from the this-miracle-food-of-high-energy-plankton-is-NOT-people dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The global food supply faces a range of threats including climate change, wars, pests and diseases. An organism too small for the human eye to see—microalgae—could offer some answers.
Feeding a growing world population that will, according to United Nations forecasts, reach 9.8 billion by 2050, and the need to conserve natural resources for generations to come may seem conflicting at first.
But a solution, while not yet in sight, is certainly not out of reach. European scientists recently have developed an appetite for microalgae, also called phytoplankton, a sub-group of algae consisting of unicellular photosynthetic microorganisms.
Most people are familiar with the largest form of algae, kelp or seaweed. It can grow up to three meters long and, in some forms, is a well-known delicacy. The related species microalgae, which can be found in both seawater and freshwater, have gained attention in research due to their extraordinary properties.
These microscopic organisms can be used for animal feed, particularly in aquaculture, and various foods including pasta, vegan sausages, energy bars, bakery products and vegetable creams.
[...] "Microalgae can be cultivated in many different locations, under very different conditions," said Massimo Castellari, who is involved in the Horizon-funded ProFuture project aimed at scaling up microalgae production. "We can grow it in Iceland and in a desert climate."
The technologies for the intensive cultivation of microalgae have been in development since the 1950s.
Today, microalgae are cultivated in open- or closed-system photobioreactors, which are vessels designed to control biomass production. The closed-system version, while more expensive to build, offers more control over experimental parameters and less risk of contamination.
The substance is by no means just a trendy food supplement. For example, in Chad, a landlocked, low-income country, the consumption of spirulina harvested from Lake Chad has significantly improved people's nutritional status because spirulina is an excellent source of proteins and micronutrients.
On top of its nutritional value, microalgae offer climate benefits by sequestering carbon dioxide as well as economic advantages by using farming areas more efficiently and—through the use of non-arable land—expanding the possibility of biomass production.
[...] While the benefits of cultivating organic microalgae for food and feed are substantial, market growth will require overcoming obstacles including a lack of automated production in the industry, according to Castellari, who works at the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology in Barcelona, Spain.
[...] "Microalgae can help us to increase the protein production within Europe to reduce our dependence on other countries," said Castellari of the ProFuture project.
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Life on earth could not survive without seaweed and algae. Every second oxygen molecule that we inhale originates from them. In the future, they could also become an important food source:
Fraunhofer researchers are working on processes for commercial cultivation, as well as the extraction of many kinds of protein and other nutrients.
Dr. Ulrike Schmid-Staiger is group manager for Algae Biotechnology at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart. For 25 years now, she has been perfecting the cultivation of microalgae in photobioreactors – transparent water tanks that supply the tiny organisms with light, CO2 and nutrients until they grow to form a thick green soup. Dr. Schmid-Staiger currently devotes most of her time to the marine Phaeodactylum tricornutum, which can generate particularly large quantities of omega-3 fatty acids, and to Chlorella vulgaris, which feels most at home in ponds and brackish water and stands out thanks to its high protein content of around 50 percent. When suspended in water, neither alga is detectable to the naked eye.
"Compared to terrestrial plants, our algae contain around ten times the amount of valuable nutritious substances," declares Dr. Schmid-Staiger with pride. Every single cell contains the same rich mix of nutrients. Terrestrial plants, on the other hand, also have roots, stalks and leaves. The substances contained in the cells vary in the different parts of a plant – the protein content of a corn kernel is different to that of its leaves or roots. "I can make use of every part of the algal biomass we grow here. There is hardly any waste material," emphasizes Dr. Schmid-Staiger. And these are not the only advantages microalgae have to offer. For one thing, they grow much more quickly than their botanical, land-based cousins. While 1 hectare of farmland can yield around 30 tons of corn biomass, a photobioreactor with artificial lighting can yield up to 150 tons of algae from the same surface area.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SomeRandomGeek on Monday September 26 2022, @03:52PM (1 child)
Algae cultivation has always seemed to have such great potential for such diverse uses as animal feed, people feed, biofuel, and carbon capture. But it has never been clear what a practical algae farm would look like. Would it be self contained, or in a lake or ocean? The obvious benefit of algae is that you can grow organisms that are precisely tailored to your needs. But there is also an obvious cost in needing to provide those organisms with environments precisely tailored to their needs. Does anyone know of any commercially viable (or even near commercially viable) forms of algae farming today?
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Monday September 26 2022, @04:05PM
Spirulina farms like the one mentioned in TFA are the most common land-based algae farms that *harvest* algae. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezNaZnCuPdA [youtube.com]
Another less obvious but more common type of farm that grows algae as-an-input instead of harvesting it is in aquaculture farms raising tilapia. They commonly fertilize their ponds with phosphate to encourage algae growth for the fish. The algae takes up nitrogen and the fish recycle it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Monday September 26 2022, @03:53PM (6 children)
I've played with growing algae and in my non-expert opinion it's difficult to make an argument for it vs. hydroponics. The raw calories-per-drop-of-water value is higher for algae and you can pack more density into bioreactors. That's great for a space constrained environment like space travel, but here on earth we have a preposterous amount of non-arable land (and water) that can be used for Hydroponics. I feel like you do better growing produce people already know how to cook and use without the challenges of harvesting and de-watering the algae, preventing colonization with non-target organisms, and finding a way to make it both digestible and palatable.
(This isn't a food bias-based opinion btw, I'm a person that eats bugs. :) )
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 26 2022, @04:59PM (2 children)
Personally, I'd prefer a bug-paste future to a micro-algae future - though neither one holds a candle to steak, bacon, or especially bacon wrapped filet mignon (still available at $20 per kCal from your nearest beef farmer...)
