REAL Oregon News

Last month I had been reading, or rather listening to, a fascinating book about the future of food. The book is called Eat Like A Fish by Bren Smith.

The story itself is not a sweet tale it is more the ups and downs, hard knocks and good fortunes, terrible storms and clear skies of author Bren Smith and his journey to make a living while looking for the alternatives to traditional harvesting of wild fish runs and changing the way to look at farming for the future. Smith used his life as the template to describe the events that hampered and helped him and there were many times during the book where I had to stop listening long enough to look up new terms and expand on some of the ideas he set forth. Smith’s story is more from the East Coast but many of the plans, ideas, and working models would be adaptable to seas from around the world.

These are some of the interesting social media posts:

• There are 10K plants in the ocean – let’s farm them! https://bit.ly/2FEONRV

• Restorative Ocean Farming: Making a Living on a Living Planet https://bit.ly/2FEONRV

• Did you know that feeding cattle a 1% seaweed diet reduces their methane output by 58%? https://bit.ly/2FEONRV

• Restorative ocean farming requires zero inputs: no freshwater, no fertilizer, no feed. https://bit.ly/2FEONRV

• There are thousands of edible vegetables in the sea – imagine the culinary possibilities! https://bit.ly/2FEONRV

One of those new terms for me was Dulse. I had never heard of the name before, this is what I was able to glean,

Palmaria palmata, also called dulse, dillisk or dilsk, red dulse, sea lettuce flakes, or creathnach, is a red alga previously referred to as Rhodymenia palmata. It grows on the northern coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is a well-known snack food.

They could have just said seaweed, but that would be a very basic description, I have eaten seaweed before in sushi, those little packets of thin sheets that are mostly air for snacking and in a few prepared meals. Also if they would have simply called it seaweed I probably would not have continued to read the book or investigate further so I see the point. My limited exposure to seaweed as a food did not get me enthused about the future of harvesting this ‘vegetable’, to me it is rather bland, this book has opened up many ideas to my thinking.

I was excited to hear that Group 5 of REAL Oregon has been meeting at Newport this last week and I found out that they are learning about Dulse as well. Oregon State University has a large stake in Ocean farming including oyster production when I attended some of the REAL Oregon classes. I had no idea but there are two Oregon Dulse farms in the State, one in Bandon and one in Garibaldi. This is now a destination trip that is on my list!

Oregon dulse operates the largest on-land seaweed farm in the United States. We grow dulse, a seaweed that is high in protein and is very appealing as a fresh, negative footprint protein.

We have two farms, one in Bandon, and our newest farm in Garibaldi, Oregon. We extract very functional proteins, and sell our dulse fresh through foodservice distributors to restaurants all over the United States.

There is a webinar that is coming up on January 21st about Farm2Fork and Dulse production in Oregon if you are interested in future of this intriguing crop.

As the world population and wealth grow, demand for protein will reach unprecedented levels.

The current production of proteins contributes considerably to greenhouse gas emissions so new sources of lower impact proteins will increase.

This presents a huge opportunity for developing new products from seaweed, which has a significantly lower carbon footprint and huge potential for creating a more efficient supply chain, healthier products that not only can feed the world, but heal it as well.

This webinar will examine the potential of on-land seaweed aquaculture, which Oregon State University has long been a pioneer.

You can register for the webinar through Oregon State University website.