- Speaker #0
Welcome back to the Deep Seed Podcast. Last week I had a really nice conversation with the co-founder of KelpBlue, Caroline Slotweg. In short, what they're doing is restoring marine ecosystems by growing giant kelp in the sea. And what they also do is harvest some of the kelp to make biostimulants that farmers can use on their fields. Her claims are quite amazing to be honest. From a marine restoration perspective, they went from 6 or 7 species to over 500 in the spots where they grow the kelp forests. That alone is pretty incredible, but the other really interesting part of the story is that the biostimulants they make with the kelp have a huge positive impact for the farmers. This week, I'm talking to their lead agronomist, Valentin Piteau, and together we really try to get to the bottom of things. We discuss the details of the whole kelp growing process, the process of making biostimulants. We also talk about what biostimulants are and how they differ from fertilizers. And finally, we discuss how using these products can help farmers reduce their chemical inputs without losing any productivity, which is incredible and which makes it such a great tool for farmers looking to transition to regenerative practices. This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital. I'm your host Raphael and this is the Deep Seed Podcast. Hi Valentin.
- Speaker #1
Hello.
- Speaker #0
How are you doing?
- Speaker #1
I'm doing great. How about yourself?
- Speaker #0
Great. Yeah, I just had a really, really interesting conversation with Caroline. We discussed the company, Calblue, the history, the mission, the kind of the system behind it. And now I'm really happy to... to have some time with you. You're the lead agronomist, right? For Kelp Blue.
- Speaker #1
Yes, that's right.
- Speaker #0
And we're going to get into a little bit more of the science and the technical stuff behind growing kelp and making biostimulants and all of that.
- Speaker #1
Exciting.
- Speaker #0
Could we start maybe with the process of growing kelp? How do you grow kelp? And don't hesitate to get into quite a lot of scientific detail.
- Speaker #1
Sure, of course. So I think first to answer the question, it depends on the type of kelp. So, you know, I'm a scientist, so it depends. You're going to hear it quite a lot. But if we focus on microcystis, first, what you need to do is actually to find a spot to cultivate the seaweed. So for this, you would look... at the nutrients of the water. Is there some current? What is the temperature of the water? So microcystis, for example, is a type of seaweed that only grows below, you know, 8 to 12 degrees. So this is the first step. And once you find a spot, then you need to get access to a license. And, you know, every government, they have like different regulations. So let's say Namibia was for us the best place to start. And once we have the license, then we need to establish the hatchery. So what is the hatchery? It's actually a place where you are going to select the kelp and start producing them. Which means that you go through the red light, which is basically, you keep them in dormancy so you can use it as a seed bank. And we have one of the biggest macrocystis seed bank in Namibia. And then you put them into the white light. So the white light is what we call the induction. With the induction, the cap are going to start reproducing themselves. And what is happening is that you have gametophyte male, which are going to release the sperm, and the gametophyte female, which are going to release the egg. And then what it does is that it creates a fertilized egg that we call sporophyte, juvenile sporophyte. This one will attach to wines that we put in the water with basically the sporophytes. and they will start growing. Once they are big enough and strong enough to go in the sea, then we go to the step of actually cultivating the seaweed. And then you have different ways to do it. Usually people they would attach a rope to two buoys. This is usually what you can find in Asia for example or also in France. What we're doing is that we're putting structures offshore, so about five to ten kilometers away from the coast, to actually do it at scale. And one of the reasons why we go offshore and we can of course come back to it, it's because you have constants. temperature, which is actually optimum condition for kelp. And then we would attach the twines that are around ropes to modules that are basically 15 meters below the surface, floating. And the total depth from the surface is about 60 meters. So imagine this huge module floating.
- Speaker #0
Floating but 15 meters below the surface.
- Speaker #1
Exactly. Yeah, that's right. So it's pretty impressive. I don't know if you dive, but if you go there and you see it, it's quite incredible actually.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Have you dived to go and see the...
- Speaker #1
I went there. Yeah. I was lucky enough to go there. So usually part of the team, part of the onboarding is you go to Namibia and you can also work with the team there, but also of course see the kelp. And this is where the magic is coming from. So when you come back to the Netherlands, it's of course great, but you're also like, when am I going back there? So basically you see the kelp growing really, really fast up to 30 centimeters a day and reaching the surface. So this represents 15 meters. And then they will grow horizontally to create what we call the canopy. And that's the part that we are harvesting.
- Speaker #0
Okay. I just want to go back to the hatchery a little bit. So you mentioned the process with the sperm and the egg. It sounds a lot like an animal reproduction more than a plant one.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. It's quite interesting, right?
