Corby Kummer on the Future of Seaweed and Kelp Farms

The seaweed and kelp farm industry could become one of the largest sustainable maritime food industries — provided that enough people buy in. Award-winning food writer Corby Kummer joined Boston Public Radio on Monday to weigh in on the future of seaweed and kelp farms.

“There are so many advocates for it who say you don't need any additional resources,” Kummer said. “It doesn’t cause pollution like fish farms in the open water do, from excrement from fish that are all penned up. You can farm seaweed [and] kelp.”

Kummer noted that Alaska already has “a strong cultural tradition of eating” seaweed. The Alaska Sea Grant, a federal-state program that funds marine and coastal research at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, has recipes for bull kelp salsa and kelp seasoning. But it might be harder to convince the rest of the nation to make seaweed and kelp a regular part of their diet.

“The question is getting people to buy it and need it,” Kummer noted.

“It's going to take a lot longer for the U.S. to want to have seaweed or seaweed burgers in their Impossible Burger — which is actually not impossible. It's a good texture builder and it can be incorporated.”

Corby Kummer is executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.