people would know where to buy the seaweed on its own, let alone what it looks like in its natural form. 

Given her sense of perfect ease while navigating the hidden nooks and crannies of Cannon Beach, I was surprised to learn that it was not Kieffer’s native habitat. She was born in New York City and came to Oregon as a teenager. Soon after, she began working for an environmental education company in the intertidal ecosystems. She immediately fell in love.

“I grew up in a family of chefs, restaurant owners, cookbook editors, and overall food lovers, so I was born with a deep connection to food whether I realized it or not,” says Kieffer. “As soon as I moved to the beach, I got away from food service and began working alongside our oceans. I learned so much about food systems and ultimately what goes into getting food from the ocean to our plates.” 

On my visit to Cannon Beach, Kieffer pointed out starfish smaller than my thumbnail suctioned to shells latched to the rocks around tide pools. She told me about sculpin (a type of narrow fish with a wide mouth) that live among sea lettuce and camouflage themselves to match their green hue.

Since founding Shifting Tides over a year ago, Kieffer has explored the ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest with people of all ages from all over the country. “At the beginning, it was mostly people from Oregon. Now, by partnering with some hotels on the coast as well as destination management organizations, like Travel Oregon and Oregon Coast Visitors Association, I have been teaching many people who aren’t from the area at all—college students from Wyoming, executive groups from Tennessee, couples from Texas.” 

While visitors may not have access to the same exact wild seafoods when they return home, they come away with an understanding of regenerative food systems that is applicable anywhere. 

“There are so many people working hard to bring food from the sea to our table in a way that is sustainable and helps coastal communities,” says Kieffer. “Telling stories of the people, practices, science, and conservation along our coast over a meal of foraged and farmed seaweeds is truly a dream.”

Kieffer’s dream is the reality that we need. As I watched her sautee seaweed on a portable seafoam green grill just yards from where we had harvested it, I felt a kind of hope that is rarer than a blue-sky day in Oregon. There is no single, simple fix for our food system, but Shifting Tides shows the valuable work already being done and invites us to join in.

The post The Bounty Between the Tides appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“Trout need lots of clean, fresh oxygen to thrive,” says Walker, 34. Some grass is good, but too much can deplete dissolved oxygen, slow waterflow and clog drains, “which stresses the fish. And calm fish are healthy fish; healthy fish are delicious fish.” 

This is part of Walker’s annual maintenance routine at Smoke In Chimneys trout farm, which opened in 2019. He’ll spend the day weeding and cleaning, then harvest the remaining fish in the next week or so. The pond then gets a break from production to naturally incorporate or filter out excess nutrients from the ecosystem. In the fall, it will again be loaded with thousands of baby trout. They’ll start their lives here, then cycle through a dozen similar impoundments—that together hold more than 20,000 fish at various stages of maturation—for about two years until they’re ready for harvest. 

“It takes a stupid amount of labor to do it this way compared to big commercial aquaculture operations,” says Walker. “But this is the only way to raise trout that consistently taste like they’ve been pulled fresh out a mountain stream.” 

That’s because the pond is part of a restored, 1930s US Department of the Interior gravity-fed trout hatchery and research facility in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains that was abandoned in the early 1990s due to budget cuts and remoteness. Here, there are no electric pumps, plastic tanks, antibiotics, mechanical agitators, recirculated water, chemical additives, or computer monitoring. Water comes from a pristine, 54-degree spring that gushes from the bedrock at 2,000 gallons a minute. It is carried to the ponds through a series of pipes and concrete raceways that mimic natural trout streams, then empties into an adjacent creek. The shale-bottom impoundments are lined with native plants, surrounded by pollinator gardens and selectively managed forest. They’re filled with naturally occurring microbes, insects, amphibians, and crustaceans. Walker and two employees hand-survey populations monthly for signs of illness or stress. They harvest and process about 400 whole trout a week, then pack them in coolers for shipping to restaurants and individual customers.

“There are a lot of small-scale trout producers in the US, but this is truly a diamond-in-the-rough situation,” says freshwater aquaculture researcher and current US Trout Farmers Association president Jesse Trushenski. Most similar facilities either vanished during the big-ag-fueled Blue Revolution of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s or are still used to supplement native wild trout populations for fishing. Then there’s the production side: The nation’s largest commercial producer—Boise, Idaho-based Riverence—churns out more than 22 million pounds of trout a year compared to Smoke In Chimney’s give-or-take 120,000.