- Speaker #0
Are kelp animals in a way?
- Speaker #1
They are not animals, but they have a very similar way to reproduce themselves. Macrocystis is also different than... other types of kelp. So it's, you know, every time it's like a different kind of expertise that you need to have, but indeed you have. And what is also really interesting is that for every individuals, they will have both gametophytes, male and female. So they are going to reproduce also themselves on the structure. And we use different varieties to also cross, kind of cross-pollinate, you know, with a bit the same that with plants.
- Speaker #0
Okay. Okay. Right. So I was just curious about that. So please continue with the, so you're talking about the structures, the platform that is floating 15 meters below the surface. Because floating, we always associate it with being on top of the surface, but how does it float? It's anchored to the bottom and then it's lighter than water, so it pushes up.
- Speaker #1
Exactly. So we work a lot with tension. So I am an engineer focusing on agronomy, but we also have engineers focusing on the sea and they will be much better than me to answer the questions. But basically we have tensions to keep. the netting module 15 meters below with huge anchors that are tons basically in the deep sea, which is 60 meters below the surface. And then once we have this floating, it stays forever, basically. So what we have to do is just harvest the seaweed. And currently we do it manually. So we have boats and people cutting it, putting the seaweed on the boat. But what is really exciting and I wish I could share pictures about it, but we're designing fully automated vessels to harvest the seaweed. And this vessel, which is massive, it's I think 30 meter length, is fully powered with solar energy. Wow. Yeah. And there is a cutting mechanism to actually cut the seaweed on the surface and then a conveyor belt to bring the seaweed on a kind of, you know, like a tank to then put them on our processing plant to create the famous biostimulants.
- Speaker #0
Okay, yeah. And what's the idea with only harvesting the top? I mean, it's a subject we already kind of covered a little bit with Caroline, but maybe you could give us a bit more information about it.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, of course. I think usually, and I think that's probably the link with seaweed biostimulants. Usually people, they would, you know, like I was saying, like plant the seaweed on a rope attached to tubers and harvest everything. When the seaweed grows, it does the photosynthesis, like the plants basically. And what is... quite interesting with microcystis is that it does it really really a lot so this is why it grows so fast up to 30 centimeters a day so it's you know has a little thing aside but fastest growing organism on earth faster than bamboo actually okay and because it grows so fast it does a lot of photosynthesis and if you harvest everything then all the carbon that your kelp are capturing is going to be released in the different product that you're making And it's the same if you wild harvest seaweed. The carbon that seaweed are sequestering is going to be released in the product that you're making. So this is one of the reasons why we decided only to cut the top because then we can let the seaweed, of course, for the biodiversity, but also when we cut the stipe, the stipe, a bit like Caroline was explaining, you know, will die off with the current goes in the deep sea as particulates organic carbon and dissolve of organic carbon that represent. 10% of the net primary production. And this will be buried over the long term in the ocean. And this is... how carbon sequestration is happening at least for microcystis.
- Speaker #0
Okay, maybe we can stay on that a little bit because we talked about the fact that you were studying how much carbon is being sequestered from this ongoing studies there, right? Yeah. How are you studying this? How are you trying to measure how much carbon is being sequestered from that kelp that is 45 meters up in the sea and then dying off after you harvest it and going to the bottom? It must be really difficult to figure out.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, it's an interesting challenge. So to do so, we're also working with local universities in Namibia. That's also what Kalan was saying, you know, part of the four R's, social returns, etc. So we work with the local universities. And we also work with different partners, the Kelp Forest Foundation, which is a non-profit, and Natural Metrics, which is also, you know, doing eDNA sampling, etc. And what is, let's say, challenging is that we also need to... get our own sensors or own things to measure it. But some of them, they are not yet commercialized. So we also have to, by ourselves, to design things that are going to help us to quantify it. So we can look at the... And I think you can go on the Calpford Nation website if you want additional information. But basically what we're trying to do is to understand the process that it takes from the seaweed to go in the deep sea. and how much carbon is going to also be remineralized by the life around, you know, by the fish, etc. And this is really difficult to monitor and to quantify, but we're going there. And we're also working with Gold Standards, which is a bit similar than Vera, to actually get the accreditation to then be able to sell the carbon credits.
- Speaker #0
Okay, yeah, I see. So once you've harvested the seaweed, Caroline, explain kind of the process where you... chop it up into small bits. And then what happens then? Can you maybe get a bit more detailed about it?
