In Zambia – where more than half the population is undernourished, and 1.2 million people are experiencing acute food insecurity – farmers already produce more than 80% of the country’s food needs.

But Zambian and international agricultural and food-production experts are convinced that with the right seeds, better technology, improved storage and delivery infrastructure, and stronger climate resilience, the farmers can do much more.

That means not only meeting more of the southern African country’s domestic food requirements. It means encouraging what experts say is its potential to become a regional food powerhouse that can help meet more of the food shortfalls in neighboring countries.

Diversifying the world’s exportable food production beyond a few giant producers, and assisting farmers in ramping up production to meet more of their countries’ domestic needs, have gained new urgency as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine – involving two of the world’s biggest food producers and exporters.

With the war largely eliminating the two countries’ wheat, oilseeds, and fertilizer production from global markets, supplies of staples have grown tight – sending food prices skyward everywhere.

As a result, an already daunting global food security landscape has deteriorated further, spreading from conflict-ravaged populations in countries like Yemen and Afghanistan to family tables in North Africa, other parts of the Middle East, and South Asia.

The “multidimensional crisis” in food security, as leaders of the G-7 group of advanced economies called it at their summit in Germany last week, has left an estimated 345 million people worldwide at high risk of food shortages, according to the United Nations World Food Program. Moreover, some 750,000 people in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen are at risk of starvation, the U.N. says.

The dire situation has put food insecurity at the top of the global agenda to a degree it has not been since at least the 2008-09 crisis in food prices.

So while USAID Administrator Samantha Power was in Zambia last week promoting U.S. assistance to locally developed programs designed to boost the country’s food production and food security, G-7 leaders pledged $4.5 billion to address food shortages and help counter the impact Russia’s war is having on global food supplies and prices.

Efrem Lukatsky/AP

A crater left by a Russian rocket attack is seen as a harvest is collected in a field 6 miles from the front line where a fierce battle is ongoing, in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, July 4, 2022.

In Germany, President Joe Biden committed the United States to providing more than half of the new funding to address the crisis – $2.7 billion.

And in Zambia, Ms. Power announced an additional $9 million in new assistance: first, “to immediately address the high cost of fuel, fertilizer, and food,” she said in a speech, but then also to help unlock “Zambia’s potential … as an agricultural power [and] a leading exporter of food across its eight regional neighbors.”

Redirecting supply chains

But even with the surge in generosity from the U.S., Germany, and other wealthy countries, questions remain whether the short-term food aid and the more medium-term assistance to expand food production will be enough to meet the crisis.

Food security experts, along with officials from international food institutions and private philanthropic organizations, say the attention and resources world leaders are giving to the crisis – as for example at the G-7 summit – are a promising start.

But they add that more must be done soon to redirect food supply chains so that existing supplies can move where needed and start to calm food-price inflation.

And more funding will be needed, they say, if the world is to avoid levels of hunger many once thought were a thing of the past.

“We’re in an unprecedented moment” of a dramatic increase in food insecurity, says Dina Esposito, vice president for technical leadership at Mercy Corps and a former USAID food assistance expert. “A decade ago we thought we had contained famine, but now here we are today with eight to 10 places we’re watching for famine,” she says.

At the World Food Program, Chief Economist Arif Husain says the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine “couldn’t have come at a worse time,” given the record number of people already displaced by conflict and climate crises, and debilitating levels of “debt distress” in 56 countries, in part as a result of the pandemic.

Add to that now the high levels of food-price inflation due in large part to the war in Ukraine.

“Right now about 40 countries are experiencing food inflation above 15%,” he says. “In countries where families spend 50 or 60 or even 70% of income on food, what are they supposed to do?”

One result is that this year WFP estimates the number of people requiring direct food assistance at 152 million – up from 128 million last year and 121 million in 2020.

In a growing number of places, the combination of higher food prices and increased numbers of people requiring food assistance means that organizations like WFP are having to cut food rations. “In Nigeria, WFP has had to cut rations in half,” Dr. Husain says. One tragic result: a rise in suicides among mothers who “cannot cope” with the inability to feed their children adequately.

Not yet a crisis of supply

In addition to cutting rations, food assistance organizations are also having to deal with major donors directing their largesse to the latest humanitarian crisis – Ukraine – at the expense of ongoing but sometimes forgotten crises.

“One of the effects of Russia’s war against Ukraine is a diversion of attention – and contributions – from other places,” says Ms. Esposito. She notes, for example, that Mercy Corps’ appeal for Ukraine was 90% funded “within a matter of days,” while donations for Somalia – one of the hunger hot spots – haven’t topped 20% of the organization’s appeal.

