Bren Smith, who grew up fishing and fighting, is now part of a movement that seeks to feed the planet while putting less environmental stress on it. He makes his argument in a book called Eat Like a Fish; his secret ingredient: kelp. But don’t worry, you won’t have to eat it (not much, at least). An installment of The Freakonomics Radio Book Club.
No one came and asked this basic question.
What's unique about the ocean as an agricultural space?
What does it make sense to grow?
And when you ask the ocean, it says something very simple.
It whispers in your ear, why don't you grow things that don't swim, that you don't have to feed?
That is Brendsmith.
He has had a fairly interesting life.
Here's a good quick summary of the early part from a book he wrote called eat like a fish.
I dropped out of high school to fish and spent too many nights in jail.
My body is beat to hell.
I crawl out of bed like a lobster.
Most mornings I've lost vision and half my right eye from a chemical splash.
In Alaska, I'm an epileptic who can't.
Swim and I'm allergic to shellfish.
Smith was a teenage misfit who dealt and used drugs and caused various other trouble.
More improbably, he also went to law school.
These days he is an ocean farmer.
He has a ten acre plot of water off the thimble islands of Connecticut in the Long island sound.
He raises oysters, clams, mussels and kelp, that brown, slippery seaweed that looks like packing tape.
If you were passing by his farm in your boat, you might not notice it.