- Speaker #1
Exactly. So what is interesting is to chop it up, we use what we call a meat mincer. And like the name is saying, you know, it's a chop the meats and we do it with the seaweed. Then we have a tank where we actually add water. So this is going to create a nomogenous solution, which is, you know, full of viscosity because we have lots of alginate in the product. We can come back to this later on when we talk about... plant health or soil health. And then it is going to go through a kind of specific machine that is going to burst the cells with really, really high pressure. So let's say you put your hands in the process, your hands would burst, also your bones. So it's really, really strong. And the interesting thing with this is that it actually opens the cells and break down the cell walls into the interesting molecules that are then in a kind of shape. where it's really easy for the plants to assimilate them. Because if you just crash the seaweed, the molecules will still be basically trapped in the cells. And then it's much more difficult for the plants to absorb them. So this is a reason why we do this. And once you have your bustier cells, you still have this kind of homogeneous solution. And then what you need to do is to separate the solid fraction from the liquid fraction. And for this, I don't know if you know this machine, but you can use a decanter. So the decanter is going to separate the liquid from the solid. And then with the solid, like Caroline was saying, we are exploring cap leather, alginate extraction, alginate pellets. Also, that is quite interesting for agriculture. We can come back to this. And the liquid extract is going to then go through different kind of filtration process to remove the bacteria, the fungi that we don't necessarily want in the product. Of course, you want them in the soil, the beneficial one, but not necessarily in the product to avoid, you know, like... your product to inflate or so on. So this is also why we have these steps. And then we package and then product is ready to be shipped to our farmers in Namibia or in Europe.
- Speaker #0
Okay, so these cells, you burst open to get the interesting stuff inside of them. What kind of stuff are we talking about? I seem to recall that Caroline used the word bioactive. Is that right?
- Speaker #1
Yes.
- Speaker #0
What is a bioactive compound? Where does it come from? How does it work?
- Speaker #1
That's the kind of question I love. Nice. So we have different families. We have, of course, nutrients. I guess you're pretty familiar with them, but N, P, K, and so on. We have also micronutrients like boron, for example, and so on. And then it comes the interesting juicy molecules, actually, the bioactive compounds. And we have the polysaccharides, which are kind of sugars, complex or not. As an example, we have alginates. alginate you can also find them in life every day and i guess you're pretty sure that you use it every day but you don't even know for example if you use shampoo or if you you know brush your teeth sometimes it can happen then you have alginate in this product and this is only coming from brown seaweed because it gives texture basically it retains the water so this is a polysaccharides but you have other ones like fucoidan that is also in seaweed and sea cucumber actually and you have mannitol or laminarin other polysaccharides. So this is one family. Another one that is interesting is those... Sorry,
- Speaker #0
I was just going to interrupt you for a second. So a polysaccharide, what is it? Is it complex sugars? Exactly.
- Speaker #1
It can be complex or non-complex, but it's basically sugars. Okay.
- Speaker #0
So they have different structures, different properties.
- Speaker #1
Exactly. Yeah. So for example, fucoidine is well-known to have antimicrobial or, in a good way, right? Anti-inflammatory properties. So People are also using, especially in Japan, fucoidan as a supplement to prevent cancer. You have some research papers on this that are quite interesting. I invite you to look at it. But also alginate would be more interesting when it comes to water retention or creates porosity in the soil. So you have different compounds for different types of benefits, let's say. And not only agriculture, but also human health, packaging, can be lots of different things. So polysaccharides, one family. Then we have, of course, plant hormones, because you do have, obviously, hormones in seaweed, auxins, cytokinins, etc. I think these ones are in non-significant concentration in the product. It's rather the upregulation of the genes inside the plants that is going to basically synthesize more of them inside the plant. We can come back to it, probably. And then the last family is the pigments. So we have chlorophyll or some very important also pigments for the plants. And then we have the polyphenols. Polyphenols, you can also find them in grapes and in tea. An example is the flavonoids that are also known to have antioxidant properties. So they can also protect plants from the stress that is coming from the sun. So for example, this kind of abiotic stress.
- Speaker #0
The polyphenols, as far as I know, they're the reason why we hear that drinking red wine can be good for your health, right?
- Speaker #1
Exactly. It is good for your health. I'm French, as you can hear my terrible accent. So I wouldn't say it's not good yet.
