Amazon starting massive seaweed farm in North Sea
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https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/aquaculture/amazon-to-fund-the-world-s-first-commercial-scale-seaweed-farm can we all talk about this? I feel pretty horrified that Amazon has taken over this industry! This seems like an industry for small farming and intimate relationships with nature! Can anybody explain to me how they are feeling about this takeover and what everybody thinks should be done about depersonalization of this industry! This seems like the absolute worst avenue to conservation and preservation of our Arctic environment!
I'm devastated
@daniel_gillespie Hey Daniel, I was originally horrified by the news and decided to dig a little deeper as I covered this topic on my podcast this weekend. I'm still on the fence as some of the headlines are a little misleading. The short version of what I can find is that Amazon has a climate fund that has invested in the Not-For-Profit https://www.northseafarmers.org/ North Sea Farmers. They plan to research and develop farming applications as well as try to create a way to accurately measure how much carbon seaweed can sequester. From the North Sea Farms side it all seems very scientific / educational with more pros than cons. However, I do agree that seeing corporations like Amazon and others coming into this field is quite worrying.
As the project is quite new it's hard to really understand the longer term motives behind the investors and the NFP. A few weeks ago I talked about the recent investment via Bill Gates into seaweed to reduce methane, I also found the same company has received funding from Ja Ma (Alibaba) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) via other funding / investment portfolios he is linked to. Because of how some of these investment funds/climate funds are set up it's murky to find who's actually involved directly and indirectly.
Since starting the podcast I've come across numerous groups/governments/companies delving into seaweed that do raise some questions over the ethics and reasons behind their interest/funding. I've started researching into this a lot more lately and hope to add a new season to the podcast to connect all of these dots and try to understand the true pro's and con's.....
@daniel_gillespie
I wouldn't worry about it gentlemen, This is a brand new industry with plenty of room for everyone. And besides, what the hell does Amazon know about ocean farming? They wouldn't know how to get their tractors out of the water. With over 650K types of algae, there is a wide open market for all sizes of farms. The 70% of our planet that has been closed to us mostly, has just opened for business. When we get this new industry figured out, they will be throwing money at us.
@daniel_gillespie
I'm not a huge fan of "green" capitalism. Right now I think anything that makes more seaweed farms is good for the planet. Seaweed is better and more efficient for carbon credits/sequestration than most (all?) other projects. Corn ethanol still a huge ridiculous industry($20 billion annually). Overall it's good that massive corporations are being less bad. Amazon having too much seaweed is a great problem to have. I think this signals that they're preparing for carbon pricing.
There are plenty of people who won't save the planet unless it's profitable. What if Amazon decides everyone should use seaweed fertilizer? Seaweed packaging is too expensive, but if they grow seaweed for carbon credits then it's free and they could afford to switch.
What Amazon excels at is logistics and automation. We can't save the planet with tax loopholes alone, but they could provide markets and RnD for a generation of farmers.
@daniel_gillespie Excatly what we don’t want!