CASCADIA SEAWEED CORP.

Published purpose

Cascadia Seaweed aims to build a large-scale seaweed farm to deliver a sustainable agrifeed product.This project will result in three key innovations:1. Deploy a large-scale ocean farm in Canada to grow enough seaweed for a minimum viable agrifeed product2. Cost effective, low energy, high throughput seaweed processing technologies3. A tested sustainable agrifeed productWith access to high volumes of cost-effective seaweed, Canada is able to start addressing the increasing demand for raw material without reliance on foreign markets. Canada currently imports >90% of seaweed and the annual demand increases by ~8-14%. The project outcomes enable Canadian companies to be cost competitive with larger foreign markets while addressing climate change, food insecurity, and economic instability within Canada. Seaweed growth provides significant environmental benefits such as carbon capture and habitat creation, and these benefits scale-up with the amount of seaweed cultivated. There are additional benefits to utilizing the crop as an agrifeed solution; by increasing the resiliency of the livestock industry though a myriad of impacts, such as improved feed conversion ratio (5%), reduction of enteric methane (15%), and reduced reliance of land based crops for livestock feed. The improved feed conversion and improved product quality also make this solution economically viable by farmers.