- Speaker #0
Nice. I really hope you're enjoying this conversation. I'm just taking a very short break to tell you about the official partner of the Deep Seat podcast, Sol Capital. So Sol Capital is... a company that supports the transition to regenerative agriculture and they do that by financially rewarding farmers who improve the health of their soils they're a really cool company that i've been following for a long time and i'm really proud to be partnering with them for the podcast so you extract all of these compounds from the sea kelp with all of these processes that's right and then what do you do with them yeah so then once we're there in the product
- Speaker #1
We concentrate them with the filtration step also, that is, you know, removing the bacteria. And then what is really interesting is to measure the bioactivity of the product. So whenever we have one batch and whenever we have one batch, also we know when we planted the seaweed, you know, when we harvested the seaweed, so we can really track and monitor not only in the cab forest, but also across our value chain. And we do the QC test to make sure that this batch is working.
- Speaker #0
Is that test?
- Speaker #1
Sorry. Yeah, it's a quality control test.
- Speaker #0
Okay,
- Speaker #1
yeah. So we make sure that basically every batch that we are creating with the seaweed that we are harvesting and cultivating has enough bioactivity to then be commercialized. So for this, we use different type of tests. We have a mung bean test where we put a mung bean on tubes with a little concentration of our product. And then we look at the root architectures. So the number of roots and the root length. And just maybe a quick thing on this, it is because when the roots are going to absorb the molecules that I was just describing, the active compounds, like the hormones, but also the polysaccharides, something is going to happen in the plant. It is going to be up or down regulation of certain genes inside the plant. And this is why you can actually see, you know, higher auxins content, for example, in the plants or activity. And this is why you can see longer routes or more routes. And visually we can say, okay, this product works. We commercialize it.
- Speaker #0
Okay, so can we get a little bit technical here about what happens when those roots are growing in the presence of bioactive compounds? What is making the roots grow so much?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, interesting question. I'm going to try to answer it. With Wachonigan, we have a big study looking at the mode of action of seaweed biostimulants, especially from macrocystis. It's a study sponsored by Nestlé Purina Europe. with our foundation. And this is basically looking at the modification of kelp. I cannot tell too much about it, but we also have other studies with other universities in France, in Namibia, or even in New Zealand, looking at the modification. And what is happening is that the synergy of molecules, polysaccharides, hormones, is going to impact the metabolism of the plants that is then going to produce more of something. can be more of auxins. The auxins is then going to impact the root elongation. But what is so far the challenge for the science is to understand what molecules is doing what. What is the signaling cascade happening basically. Because if you only put fucoidin, nothing is happening. If you only put alginate, nothing is happening. But then if you start putting these molecules together, this is the moment where you're going to start to see longer roots. or a better nutrient uptake, which means like more nutrients in the fruits and so on.
- Speaker #0
Okay, yeah. So you're retracing the process, you've extracted the bioactive components, you're testing them to see which batch worked the best or the most bioactive by using a series of different tests like the one you described. And then how do you make the biostimulants from that?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so the biostimulant is actually made after the filtration. So remember, we have the process where we burst the cells decanter, we separate the liquid from the solid. The liquid is going to be basically filtered. And then we have the biostimulant. Then we have the packaging line. Then we have our product.
- Speaker #0
Okay. So that liquid is the biostimulant.
- Speaker #1
Exactly. Then we, let's say on the batch, we just select one bottle and we're going to test it on the mung bean. We also do some analysis of the specs. So basically what is the dry matter of the product? What is the nutrient content? And sometimes we can also relate once we have, for example, a mung bean test that's failed. Then we can look at the specs and say, okay, here there is a problem. But sometimes there is no problem. So why did it fail? And then that's what is really interesting with KBlue actually, is that because we have the full in-house value chain from hatchery to sales, and we own everything, then we can put some really nice traceability system in place. So if a batch fail, and it's not because of the nutrient content or even because of this, we can... look at the traceability and try to even understand when we planted the seaweed, was it something that we did wrong? And for science is also very fascinating to get access to it.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So you can refine the process over time. You can start understanding what works best, what might be problematic. come up with solutions for that and so that you can improve the product over time and refine the process. That's great. That's great.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And you know, also the interesting thing about it is that Namibia was the pilot. Now it's like a commercial, let's say, seaweed farming and processing. And we take the learnings from what we've done in Namibia. And we're also constantly learning there with like the product that we're making. And then we can actually apply it in the other countries where we want to establish our farms and plants, like in New Zealand, for example. and it's not like it works in Namibia so it's going to work in New Zealand that's the challenge is that different types of water you know different types of access to processing material and so on so it's always very very different but still we can learn a lot from it so
- Speaker #0
you're making these biostimulants maybe the first question to ask is what is a biostimulant and how does it differ from a fertilizer or is it a different name for a fertilizer like maybe you can tell us more about that yeah it's a interesting question because
- Speaker #1
We have to come back to the regulation and all the different regulations across the world are different. So you have, for example, a biostimulant regulation in India, but you don't want, for example, in Ghana, you know, or you have one in Europe now, a new one that is harmonizing all the different regulations from the different countries. Because before France has a different regulation than Belgium, which has a different one than Austria or the Netherlands, you know. And what is the European regulation saying about biostimulants is that a product... independently of his fertilizing, basically, capacity, that is going to have an impact on nutrient use efficiency, resilience to abiotic stress, better, let's say, fruit quality or food quality. And then the last one is probably also having an impact, overall impact on soil health. So this is what the regulation is saying. But, you know, a different regulation is saying something different in the US. And... If I can now compare biostimulant and fertilizer, the fertilizer is going to bring nutrients to the soil, that's it, and PEK or other things, while the biostimulant is going to really have an impact on the plant's metabolism or the soil health. So if we use that, if I am a human, for example, fertilizer would be the food I eat, so the nutrient I take, while biostimulant, they could be nutrients. somehow associated to more like the vitamins or the you know the prebiotics or probiotics that I would eat right so yeah fertilizer you bring in fertility you bring in minerals yes uh like let's say it could be the chemical npk but it could be compost organic yeah for example organic matter so you're bringing uh material exactly to feed the soil yeah and a biostimulants will be more about helping the plants to detect those nutrients exactly that's right okay yeah yeah i see so you would
- Speaker #0
tend to use the dembow in combination?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, some people are saying like, okay, now we use a biostimulant to replace fertilizers. I don't think it works that way. I think it could be possible, but it's probably a really long process that can take up to five years. But what is interesting is that because the biostimulant, seaweed biostimulant, but I guess also other type of biostimulant can help for root elongation or... boost via, you know, roots communicating with microbiome, boost also the assimilation of the nutrient confined in the soil. Because of this, then you can reduce fertilizers. If you reduce fertilizers, what is happening is that you can also reduce runoff. If you reduce runoff that ends in the sea, also we are happier basically. So, you know, it kind of, what I usually like to say is people, they tend to only look at the ocean or only look at the land. And I think we should probably see it as a whole ecosystem and using the sea for the soil. But also if you use it, then the soil are also going to be used for the sea. You know, it's kind of the chain that you have to look at and how you can balance these two ecosystems together.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So at the moment, we hear a lot about the fact that we apply fertilizer. A lot of it is not actually taken up by the plants. It's kind of wasted and it runs off and goes into the... water ecosystems and it's quite damaging to them.
- Speaker #1
And it actually creates, funny enough, but alga bloom. But these are not the nice algae that you want in the product. Or for example, in the Caribbean islands, now you can see a lot of Sargassum popping up. It's another type of seaweed and this is a problem because then you cannot go to swim anymore because it's full of Sargassum everywhere. And it's actually released the methane, which is a really bad gases. Okay. And if you can reduce the runoff, then probably also you can reduce this because this is just mother herb that is trying to defend herself, you know, producing more seaweed to absorb actually these things. And then the seaweed will perish and creates the methane. It's really interesting, but it's a huge ecosystem that we have to protect and that we have to regenerate. So not only the soil, but also the ocean.
- Speaker #0
And to close the circle, since the kelp growing also needs fertility, it needs that nitrogen and things like that, that are... are running off from the fields. Is it also capturing a lot of that extra runoff, like that fertility that can then go back to the fields instead of being in the water and favoring type of algae that you don't want?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. So when you have the runoff, the seaweed, it works a bit like a sponge basically. So it absorbs everything that is in the sea. Heavy metals also, phosphorus. And basically by planting seaweed, you can also reduce acidification of the ocean or certification that is linked to, you know, phosphorus that goes to the ocean. Yeah. And basically. You have multiple benefits of using seaweed, but if you cultivate them the right way and if you bring back nutrients to the soil, because now we hear a lot of farmers saying, yeah, I don't have nutrients anymore in my soils. Potentially, yes. I think it's also the macrobe that is really important, but what is also key is to bring back these nutrients to the soil through seaweed cultivation. You probably have other ways to do it, but seaweed cultivation is for me one really interesting because then you can link the two ecosystem.
- Speaker #0
So you said that it was a biostimulant, so it's not actually bringing fertility, but just stimulating the root. Is there also macronutrients present in that?
- Speaker #1
Yes, definitely. So we do have them. It's not as big as fertilizer, but we still have phosphorus. We have a lot of phosphorus in the products. We have also nitrogen. We have some also micronutrients. So definitely we bring some fertilizing material, but the definition is more that's...
- Speaker #0
Independently of bringing this fertilizing material, there is also these things that is like nutrient availability, etc.
- Speaker #1
Okay. Aren't a lot of those nutrients also in the solid part, the pulp that you're filtering out? And is there any way you can use that also to bring back fertility to the fields? Is that something you're looking into?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, thanks for asking the question. Now what we're trying to create is what we call alginate pellets. So we have potassium alginate pellets and sodium alginate pellets. pellets what is really interesting with these pellets so it's basically you know like a pellets but that are fully natural only made with seaweed you would apply them on the soil and like this you can bring a lot of nutrients organic nutrient to the soil but also you still have compounds that during the decanter remember solid fraction liquid fraction that are going in the pulp like the alginate and alginate it's retaining water in the soil and creates porosity you So let's say you are a farmer and you are facing drought stress, so you cannot grow your crops anymore. Then you can apply these alginate pellets. They would retain the water. So in case it doesn't run for a long time, then the soil will still get a bit of water. And alginate is also a sugar that can communicate with or that can recruit, let's say, or feed the microbiome. So the fungi, the bacteria, etc. And let's say you are a farmer and you face fluid issues, we've seen in the UK recently. What is interesting with the pellets is that they also create porosity. Because what is happening is that when you have no porosity in your soil and your soil is really compact, then the water cannot penetrate the soil and stays on the surface. And this is really problematic because then you have less oxygen in the soils and then you have conditions where you have actually oxidation and this kills the plants. So if you can
- Speaker #1
create porosity and in the meantime protect from these weather events then i think it's also really interesting awesome yes it helps with fertility with soil structure with water retention all of these things that you need to yeah to have a healthy soil it helps and now we need to understand how it helps in which conditions because sometimes it's going to work really really well and
- Speaker #0
sometimes not as plant so for this we have lots of research going on in different you know countries and with different types of institutes or even farmers to explore the science behind this.
- Speaker #1
Okay. So at the moment, it's not something commercialized yet?
- Speaker #0
The alginate pellets, no. It's still basically under R&D, but we already have product that we're testing. The biostimulant, yeah, it is commercialized, but also for the biostimulant, we still have lots of studies. We have actually a great program that we call Ambassador Farmers, where we partner with, it's kind of influencers, but really well-known farmers. In the regional space, but also conventional ones that are, you know, influencing other farmers, we partner with them to do tests during three years where we look at, you know, the impact of biostimulant on the microbiome or on plant health, return on investment and so on. And then we communicate together. So the goal of this program is to create a kind of network of farmers where we can all exchange knowledge on how do we actually shift towards a more... regenerative or more sustainable agriculture industry. And just exchanging knowledge. You were also at Groundswell. We had some of our ambassador farmers there. One actually won the Soil Science Prize. So you know it's all about how do we communicate and bring the knowledge together.
- Speaker #1
So it's still very early days. You're still doing a lot of trials, a lot of studies, both with the biostimulants and with the pellets. So it's still early days, but how do you feel about it so far? What is the feedback, whether it's the scientific numbers that you already got or just the face to face feedback from the farmers that you collaborate with?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, it's a long journey. We are at the beginning, but we are also already commercializing our product in different countries. So we're commercializing it in Chile, in France, in the Netherlands, in various places around the world. So we are also starting to get product to farmers through distributors, et cetera. The journey is all about building the science behind the product, because this is, I think, what is really going to help the industry to shift to something more sustainable. So for this, we also launched half a million budgets on field trials everywhere in the world with accredited agencies. So we have, I think, 16 different crops and 63 field trials with four replicates, five treatments, five different treatments with control, competitor products, different... dosage. And all this is basically helping us to build the perfect case. So let's say you're a farmer, you're coming to us in five years. You just have to tell us, okay, what is the type of soil? What is the type of crops? A few other parameters. And then we can come back to you and say, okay, in this case, we would recommend you to use this amount. Or it can also be that I want to reduce my fertilizer by 30%. How can I use your product? And this is the kind of discussion that we'd love to have, but for this, we need really to build a solid quantitative data.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, obviously. Yes. At the moment, what kind of return on investment can you hope for as a farmer compared to what you're used to doing? So the price of the products, the biostimulants right now, I don't know if you have that kind of data or information yet.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, we do. We do for some crops. Let's take an example. The question is kind of tricky to answer because it depends. It always depends. Let's say currently you're wheat farmers in the UK, then it depends. Do you want to maintain your yield, but reducing fertilizer, or do you want to increase your yield and keeping the same fertilizer? It's a little bit like the question that we have to discuss. But let's say we did a lot of tests in the UK with farmers, and what we've seen on wheat is usually an increase in yield between 5% and 10%. The fertilizer, usually they cost anything between you know, 200 to 400 euros per or pounds per hectares or acres. And what we've seen is that we can reduce fertilizers in most of the cases by up to 30%. If you can reduce by 30% 300 euros, it means that then at the end you only have to pay 200 euros. And our product costs per hectare approximately anything between 20 to 60, which means that at the end you can, while you maintain your yield actually, still create anything between 20 to 50 euros per hectare. Okay, that's great. Yeah, exactly. While actually boosting the yield by 5 to 6%. So this is on wheat. And there is one test that we were all like, this was the really beginning. We were all like, whoa, what the fuck, you know? We did a test in Spain with IdeaGro, which is an accredited company by the Spanish government on grapes, table grapes. And we had with two liters per hectare that we applied three times. So six liters per hectare in total and increased in yield of 36%. So just to put this into numbers, 36% increase in yield. means that, and they did the calculation, means that per hectare, you can get additional between 5,000 and 7,000 kilograms of table grapes, additional. Price, the wholesale price of table grapes is between 1.2 and 2 euros per kilogram. So then basically the profit that, or at least the revenue that you can make is around 7,000 to 10,000 euros. And then the product costs like 100 euros. So the return is just massive. So of course this doesn't happen every time, but yeah,
- Speaker #1
okay.