Nariman El-Mofty/AP

Traditional Egyptian flatbread at a bakery in the Shubra district of Cairo, March 2, 2022. The war in Ukraine is worsening food insecurity and threatening to push more people into poverty in places like Egypt and Lebanon, where diets are dominated by government-subsidized bread.

Still, Dr. Husain says that while higher food prices are making it more difficult for WFP and other organizations to feed the growing number of hungry people, the crisis is not yet one of supply. And, he says, world leaders must act now to ensure that the crisis doesn’t turn into one of shrinking food stocks.

“It’s easier to respond now when it’s an affordability crisis – and not letting it become an availability crisis,” he says.

A growing threat to food availability is what experts are calling “food nationalism” – the tendency of some food-producing countries to respond to higher food prices by imposing export taxes or taking other measures to discourage food exports and build up food stocks at home.

Yet Joseph Glauber, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, says, “Markets are actually performing pretty well. People can get grains; they’re just more expensive.”

He offers the example of Morocco, which he says turned to Ukraine last year following a serious drought that hit domestic production. But with Ukraine cut off, Morocco has had to turn elsewhere.

“You can get grain from Australia,” he says, “but it’s more expensive.” Canada is increasing grain production, he notes, but it will also be more expensive than Ukraine – which before the war provided 10% of global wheat exports.

Access to Ukraine

What that tells some food supply experts is that Ukraine is not going to be replaced anytime soon as an inexpensive global food basket.

“I’m really pleased with the level of political attention we’re seeing at the top,” says Caitlin Welsh, director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former director of global economic engagement at the National Security Council. “But ultimately what the G-7 is doing, for example, can be successful as stopgap measures only.”

She and other experts say that proposals to build grain silos in countries neighboring Ukraine to store its crops, for example, or the slowly increasing exportation of Ukrainian grains by land, are fine but limited alternatives to sea export. Shipping grain by rail is three times more expensive than by sea, they note.

“The ultimate solution has to lie in unblocking Ukraine’s ports on the Black Sea,” says Ms. Welsh.

Noting that different proposals to allow a resumption of Ukrainian maritime shipments have stalled or been rejected outright by Russian President Vladimir Putin, she adds, “We can talk more long term about encouraging other places to become global breadbaskets, but the answer today lies in a cessation of hostilities – and some decisions from President Putin.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify the location of Zambia within Africa. It is considered part of southern Africa.

Slava Zagoruiko walks through a battle-scarred garage in the tram depot on northeast Kharkiv’s front line. “Each hole was a hit – the large ones rockets, the smaller ones mortar or artillery,” the depot overseer says as he points out breaches in the shattered building, a home to old streetcars, including his personal favorite, a wooden tram once featured on movie sets. “The Russians thought this was a Ukrainian army base.”

Now the streetcars in and around the garage are casualties of the war, and present a daunting challenge to cleanup efforts. “Not one of these trams is undamaged,” he says. “If I were the mayor, I would not know where to start.”

But nearby, work is already underway. Dressed in camouflage pants and flak jackets, two middle-aged men coordinate efforts to remove the rubble from a residential district in northeast Kharkiv. Heavy-duty vehicles struggle to clear the twisted metal skeleton of a commercial strip reduced to ashes. Glass shards and debris pave the road.

“Communal services have not stopped working for a single day since the start of the war,” says Yugeny Lipovoy, who is responsible for the city’s transportation services during peacetime. “Most communal workers stayed in Kharkiv. If there was shelling in one stretch of the city, they went to clean up another neighborhood. ... All communal services are operating: trash, gas, electricity.”

That commitment is grounded in the clear-eyed realization that Kharkiv, hollowed out by weeks of heavy Russian bombardment, will remain especially vulnerable as long as the war lasts. Sitting 30 miles from the border with Russia, it will always be within striking distance.

Experts say it could take years, perhaps decades, to restore Ukraine’s second-largest city to what it was. But community workers and volunteers are focused on making the present livable for those who remain, many of whom still shelter in underground bunkers, metro stations, or the relatively safer pockets in the center and southwest of the city.

Dominique Soguel

Community workers take advantage of a quiet spell to restore electricity and gas systems in Kharkiv, Ukraine, May 11, 2022. “Most communal workers stayed in Kharkiv. If there was shelling in one stretch of the city, they went to clean up another neighborhood,” says transportation services overseer Yugeny Lipovoy. "All communal services are operating: trash, gas, electricity.”

