Seaweed farming is anything but new.
The Japanese have been harvesting nori seaweed since the 1600s, but in America seaweed farming has been slow to catch on. That momentum is slowly building, though, and farmers like Azure Cygler and her family, who own Rhody Wild Seagardens, are building new businesses on regenerative sea farming.
Organizations like GreenWave have started to organize these farms across the globe, but locally, Cygler said, there’s only a handful of kelp farmers that are in the business.
“This is new for us and we’re now on our second season of kelp grows,” she told RI Inno this week. “We work with four other farmers, based here, Massachusetts and Connecticut, as part of the Sugar Kelp Co-Op and sell the kelp to restaurants and wholesalers.”
Sugar kelp, in addition to being a nutritious food high in fiber, vitamins, and minerals, can be used as a sweetener and has thickening and gelling qualities that can be used in food or cosmetics. Cygler said most of their sugar kelp is being grown and harvested for restaurant use, but she sees a future where it can be turned into potential biofuels as well.
“We get our seeds from local divers who source wild and native species and we then grow those in a lab, usually from October on and by November or December, we’re planting the crops back in the ocean,” she said. “April is the time when we’re harvesting. We do a few intensive harvests in the spring and that’s the season. We’re in the middle of our third harvest now.”
Cygler said she’s also eyeing growth in the industry as larger companies start to use the kelp for animal feed, natural fertilizers and bioplastics.
Cygler, like many small kelp farmers, has a second job where she earns the bulk of her yearly income. A former commercial fisherman, Cygler currently works at the University of Rhode Island as a coastal research associate in the fisheries and aquaculture department. After years on the water, Cygler settled in Narragansett with her family and currently has two kids, a 6-year-old and a 13-year-old.
“Most of the kelp farmers I know have other jobs,” she said. “We’re still trying to figure out how to make a living wage with this and a big part of starting this company is to pave that way. As much as we love farming and the sustainability aspect, we want to build something for them and give them an option in the future.”
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