- Speaker #0
What we have to understand now is when, uh, what are the parameters in this, in where this case would, uh, be possible again to kind of replicate it.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. That's incredible. I mean, it already proves that there's a massive potential and maybe it doesn't work in every context. Maybe you need to figure out exactly how to maximize the impact for each. individual contexts. But having those kind of results already must be super exciting, right? And super promising.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly. So when we got the results, we were with all the team, you know, just working and the results arrived on my computer and I was like, oh guys, I think you have to see something. And from the agronomic team to the people working in the hatchery, like we were discussing, we were all like celebrating this because it was like a massive milestone basically.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. I can imagine that. Exciting.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
I have a really small favor to ask. If you're enjoying this conversation and would like to support my work and this podcast, you can do that in just five seconds. Wherever you're listening to this podcast right now, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or a different platform, just click on the deep seat page and hit the follow button. It would really help me and I would be very grateful for your help. Thank you. How does it all connect to regenerative agriculture? I mean, this podcast is centered around the topic of regenerative food systems. We've talked about the sea kelp, we've talked about the biostimulants. Obviously, we're very closely related to Region Ag, but I'd like to sort of maybe bring the conversation towards how does this help the transition to Region Ag?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, great. I think the answer is the transition indeed. Probably my sense of Region Ag is that at some point, your soil and your ecosystem is so good that you don't need to add additional input. It should like strive by itself. But to get to this, you probably need a transition. It's just that you stop everything in one go. And for this, you can basically use the biostimulants. And what we're trying to do now is to create a kind of regenerative package with alginates, pellets, the biostimulants, and maybe some other things that we would give to farmers to transition towards regenerative agriculture, which means that... like we were explaining, if you can increase nutrient uptake and you can reduce fertilizer, maybe the first year, 10%, second year, 20, 30. And then basically in five years, you can probably try to have an ecosystem without having to bring additional nutrients or pesticides because your plants are stronger. Because what is interesting also in seaweed is that you have some compounds that can help to boost. the metabolism, but also the defense metabolism of the plants, not only against abiotic stress, but also about biotic stress. But this is currently being studied a lot. So if you can reduce fertilizers, then you can basically help this regenerate transition. And I think for a farmer, if he knows that when he gets a product, it also helps to regenerate the ocean. It's also, I think, quite interesting while sometimes you get a product. and the product is actually just having a bigger impact, but like a negative one in the ecosystem. So I think now we should also start thinking of where do we get our input from? Is it a sustainable input? Do they cultivate seaweed? Do they wild harvest? You know, like all these kind of different...
