Bren Smith > Quotes

“seaweed uses photosynthesis to pull carbon from the atmosphere and the water; some varieties are capable of absorbing five times more carbon dioxide than land-based plants. And seaweed is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world.”
― Bren Smith, Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer

“Livestock produce more greenhouse gases than global airplane and car emissions combined, and 65 percent of these gases come from cows.”
― Bren Smith, Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer

“a global network of sea-vegetable farms totaling 180,000 square kilometers—roughly the size of Washington State—could provide enough protein for the entire world population.”
― Bren Smith, Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer

“It's stunning how, under the weight of ecological collapse, a hundred years of culture can be gutted overnight. The metronome of our music and poetry isn't the ocean, it's fish. With cod gone meaning was swept away, dignity soon replaced with anger.”
― Bren Smith, Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer

“The main nitrogen polluter is agricultural fertilizer runoff. All told, the production of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides contributes more than one trillion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere globally each year.”
― Bren Smith, Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer

“Want to scale food production? Restorative ocean farms have the capacity to grow massive amounts of nutrient-rich food. Professor Ronald Osinga at Wageningen University in the Netherlands has calculated that a global network of sea-vegetable farms totaling 180,000 square kilometers—roughly the size of Washington State—could provide enough protein for the entire world population. A modest goal of five hundred twenty-acre farms would produce 120 million pounds of shellfish and in the range of eleven to forty million pounds of seaweeds, depending on the species grown—that’s a lot of food.”
― Bren Smith, Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer