Kelp Solutions

Today 98% of food comes from land based agriculture, while only 2% from aquaculture. We need to change the way we think of resources and where we get them. Our proposal is to replace over-exploited resources with an unused one: kelp. We see potential in using kelp in agriculture for livestock feed and fertilizer. Replacing imports with kelp reduces transport emissions and offers an alternative to heavily exploited, land based resources. Using kelp as fertilizer creates a feedback loop where phosphorus and nitrogen is fed back into the system. Kelp also makes the plants’ immune system more resilient and helps the soil retain water. Today kelp farming is a manual process. Labour in Norway is expensive. If we want to make kelp farming economically viable it can’t be done like today. Therefore we designed an autonomous buoy and a harvesting drone. They make growing and harvesting kelp more efficient, by reducing manual labour, improving monitoring, and autonomizing several steps. These tools facilitate a future where kelp is a resource. This is a big contributor to make agriculture and aquaculture more sustainable and circular, and a good alternative to the systems of today.
These are just some of the benefits of kelp.

7 week project with Anna Malene Vik, Mathilde Osvold Mortvedt, Ingrid Sudbø and Jon Anders Fløistad.