- Speaker #1
Okay, maybe that's an interesting point to get into a little bit. There's different sources of seaweed-based biostimulants by different harvesting methods, different... But... What's the sort of industry looks like?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, so it's interesting because you have different types of seaweed. Ascophyllum that represents 70% of the bio-stimulant markets. Then you have Eclonia that is probably around, I think 20 to 30. And then you have like some minor other seaweed microcystis being part of them basically. And all the seaweeds, they have different... compounds and they have different benefits. So it's not one seaweed works better than another one. Maybe yes, but for certain reasons or certain parameters. And then what is interesting to understand is if it's a cultivated seaweed, it means that potentially you can have a good impact on biodiversity or on carbon sequestration, like Caroline was saying at the beginning. If it's from wild collection, it means that basically people are going... in the sea to get access to a wild seaweed to cut them. And potentially there are ways to do it that are sustainable, but there are also ways to do it that are non-sustainable, which means that if you cut all the seaweed in one place, then it's kind of reproducing what we did on the land when we were cutting trees to make paper and we're still doing it in some places. But that's really important to understand that the source of bio-instrument has to be sustainable to have an impact. Otherwise, it's really nice that you get your seaweed, but the impact is much lower than it could be.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, okay. How do you find out the source of your product? Is it easy to understand? Like if I'm buying the StimBlue Plus biostimulant from KelpBlue, how do I know where it came from?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, it's an interesting question. So I think I'll discuss it with Anouk, who is basically in the marketing team. But what I would really love to have is a kind of QR code in the product. that farmers would scan. And then they see actually videos, you know, 30 seconds to one minute explaining what we're doing from the beginning to the end. So from the hatchery to cultivating seaweed, to, you know, harvesting them with the solar panel vessel, processing them. And then at the end, they really understand like, how do we, how do we make one product? Because indeed it's a really good question, but if you look at the different products made out of seaweed, you don't see in the label cultivated seaweed. You don't see it a lot because not a lot of people are actually cultivating seaweed. It's something quite new. And the industry is moving towards it because also you have very strict regulations now when it comes to wild harvesting seaweeds. You have quotas. The industry is kind of forced and pushed to cultivate it, but it's going to take time. So it's already important to look at this, I think.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah, sure. That would be great, actually. But you said earlier that you can trace the products. I mean, in-house, you guys can trace the products. So each bottle, you know. each step of the process, where it came from, down to exactly which piece of sea, which platform that kelp came from, right? That would be actually really cool for a consumer to be able to scan its products in the bottle and see the exact coordinates, the exact location of where that kelp was grown. It would be really cool.
- Speaker #0
It would be amazing. Imagine you going to a supermarket, getting your bread. And then you actually know like, okay, so this bread has been made out of wheat harvested with this farmer who is using this kind of practices processed here in this plant. And then here you go, you know, it's maklik like we say in Dutch or bon appetit.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that would be amazing, but probably very difficult to do with wheat because that's, it's all agglomerated in like big, big, big batches of wheat. But in the case of the It's you own the whole operation from start to finish.
- Speaker #0
In all cases, it's easy. But if you look at other biostimulants, it's really difficult because it's quite fragmented. So people, they usually harvest seaweed and then they sell them, or they cultivate them, then they sell them. Someone is going to buy them, process them. Then you have like several distributors before the product gets to farmers. And what is happening is when you have several people, then you lose margins. And if you lose margins, then at the end, the farmer is paying for something very expensive because all the businesses in between, they need to remunerate themselves. So we have control of this margin. So for us, it's much easier to get to a product that is affordable also.
- Speaker #1
So I read on your website as well that you have a new product that is not aimed towards necessarily farmers, but towards home gardeners, growers. How does it differ from the other?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, it's actually... Very similar, it's just the concentration of the product is much lower because if it's the biostimulant for farmers, we recommend two liters only. So two bottles for one hectare. If it's just one plant that you have at home, you know, it would be way more too concentrated. And if it's too concentrated, then you are going to actually tire the plants if you apply it on the plants. Because it's like if you drink a lot of coffee, then at some point, you know, you start shaking and everything. And this is why we dilute it. And then we use also different types of molecules that are good for home plants. So I'm starting to test it. As you can see around, lots of plants growing everywhere.
- Speaker #1
Looking good.
- Speaker #0
Some looking good, some not. Because some have products, some not. You know, it's how do we test it? But what we realized is that a lot of gardener products, so homemade home plants, basically, you don't really have like... impactful solution to apply on your crops. So if you can have a product with this story behind it and apply it on your crops, instead of applying chemicals, fertilizer, that's also kind of interesting, I think.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, definitely. Is that available?
- Speaker #0
Yes, it's available on the website. So feel free to come to the K-Blue website and... Yeah,
- Speaker #1
give that a try. Yeah, exactly. Be part of the movements of the pioneers using these revolutionary new products.
- Speaker #0
That would be awesome, yeah.
- Speaker #1
Great, great. Well, I think we've covered most of the question. I mean, I'm sure there's plenty more we could discuss. And since there's so much science going on right now, maybe it would be super interesting to have another conversation, maybe in one or two years time on the podcast and see how things have evolved. But yeah, I'm super excited about what you're doing at CalBlue. Really happy that we had the opportunity to talk today. So thanks a lot for that. And, you know, all the best.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, thanks a lot for your time.