“From the moment it starts, reconstruction could take three to four years,” says Kateryna Kublytska, an architect documenting damage to heritage buildings. “The sleeping districts will take at least 10 years. The question is when will reconstruction start. From a restoration perspective, we have not had such a challenge since World War II.”

“I feel so sorry for this city”

In northeastern Kharkiv, swathes of the so-called “sleeping districts” – Soviet-era residential areas originally intended to offer little more than space to rest – are a wasteland of disfigured buildings left without electricity. But the retreat of Russian forces just beyond striking range in May opened a precious window of opportunity to coordinate cleanup efforts in the hard-hit sleeping district of Saltivka. 

Armed with a broom and dressed in a bubblegum-pink vest, Nadiya Antonova was one of those trying to clean up, clearing smaller chunks of rubble from a highway.

Peace has been elusive for her. She moved to Saltivka from the eastern city of Luhansk, which has been gripped by war since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and backed an armed uprising in parts of the eastern Donbas region. And she moved to the city center to live with her daughter and grandchildren on Feb. 24, the day Russia launched its full-scale assault on Ukraine.

“We were running away from war, and war followed us,” says Ms. Antonova, a welder by training. “I feel so sorry for this city. We love it so.”

Moving in with her daughter proved a good call. Russian rockets and bombs have rained down on Saltivka. Its residents, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, have fled in an exodus that, by most estimates, emptied half of Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million people.

“Nobody really knows how many people have died here because there are still people under the rubble,” says Nataliya Zubar, who for weeks has been cataloging the large-scale destruction with geolocation and videos for each affected structure, in the hope that Russia will eventually be held accountable for indiscriminate attacks against civilians.

“Thousands of buildings have been destroyed,” says Ms. Zubar, sitting in her apartment overflowing with art, books, and photos. “Aerial bombs dropped as the Russians tried to enter the city left deep craters. We’ve even been hit by ballistic missiles fired from the Black Sea. Now the air defense system around Kharkiv is much better.”

History and reconstruction

Kharkiv was badly damaged during WWII. Experts at the time estimated it would take 60 years to rebuild the city, says Ms. Kublytska, the architect. That calculation proved accurate in the sense that Kharkiv only began booming economically in the early 21st century.

Dominique Soguel

Architect Kateryna Kublytska discussed the different styles of historic buildings in Kharkiv, Ukraine, May 11, 2022. “The city will be restored and rebuilt, history shows that,” she says. “To predict when and how this will happen and how long it will take is hard to say now."

Now more than half the population has fled; businesses are shuttered; only a couple of restaurants open their doors in days kept short by curfew. Nearly 3,000 out of 8,000 civilian buildings have been damaged or destroyed in this city, according to official figures.

Missile strikes destroyed the city hall, a shopping center, and the economics building at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. More than 100 historic buildings have been damaged in this city founded in 1654. They span architectural styles ranging from the undulating lines of art nouveau to hard-edged constructivist structures like the iconic Derzhprom, a white building complex doubling as a reminder of Ukraine’s Soviet past.

Rebuilding, says Ms. Kublytska, can only start when people feel safe enough to open their shops and put their children in school again.

“The city will be restored and rebuilt, history shows that,” she says. “To predict when and how this will happen and how long it will take is hard to say now. This is a new world for us. ... I don’t know if the day will come when we say there is peace now. I am sure the situation with Russia will take many years to resolve, and it is hard to predict how it will affect Kharkiv.”

A ruined mansion with a statue out front

For now, women like Olha Diominova, who worked in a textile factory making stockings before retiring, feel safer underground. The buildings around the humid basement she shares with four families are in ruins. The windows of her own home were blown open early in the conflict.

“When things are calmer, I will go home and try to fix things,” she says. “I don’t know how long it will take to repair everything but we still need to live somewhere. It is hard mentally to live within four walls in the dark, with no windows – to come out only to hear shelling and shooting and not know what will come next.”

Dominique Soguel

Custodian Hanna Yarmish shows the damage to the museum of Ukrainian Cossack philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda on May 10, 2022. It was hit by a Russian rocket a few days earlier. “By targeting this museum, they were trying to break our spirit and rob the world of a philosopher who upheld the principles of living in peace and love,” she says.

The destruction spills into nearby villages fought over by Ukrainian and Russian troops. One Russian attack that sparked local fury was a rocket strike that destroyed the museum for Ukrainian Cossack philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda, located in Skovorodynivka. The 18th century building caught fire, destroying most of the structure except for parts of its yellow facade and stately pillars.