This is a small, extremely high-end facility operating on historic infrastructure, says Trushenski. “If other commercial facilities [like the Walker’s] exist, there can’t be more than one or two.”

Walker also touts Smoke In Chimney’s sustainability versus typical fish-focused commercial aquaculture farms. On one hand, he likens his farm’s production methods to the inland freshwater equivalency of regenerative livestock farming. 

“This approach is without a doubt going to affect a net positive environmental impact,” says Trushenski. The system acts like a natural waterway, using gravity and hydrostatic pressure to move perfectly balanced water from a limestone aquifer. It requires no electricity or additives to operate. It’s effectively a restored habitat for depleted natural fish populations where, like rotational grazing, trout cycle through different impoundments as they grow and mature, nurturing their needs while playing a supportive role in the overall ecosystem. A percentage of newly hatched fish escapes into the nearby stream, bolstering habitat and wild populations. 

Meanwhile, more farm-raised trout on the market means less extractionary pressure on local streams. It also helps balance the increasing gap in wild-caught seafood production due to overfishing, climate change, and human population growth.

“This is an ecological win-win,” says Trushenski. “You’re boosting stream health and native fish populations while making inroads on a problem that is only going to get worse with time.” 

Walker appreciates sustainability and historic novelty—and leverages both to market and tell the story of his trout—but he’s more concerned with the quality of product the method yields. And testimonies back up his claims. 

“There’s this rich, nutty, buttery decadence. It tastes clean and refreshing, like spring water,” says Patrick Pervola, research and development chef at Michelin-starred Washington D.C. eatery, Albi. “This is some of the best fish I’ve tasted in my career. It rewrites what you think of as possible for farm-raised fish.”

But despite all the benefits—and roughly 2,900 miles of native wild trout streams—Smoke In Chimneys is one of about three other commercial trout farms in Virginia. And the others are tiny by comparison and sell almost exclusively to family friends or at local farmer’s markets. That means, by Trushenski’s estimate, about 95 percent of trout consumed in Virginia comes from production strongholds like Idaho, Washington, or North Carolina. 

She says the problem stems from issues around education. 

First, most seafood consumers have never tasted wild-caught or truly healthy farm-raised trout, and that lack of exposure leads to decreased demand. Second, Virginia focuses aquatic agricultural resources on marine seafood, so there are no dedicated high school or collegiate-level educational programs for inland freshwater aquaculture. And would-be farmers can’t pursue opportunities they don’t know about.

“To put it into perspective: When I started out, I called around to agricultural extension offices at [the state’s leading universities] and there was literally nobody there that could tell me anything useful about farm-raised trout,” says Walker. “I had to rely on old books from the 1930s I dug up on eBay, rangers working at hatcheries, farmers in other states, and trial-and-error to figure it out.”

But Walker remains undaunted. He and wife, Shannon, spent a year sifting through regulatory red tape and launched a small USDA-inspected processing plant near the farm. They work tirelessly on social media and with restaurateurs to educate eaters about the virtues of healthy, farm-raised trout. 

Walker has also joined the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Aquaculture Advisory Board and is in talks with administrators at the new Virginia Tech Aquaculture and Seafood Production Facility. He’s using the position and access to advocate for increased resources around gravity-fed inland freshwater aquaculture. He envisions a future where Smoke In Chimneys has expanded to include one to two dozen sister farms and helped dramatically increase trout consumption throughout the state and Mid-Atlantic. 

We have “the natural resources and the market potential is there,” says Walker, noting $67.5 million in USDA-reported 2018 sales at farms in the top two US trout-producing states alone. “All we need is the support to help us get the ball rolling and tap into that potential. And I don’t plan to quit until that happens. I want to remind Virginians why trout is our state fish.”

The post Meet the Modern Trout Farmer Using Gravity to His Advantage appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Last week, the FAO released its annual report on the state of aquaculture — which refers to the farming of both seafood and aquatic plants — and fisheries around the world. The organization found that global production from both aquaculture and fisheries reached a new high — 223.3 million metric tons of animals and plants — in 2022. Of that, 185.4 million metric tons were aquatic animals, and 37.8 million metric tons were algae. Aquaculture was responsible for 51 percent of aquatic animal production in 2022, or 94.4 metric tons.

