Carl Hodges: Leading the Way to Environmentally-Friendly Seawater Farming

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Carld Hodges is a salicornia farmer. The 71-year-old has a plan that could potentially provide people with food and biofuel without causing harm to the environment. Apparently seawater farms could be the answer to a few of the world's problems.

Carl Hodges is a Tucson-based atmospheric physicist. He has spent most of his life trying to figure out how people can feed themselves in desert climes, where fresh water is rare. The founding director of the University of Arizona's highly-regarded Environmental Research Lab and head of the non-profit Seawater Foundation seems to have found his answer in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. There, Global Seawater Inc. recently planted 1,000 acres of salicornia. Salicornia is a plant that feeds on salt water. Hodges and his crew have flooded salicornia plots with salt water a few miles in from the nearby Sea of Cortez.

He plans to channel the ocean into man-made ''rivers'' that will nourish commercial aquaculture operations, mangrove forests, and crops that produce both food and biofuel. This greening of desert coastlines, according to Hodges, may be able to add millions of acres of productive farmland to our planet.



There, in the midst of sun-baked cracking ground and sun-bleached cacti, orderly rows of emerald plants emerge from the desert floor. They are plants that have the potential to feed millions of people and be used as environmentally-friendly biofuels.

''It's a dust bowl. We're going to making it bloom again...with a new kind of agriculture,'' said Hodges.

According to his calculations, the world could build 50 sizable seawater farms in the next 10 years if people would just get started. In addition to providing tons of needed food and biofuel, these farms would also help with coastline erosion. And the fact is that we have looming water shortage problems, along with a need for more environmentally-sustainable agriculture and biofuels to offset oil and coal prices. It will take, according to Hodges, $35 million to set these wheels into motion.

''When I first met Carl, I thought he was a philosopher,'' said actor Martin Sheen, one of Hodge's admirers and friends.

The Land Pavilion in Walt Disney World in Florida and the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona have both been showcasing Hodge's real-world musings for years now.

And thanks to his team's work on shrimp cultivation—work that fueled the meteoric rise of Mexico's aquaculture industry—the leader of Abu Dhabi sent Hodges’ lab $3.6 million to build a salt water greenhouse system for growing vegetables in his oil-rich, arid Arabic kingdom.

Salicornia, or ''sea asparagus'', is a halophyte. That means it is a salt-loving plant. A briny succulent, it also loves scorching heat and pathetic soil, and its endurance is so great that all it needs is a regular dousing of ocean water. Several countries are experimenting with salicornia, in addition to other salt water-tolerant plant species to find food-supply solutions. Salicornia is versatile as nourishment: it can be eaten fresh or steamed, squeezed into cooking oil, or ground into high-protein meal.

What's more is that NASA has estimated that halophytes planted over an area the size of the Sahara Desert could supply over 90% of global energy needs in a low-pollution manner.

Hodges is seeking $35 million to buy up enough salicornia to start his huge farmland project. In 2007 Hodges formed Global Seawater Inc., a profit-seeking private firm that produces salicornia biofuel in liquid and solid versions. According to Hodges, if distributed on a mass scale, it could be sold for just one-third of the going price of petroleum. The acres in Sonora are intended to provide seed for a major venture to be carried out 50 miles north in the coastal city of Bahia de Kino, where the company wants to lease or buy 12,000 acres to create the world's largest seawater farm.

The company would cut an ocean canal into the desert to nourish commercial ponds of shrimp and fish. But rather than just dumping the overflow back into the ocean, they would next channel it further inland to fertilize fields of salicornia. The seawater would then meander into man-made wetlands, where mangrove forests will be grown. ''Nothing is wasted,'' said Hodges.

But biologist and former head of Mexico's National Ecology Institute, Exequiel Ezcurra, said about the proposed project, ''We have had catastrophes in the past, so we have reason to be concerned.”

Hodges doesn't want to hear it. He insists his project plan has met all environmental requirements posed by Mexico. He also says we have reached a point where it's too late for debate, and only decisive action can save us now. ''My father once told me, 'Carl, there is a special place in hell reserved for fence sitters','' he said.

NASA, heavy industry leaders, and retired executives from some major corporations have grown highly interested in helping to finance and test Global Seawater Inc.'s products.

Giants like Coca-Cola Company, Monsanto, and Walt Disney Imagineering have all come to believe in Hodge's vision. With commercial endorsement like that, any skeptics to Hodges’ vision might just be proven wrong.
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