I'm not advocating we all eat filet mignon 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year - maybe once or twice a month? It's not about human health, it's about what the whole biome of Earth will evolve into. One the one hand, we can no-doubt feed 40 billion humans from carefully controlled micro-algal bio-reactors in the deserts - but is that the future we want to send humanity into? Compare that to a future with 2 billion humans, on a world with 50% of the surface and sea volume devoted to biodiversity, with enough beef farming in the remaining 50% for that once a month steak, and bacon for breakfast once a week... Both futures are valid, but I know which one I'd prefer to visit.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by SomeRandomGeek on Monday September 26 2022, @05:26PM (1 child)
Because some land is better used as pasture than farmland, an omnivorous diet actually allows the world to have a higher carrying capacity than a vegan one:
https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/article/doi/10.12952/journal.elementa.000116/112904/Carrying-capacity-of-U-S-agricultural-land-Ten [ucpress.edu]
Similarly, I would imagine that there is a lot of land that is unsuitable for either pasture or livestock, but is suitable for growing algae. You know, deserts. We could grow algae in deserts as animal feed. This would allow more livestock while not diverting arable land from other uses.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 26 2022, @06:34PM
>We could grow algae in deserts as animal feed.
But what would become of the Spice (that we haven't discovered yet ;-) ?
On as more serious note: just because it's desert doesn't mean it doesn't play an important part in the biodiversity of the planet... Shameless plug for a cause that sprung up to match an idea I had many years ago: https://www.half-earthproject.org/ [half-earthproject.org] Where I diverge from their thinking (somewhat) is that I believe we should preserve first, attempt to understand the web of life later. Yes, of course we should use the knowledge we have to make intelligent choices, but we should also embrace our ignorance and make some very arbitrary decisions: preserving half of the desert because: it's desert, we should have a strong representative sample. Same thing for beachfront, swamps (no problem there - people love preserving swampland in exchange for developing beachfront...), rain forest, temperate forest, coral reefs, deep oceans, the whole Attenborough catalog. Given humanity's record to-date: just because it looks uninteresting or of low value to us today is no reason to believe that's actually true.
In the end analysis, the Earth will always have a maximum carrying capacity number for h. sapiens. The interesting question is: if we keep half of Earth as a biodiversity resource, will that maximum number be diminished, or increased? Even if it is diminished to 50% (which, all evidence to-date says: hell no - we'd benefit tremendously from life spilling over from the preserves into our developed regions), which future Earth do you think is better for future humanity?
My half-baked blog: https://5050by2150.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com] because promotion of causes, environmental or otherwise, is not really my strong suit.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday September 26 2022, @06:02PM
Kombu and Nori are both pretty delicious and I think both of those are algaes.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday September 27 2022, @12:08AM (1 child)
I feel like there's a lot of potential for microbial farming of processed staple ingredients like flour and sugar - ideally they can come up with drop-in alternatives and radically reduce the demand for wheat and corn, which require growing a huge amount of biomass to to produce a comparatively tiny amount of grain.
That's... I think the large majority of US cropland freed up right there. It could be re-purposed for other crops, or be re-wilded to promote greater ecological health.
And perhaps just as importantly - it shifts that supply of essential calories to a source that's unlikely to be impacted by freezes, floods, droughts, etc. as weather patterns become more erratic over the next century or ten.
As for "non-target" organisms, I suspect that it will be much less of an issue than traditional crop diseases, weeds, insects, etc. - at least once the technology begins to mature. After all, they're microbes capable of exponential growth under the ideal circumstances you're doing your best to provide. If a "field" gets infected, just sterilize it and re-innoculate it with a teaspoon of lab-fresh starter culture and you should be back to maximum production within a matter of days.
The continuous year-round production would also be a huge boon, eliminating the vast amounts of storage required to keep this year's harvest good throughout the rest of the year - only a strategic reserve is required.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 27 2022, @09:52AM
>the large majority of US cropland freed up right there
Yeah, that'll be a big winner with the Ag lobby. Just show them how their profits will double and their future control over the world food supply will become more of a lock than it is today.
I doubt you will be seeing them relinquish control of the land in any deals they accept...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 27 2022, @12:15AM (1 child)
https://purebulk.com/products/spirulina-bulk?variant=14307859497009¤cy=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic [purebulk.com]
25 kg for US $540 doesn't seem like much of a bargain. I can still buy beef and pork for that price, chicken considerably less. Just went to Walmart.com to double check that. Lean ground beef 7% fat is roughly half the price of this spirulina. If you can live with a higher fat content, that is even less. Of course, if you're a picky eater who won't shop at Walmart, you might pay a whole lot more for your beef.
As might be expected, prices for spirulina are all over the place, but Google claims the link above is "average" for bulk powder.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 27 2022, @09:56AM
One would hope current pricing is "test marketing" like when kiwi fruit was introduced to the US market.... If it will sell at 5x the high volume price, then you know it's worth the investment to bring it to market at high volume.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 27 2022, @05:31PM
Nobody seems to want to talk about it but I suspect the first very large scale algae deployment will be for biodiesel. Yeah they talk a lot about protein production but I bet its going to deploy as carb production first.
You don't have to worry about bacterial contamination or whatever other problems if you're just separating the oil, esterizing it, then burning it in a tractor. Or a diesel car, perhaps. Or ferment and distill, or several other interesting processes.
I don't even know what that means. At the ultra low end I saw the Codys Lab youtube series years ago (certainly pre-covid, I think?) where he did some solar powered arduino nonsense to automate his small scale algae farm and at the high end I looked into how the Hawaiians were making (IIRC...) vitamin C using algae and it all seems pretty modern with PLCs and SCADA and all that, its not really the kind of process done by numerous peasants with straw hats.