The Seawater Foundation

The Seawater Foundation uses seawater, photosynthesis and human intelligence to green coastal deserts, create communities, generate wealth and abundance, and provide immediate and long lasting planetary ecological balance.

Irrigated agriculture is the key to the world's having done as well as it has through most of the last century. From 1900 to 1978 we were able to add irrigated area to provide increasing food and wealth per unit of population even with the world population increasing. But in 1978 irrigated agriculture peaked at 48 hectares (2.47 acres = 1 hectare) per thousand people. Since that time, it has been in decline. The decline is due to using up freshwater available for agriculture by the damming and development of most potential rivers, and the over-exploitation of groundwater.

But freshwater is only 2.5% of the world's total water. 97.5% of all the water on earth is seawater, and all oceans are interconnected. Seawater–irrigated agriculture along the 40,000 kilometers of desert coasts will be supplied with all its needed water forever. Areas of the world, such as the Horn of Africa, which The Economist recently described as the "horn of famine" can, with the application of seawater–based agricultural and forestry technologies, become a horn of plenty with wealth generation and environmental enhancement. The Seawater Foundation has developed a number of seawater–tolerant crops that could replace wheat, rice, and soybeans, not only in Africa, but around the world including Mexico where we have already begun.