How can seaweed farming help tackle global food insecurity?

According to a study carried out by researchers at the Friedman School, Tufts University, seaweed farming may help to tackle global food insecurity. The researchers claim that seaweed, as well as being a “sustainable superfood”, has “significant income-boosting potential”. The study was published in Global Food Security and found that producing and selling seaweed could boost incomes for farmers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly in coastal regions of Africa and Southeast Asia. Senior Author of the study, Patrick Webb, the Alexander McFarlane Professor of Nutrition at the Friedman School, explained: “One of the biggest problems of food insecurity in LMICs is the unaffordability of healthy diets. “There are roughly 3.5 billion people in the world who can’t afford a healthy diet even if they choose local foods at local prices. For many of those people, cultivating and selling seaweed would lead to higher incomes and improved nutrition through purchases on the ...