“When I think about all the plans we had for this place, I feel there is no war,” says Hanna Yarmish, the museum’s elderly custodian who, along with her husband, hoped to open a cafe to host philosophical discussions.

“Then I approach and I am shocked,” she says, pointing to the ruined mansion framed by a forest of oak and apple trees, where birdsong drowns out the rumble of incoming and outgoing fire. “By targeting this museum, they were trying to break our spirit and rob the world of a philosopher who upheld the principles of living in peace and love.”

She puts her faith in the power of nature to restore, and she treasures all that remains: Skovoroda’s grave, a collection of sculptures, a pond full of industrious beavers and chatty frogs, and, best of all, a statue of the philosopher himself that was propelled out of the museum by the blast and now stands unscathed in front of it.

“This war will end,” declares Ms. Yarmish with confidence. “We will rebuild and fix everything up.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.

The landing dock of the Portland Fish Exchange is busy this afternoon, in a way that almost reminds David Townsend of when there were still groundfish to catch in Casco Bay, when this pier was piled with cod and haddock. That was back when he captained his own boat and before he became operational manager at the exchange – back before the fisheries collapsed and people started to learn that the Gulf of Maine was warming faster than almost any other waters on Earth.

Now, Mr. Townsend waves down to Justin Papkee, who has maneuvered his boat up to the dock. Mr. Papkee is a lobsterman. But hours earlier, he and his crew harvested thousands of pounds of sugar kelp, hauling the seaweed onto his boat from the ropes where it had been growing, cutting off the leafy blades and stuffing them into half-ton potato sacks. The back of Mr. Papkee’s boat sags from the weight of it all.

“Let’s bring ’em up,” Mr. Townsend says, as the dock and boat crews start attaching bags to a pulley system, readying the forklift and scale.  

There is another boat behind Mr. Papkee’s, where Stewart Hunt is waiting his turn to offload. Mr. Hunt owns a mooring company here. But he has incorporated kelp farming into his business plan, and now he and his son, who came up from New York to help with the harvest, stand next to their own white sacks full of seaweed, some 9,000 pounds in all.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

David Townsend, operations manager at the Portland Fish Exchange in Maine, has seen big changes in the industry as stocks of cod, haddock, and other traditional fish have disappeared.

“We love the new business,” says Mr. Townsend. “This is the thing of the future.”

Briana Warner smiles when she hears this. This is a new tune for the dockworkers, who not long ago grumbled about how their lives had descended to this, landing ocean weeds. But as the boats keep coming in, their enthusiasm for her efforts has grown.  

She ties off the huge white bundles as they come on to the dock, marking some with an organic label, kelp flecks on her arms. She made herself take a shower last night, even though she knew she would be right back here, smelling like fish and seaweed again. It is a short harvest for kelp, and it’s busy. And it is her company, Atlantic Sea Farms, that is buying all of it, part of an ambitious effort to revamp not only Maine’s working waterfront, but also the way the state is fighting, and adjusting to, climate change.

“Kelp is the answer to so many of the questions that we’re facing here in Maine,” Ms. Warner says. “We are presenting a climate change adaptation tactic that also does no harm, and in fact does positive things. ... It makes the ocean better. It makes our coastal ecosystems better. It makes our coastal economy better. And it makes the consumer healthier.”

She shakes her head.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“Kelp is the answer to so many of the questions that we’re facing here in Maine. ... It makes the ocean better. It makes our coastal ecosystems better. It makes our coastal economy better.” – Briana Warner, head of Atlantic Sea Farms, which produces the majority of commercially farmed seaweed in the U.S., shown here tagging a bag of harvested kelp in Portland, Maine

“It’s a hard road. Like, it’s extremely hard. ... But if we can prove we’re doing this – building a company that is based entirely on the integrity of the planet and our coastal ecosystem – that’s a proof of concept. The system doesn’t have to be broken.”

The story of seaweed here in Maine, and how it is evolving into what some are calling Maine’s new cash crop, is part of a global story. It is one that weaves together climate change, industrial food systems, nature-based solutions, economic challenges, and cross-sector cooperation. 

But it is also intensely local. And this, climate activists say, makes it even more important for understanding how humans around the world might adjust to a quickly changing planet.

