GreenWave Seed Bank and Nursery Tour

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Good afternoon.

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My name is Toby Shepherd Block.

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I'm the director of infrastructure here at GreenWave,

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and I'm really excited to share the work our seed team has

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been doing over the last several years

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to implo improve the quality

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and reliability of kelp seedlings available to farmers.

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We started this work based on

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what we were seeing on our own farm

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and hearing from the field that seed was getting

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to farms too late

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and was of uneven quality, which led to lower yields

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and smaller harvests.

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When we set out to develop solutions to these problems,

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we wanted to come up with systems that were scalable,

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affordable, and replicable

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and accessible to a broad range of operator backgrounds so

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that anyone could be successful doing this work.

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We broke the problem into two parts, the source of seed

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and how seedlings were being raised.

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To improve the source of seed, we built the seed bank.

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You see behind me, the seed bank can hold seed year round,

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eliminating our dependence on wild seed,

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and seed can be stored in the seed bake indefinitely,

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and it grows here roughly doubling every month.

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This allows us to control the timing of seedling production,

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which means that we can get seed out

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to farms at the optimal Outplant moment

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where the seedling has maximum availability

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to light and nutrients.

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So we're seeing results from this work right away.

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Farms that received seed using this method last year saw a

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doubling of their yield in Southern New England,

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and at the same time, we're building foundations

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for the long term industry

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that farmers have control over their own seed.

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So farmers can take wild material from their farm

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or that they find adjacent and they can send it to us

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and we add it to the seed bank and we bulk it up year round,

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and then we send it back to them

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where they can grow their own seed,

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protecting them from corporate control.

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We're also protecting

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and preserving seed from climate stressors like rising ocean

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temperatures that make it harder to find seed in the wild.

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The ocean's already a big place,

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but as populations dwindle, it can be even harder to find

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that reproductive material at the exact right moment.

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Lastly, every year we add new genetic material

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to the seed bank, and so

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that gives us more strains each year

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that we can produce seed from

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building a robust genetic collection

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that doesn't create a monoculture

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when we farm out in the ocean.

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The success of the seed bank is based on the blue thumb

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of the team that operates it year round.

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Stewarding the seed here.

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Maggie's doing a health assessment

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of one of the seed stocks.

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She's looking for signs of potential

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contamination or stress.

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We can clean the seed stock to remove the contamination

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or alter environmental conditions

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to reduce the stress in the seed bank

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and make the seed as vibrant

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and healthy as possible when it goes out in the

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ocean. And

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Over here, Sophie is taking seed

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and she's painting it onto one of our seed spools.

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Less than a gram of seed gets applied to one of these spools

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that when it's out planted in the ocean, it'll yield up

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to 5,000 pounds of cattle.

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Now a lot of this might look simple and in many ways it is.

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We sort of designed it to be that way,

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but there's a lot of craft

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and intuition, uh, wrapped up in what we call the blue thumb

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that's required to be successful.

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And so Sophie and Maggie are working on a library

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of protocols that document

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what we've discovered in this process,

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and we're gonna be putting it up on the greenways ocean

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farming hub so

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that everybody in the field can benefit from our experience.

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So knowledge transfer from the scientific community was

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critical for the establishment of the kelp farming industry,

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but some of the methods and

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and equipment from the scientific process aren't suited

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to commercial applications.

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And so a lot of the work we do at GreenWave is setting out

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to hack science to get better results at a lower cost.

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And that's what we've done here

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with our kelp seedling nursery.

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This is based on a 20 foot shipping container

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that we've upcycled that was at the end of its useful life.

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And we reached out to the knowledge network and,

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and we, we asked people

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what had worked in growing kelp seedlings and,

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and what had failed and,

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and drawing from all those experiences.

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We built this optimized platform.

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All the schools in this nursery,

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when they're put out in the ocean, can yielded up

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to a million pounds of kelp.

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And in the past nursery production systems were variable,

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so we would expect to maybe 10 or 20% of schools would fail.

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But in this new system, we see a hundred percent reliability

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every single school.

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Very uniform, very consistent.

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And because we can control that timing

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very productive when it goes out in the ocean.

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So like the protocols in the seed bank,

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we've developed an equipment list, a fabrication guide,

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and put it up on the ocean farming hub.

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And we're working with farmers around the country

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and around the world to replicate this system.

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So Greenway staff are out in the field providing high touch

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support so that cooperatives

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and family farmers can grow their own seed

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and control their seed supply chain.

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This is how we think about infrastructure at Greenway

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Systems that are scalable, replicable,

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and affordable, robust solutions

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that meet the commercial needs of industries

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and are accessible for farmers to own, build

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and run made of readily available components.

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And it can be shared widely so that,

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that we can learn from each other as an industry.