Seawater Farms is a Unique Company

Seawater Farms Bahía Kino (SFBK) introduces a new technology of integrated aquaculture, agriculture and forestry activity utilizing seawater effluent from existing shrimp farms on the coast of the Gulf of California to irrigate salt-tolerant crops and produce additional products for feeding both people and farm animals.

Dr. Carl Hodges, Mexican President Vicente Fox and State of Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours discuss the newly planted seawater crop at the Bahia Kino demonstration farm.

SFBK is unique in the partnerships that have come together to make its development possible. Participants include the government of Mexico, led by President Vicente Fox; the State of Sonora, Mexico, led by Governor Eduardo Bours; the University of Sonora and the Seawater Foundation. The Seawater Foundation brings to SFBK the resources of Seaphire International, an agricultural technology company through which SFBK will derive its operational guidance. 

The project is being developed in three phases, initially encompassing 4000 hectares and eventually growing to 30,000 hectares.

SFBK is the first of what will be a number of associated projects initially along the coast of Sonora, then moving south into Sinaloa. These farms will arrest the environmental challenges of massive amounts of shrimp excrement and disease vectors being discharged into the Gulf of California by the shrimp aquaculture industry, so damaging in Ecuador, Asia and India, before they take their toll of destroying the aquaculture industry and even the offshore fishing and environment in Mexico. 

SFBK will turn what is now a problem into a major resource by redirecting the flow of the effluent water inland to irrigate new salt-tolerant crops developed by Seawater Foundation from 20 years of selection and breeding. These new crops produce high quality vegetable oil, protein meal, and animal fodder. The rivers of redirected water will be used for the production of seaweeds, oysters, other bivalves, and finfish.  Under development are additional seawater based crops (halophytes) that will soon complement the world’s production of wheat, rice and alfalfa.

An aerial photograph shows a plume of waste water from a shrimp farm traveling north along the Sonoran coast in the Sea of Cortez. The SFBK project will use this nutrient-rich water to grow a wide variety of agricultural crops and animals that thrive on salt water.

This contribution to the world’s food supply is needed due to problems that have resulted in declining irrigated agriculture per capita since 1978. 

Also unique is seawater farming forestry. SFBK will ultimately plant 11,000 hectares of new mangrove forests irrigated with seawater. These forests will produce animal fodder, wood for lumber, pulp production, and honey. 

As products from SFBK provide economic resources, the overall farm operation will also lead to the profoundly important regreening of the region.  

A benefit from the halophytic plants is that they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store carbon in their roots. As such they provide one answer to the increasingly serious problem of global warming, an answer which is recognized by the BioCarbon Fund of the World Bank. SFBK will be one of the first projects to be certified by the BioCarbon Fund, which will purchase carbon emission reduction credits from the farm. Further, the Seawater Foundation is working with the World Bank’s Division for Sustainable Development which may lead to further cooperative activities in Mexico and in other countries.

An architectural rendering of the 26,000 ha that will use effluent water from the shrimp farms located just to the south of the farm.

During our and our children’s lifetime, the world will face the daunting challenge of balancing the food and freshwater requirements of a growing .We must meet that challenge even as we work to reverse the negative environmental trends currently confronting us. SFBK’s innovative integrated seawater farming technology provides new and effective tools to meet these challenges in profitable and environmentally enhancing ways.