While few researchers would discount the importance of sweeping climate actions by international organizations and countries, there is a growing sense that, at least in the short term, real change will come from variations of what is happening in the waters off the coast of Maine. These will be place-specific initiatives. They will be based on cooperation and unity, not only between humans – the environmentally minded businesswoman and the sometimes conservative fishermen – but also among people and nature: the carbon and the kelp and the restaurateurs.  

Alone, these efforts won’t fix all the ecological and economic problems brought about by climate change. But they will help, especially as they are repeated in different forms and ways.

“There’s no one silver bullet,” says Susie Arnold, a marine scientist at the Island Institute, a Maine nonprofit focused on preserving the state’s working waterfront. “It’s going to take everybody. And at this point, we’ve taken such a toll on the Earth that there are going to have to be trade-offs. It’s going to have to be about the big picture, and how everyone needs to pitch in.”

In Maine, this means developing a new understanding about what is happening – and what can happen – in and around the water.

For generations, life in this sparsely populated, ruggedly proud Northeastern state has focused on the ocean. Although Maine’s coast is only about 228 miles from north to south, when you include the various bays and inlets, the state’s shoreline measures more than California’s, totaling some 3,478 miles. Studies show that more than 80% of the household income in some communities traces back to fisheries.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Workers with Bangs Island Mussels, a Maine-based aquaculture company, harvest multiple lines of kelp in Casco Bay.

When Mr. Townsend was younger, these fisheries were ecologically complex, with people who worked the sea bringing in a variety of groundfish and shellfish. But for a complex brew of reasons, involving everything from overfishing to ecological changes to new regulations, many species have largely disappeared from Maine’s waterfront. 

Yet there has always been lobster.

For a generation now, lobster has been king of Maine’s seafood industry. It forms the base of a billion-dollar-plus business in the state, which provides the vast majority of domestically caught lobster in the United States. Communities up and down Maine’s coast revolve around the lobster industry, both economically and culturally. And the people who hoist the traps take pride in crafting their own stringent measures to protect the fishery. They have imposed regulations on everything from who gets to catch lobster to what type and size of crustaceans are allowed to be pulled from the water.

“Lobster fishermen are notoriously good stewards of our coastal ecosystems,” says Jesse Baines, the marketing director at Atlantic Sea Farms, who grew up in a Maine lobstering family. “But we all know that the seasons are more variable every year.”

Yet the seasons are not just more variable, starting unpredictably later or earlier. On the water, they are also warmer.   

“The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest bodies of warming water in the world,” says Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association. “And frankly, it’s incredibly scary how fast it’s happening.”

The reason, scientists say, is climate change. As humans release more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the air warms. Much of that heat is absorbed into the oceans. There are also ocean currents that some scientists believe are being disrupted. A shift in one particular circulation pattern has allowed warmer water coming up from the Gulf Stream to push away colder water coming down from Labrador, leaving warmer, saltier currents entering the Gulf of Maine. And that has prompted the lobster population to shift northward.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The floor at the Portland Fish Exchange – once filled with local catches of cod, haddock, and other groundfish – is now largely empty. It’s a symbol of the decline of local fish populations.

Already, researchers say, the lobster population in New Hampshire and Massachusetts has dropped dramatically, while in Maine the best lobster grounds have inched northward and eastward along the coast, or farther offshore. The lobster harvests might still be strong, but many boat crews recognize that the water is changing. 

Meanwhile, the warmer water has caused other species to migrate to the area, including the endangered right whale. Legal battles have erupted among the lobster industry, interest groups, and the federal government over protecting the mammal. Looking at all of this, economic development experts throughout the state are worried about the risk of so much of Maine’s economy being dependent on lobster. 

Those experts include Ms. Warner. “Just a few more degrees in the water, and no matter what they do for conservation, no matter what license procedures we’ve put in there, the lobster larvae aren’t going to survive at the rate they are now,” Ms. Warner says. “We would never say the lobster industry is going to end, because we have no idea what is going to happen. But we do know that it’s super volatile. And it’s really scary to have the entire coastline of Maine completely dependent on one species.”

Before she and her family moved to Maine, her husband’s native state, in 2013, Ms. Warner had spent nearly a decade as a U.S. Foreign Service economic development officer based in multiple African countries. There, she watched the struggles of individuals and communities working against forces far larger than themselves. And so she recognized what she was seeing in Maine.

“It’s just really devastating to see an industry that has taken such a leadership role in conservation and has no ability to stop the volatility because of the greater world’s usage of fossil fuels,” she says. “No matter what the lobster fishery does, they can only control so much because the ocean is just warming.”