The milestone was in many ways an expected one, given the world’s insatiable appetite for seafood. Since 1961, consumption of seafood has grown at twice the annual rate of the global population, according to the FAO. Because production levels from fisheries are not expected to change significantly in the future, meeting the growing global demand for seafood almost certainly necessitates an increase in aquaculture.

Though fishery production levels fluctuate from year to year, “it’s not like there’s new fisheries out there waiting to be discovered,” said Dave Martin, program director for Sustainable Fisheries Partnerships, an international organization that works to reduce the environmental impact of seafood supply chains. “So any growth in consumption of seafood is going to come from aquaculture.”

But the rise of aquaculture underscores the need to transform seafood systems to minimize their impact on the planet. Both aquaculture and fisheries — sometimes referred to as capture fisheries, as they involve the capture of wild seafood — come with significant environmental and climate considerations. What’s more, the two systems often depend on each other, making it difficult to isolate their climate impacts.

“There’s a lot of overlap between fisheries and aquaculture that the average consumer may not see,” said Dave Love, a research professor at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University.

Studies have shown that the best diet for the planet is one free of animal protein. Still, seafood generally has much lower greenhouse gas emissions than other forms of protein from land-based animals. And given many people’s unwillingness or inability to go vegan, the FAO recommends transforming, adapting, and expanding sustainable seafood production to feed the world’s growing population and improve food security.

But “there’s a lot of ways to do aquaculture well, and there’s a lot of ways to do it poorly,” said Martin. Aquaculture can result in nitrogen and phosphorus being released into the natural environment, damaging aquatic ecosystems. Farmed fish can also spread disease to wild populations, or escape from their confines and breed with other species, resulting in genetic pollution that can disrupt the fitness of a wild population. Martin points to the diesel fuel used to power equipment on certain fish farms as a major source of aquaculture’s environmental impact. According to an analysis from the climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown, swapping out fossil fuel-based generators on fish farms for renewable-powered hybrids would prevent 500 million to 780 million metric tons of carbon emissions by 2050.

Other areas for improvement will vary depending on the specific species being farmed. In 2012, a U.N. study found that mangrove forests — a major carbon sink — have suffered greatly due to the development of shrimp and fish farming. Today, industry stakeholders have been exploring how new approaches and techniques from shrimp farmers can help restore mangroves.

Meanwhile, wild fishing operations present their own environmental problems. For example, poorly managed fisheries can harvest fish more quickly than wild populations can breed, a phenomenon known as overfishing. Certain destructive wild fishing techniques also kill a lot of non-targeted species, known as bycatch, threatening marine biodiversity.

But the line between aquaculture and fish harvested from the wild isn’t as clear as it may seem. For example, pink salmon that are raised in hatcheries and then released into the wild to feed, mature, and ultimately be caught again are often marketed as “wild caught.” Lobsters, caught wild in Maine, are often fed bait by fisherman to help them put on weight. “It’s a wild fishery,” said Love — but the lobster fishermen’s practice of fattening up their catch shows how human intervention is present even in wild-caught operations.

On the flipside, in a majority of aquaculture systems, farmers provide their fish with feed. That feed sometimes includes fish meal, says Love, a powder that comes from two sources: seafood processing waste (think: fish guts and tails) and wild-caught fish.

All of this can result in a confusing landscape for climate- or environmentally-conscientious consumers who eat fish. But Love recommends a few ways in which consumers can navigate choice when shopping for seafood. Buying fresh fish locally helps shorten supply chains, which can lower the carbon impact of eating aquatic animals. “In our work, we’ve found that the big impact from transport is shipping fresh seafood internationally by air,” he said. Most farmed salmon, for example, sold in the U.S. is flown in.

From both a climate and a nutritional standpoint, smaller fish and sea vegetables are also both good options. “Mussels, clams, oysters, seaweed — they’re all loaded with macronutrients and minerals in different ways” compared to fin fish, said Love.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post The World is Farming More Seafood Than it Catches. Is That a Good Thing? appeared first on Modern Farmer.