Water for Food in Deltas

Combining knowledge of both the food and water domains increased our understanding of tradeoffs and synergies of a combination of production systems. For instance, cultivating both mangrove and shrimp in one pond showed benefits in improved water quality, providing shelter for shrimp, providing nutrients (mangrove leaves) hence increasing shrimp production. In addition, multiple examples of non-timber products of mangrove forests (fodder, juice, food, tea, honey, medicines ...) and prove of socio-economic benefits to communities can be found in literature and practice. But these are often overlooked in developing mangrove forests. For successful upscaling, these socio-economic benefits need to be considered more in research, implementation and investments. The effects of farming seaweed together with shrimp is studied in ‘Aquatic Systems’: WUR and partners discovered that combining seaweed with shrimp culture allows shrimp to grow to a much larger and higher-value market-size compared to shrimp culture without seaweed and yields additional income from seaweed. A point of attention here is the safety aspect of seaweed when used for consumption. Data on safety was collected and after additional testing in 2022, results can be presented.
Meanwhile, work is ongoing to identify seaweed production potential worldwide by: (a) developing a 12-parameter bio-economic seaweed growth model (video) and (b) identifying potential locations for sustainable seaweed production worldwide.