The industry needed another way to make money, she realized – one that would be ecologically helpful instead of harmful.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Kelp, which looks like bronze lasagna noodles, is harvested off the coast of Maine.

And that brought her to kelp.

The seaweed known as Saccharina latissima, or sugar kelp, is a yellowish brown alga that grows along rocky coastlines. It takes the shape of an elongated lasagna noodle, with crinkled edges, and can grow up to 16 feet long.

It is high in a variety of nutrients, and also has a gelling capacity that makes it a useful ingredient for everything from cosmetics to ice cream to toothpaste. And like all plants, kelp absorbs carbon while giving off oxygen.

Researchers are still trying to quantify how much carbon is sequestered through a kelp forest. This concept, though, is tricky, in the same way that the carbon-absorbing nature of cover crops, or tree farms, can be difficult to measure, because once a plant is cut and consumed, that carbon is no longer trapped within its cells. There is some indication that debris from kelp makes its way to the ocean floor and is buried there, which would be true long-term carbon capture. But supporters of the plant’s climate impact say that matters less than the carbon benefit that comes from the sorts of food kelp can replace.

Kelp can be grown without fertilizer or some of the other fossil fuel-heavy elements of industrial agriculture. As a result, kelp-infused foods, such as plant-based burgers, have a lower climate impact than more traditional fare. Increasingly, scientists are looking at ways to use kelp in livestock feed. Other researchers are exploring kelp’s potential as a biofuel.

These uses are at the cutting edge of seaweed research, but the idea of kelp as both a food source and an environmental solution is not new. Indigenous people in the Americas harvested kelp for generations. In Asia, it’s part of a multibillion-dollar seaweed farming industry.  

But in the U.S., where far fewer people eat seaweed, there has been scant commercial interest in kelp farming until recently. Overall, aquaculture, or sea farming, is one of the most rapidly growing food production methods in the country. Although seaweed currently makes up only a small percentage of that industry, it is the fastest-growing subsector, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Buoys designate lines of kelp on a seaweed farm in Casco Bay, an inlet in the Gulf of Maine.

This is partly the result of efforts by people like Mr. Belle, the Maine aquaculture organization director, and groups like the Island Institute. They have taught farmers about the potential of kelp and also lobbied the state government to implement regulations that allow men and women who fish to test out the farming method without overly burdensome investments.

This work helped convince people like Mr. Hunt, whose boat was lined up at the Portland Fish Exchange, that kelp farming could supply a good chunk of his income.  

The waterman started thinking about seaweed six years ago, after hearing another farmer talk at a conference. He quickly wrote up a business plan, and estimated that kelp could eventually make up a good 50% of his income, which was otherwise focused on servicing moorings.

The plan, he says, “was right on.” Mr. Hunt now farms 20,000 feet of kelp line. He does, however, make sure to keep some for himself. “I like a seaweed salad,” he says. “With sautéed shrimp, carrots, and tamarind sauce.” 

Seaweed farming works well in Maine because it grows in the offseason for the lobster industry. That means people who already have the boats, equipment, and knowledge for working the sea can make an additional profit over the winter.

“It fits well with their traditional fishing,” Mr. Belle says. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Once pulled in, the kelp is stored in giant bags on the boat.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Kelp is unloaded and weighed at the Portland Fish Exchange in Maine. Maine is the country’s top producer of seaweed, harvesting more than 1 million pounds a year.

For these workers, kelp farming is not overly difficult. In the fall, they run ropes seeded with kelp across leased sections of water. Then they let the plant grow until early spring, when it becomes long enough to harvest. The issue, Mr. Belle says, is what to do then. “We know we can grow a lot of seaweed,” he says. “We can grow hundreds of thousands of pounds of it. The challenge is what to do with that seaweed. For us in the U.S., seaweed isn’t part of our normal diet.”

That’s where Ms. Warner fits in.

In the mid-2010s, she was working with the Island Institute, focused on how to foster economic resilience in the face of warming water. As part of that effort she met the founders of a company called Ocean Approved, who wanted to grow, harvest, and market large volumes of seaweed. In 2018, Ms. Warner took over the company. But she decided to change the business model. Rather than having her own large seaweed farms, she wanted to contract with people who fished up and down the coast and have them do the harvesting. She would supply the kelp seed, technical support, and training, as well as promise to buy all their kelp.

That last element – a guaranteed buyer – was key to many boat captains’ decisions to start growing seaweed. It meant that they could operate the same way that they did with lobsters: They would bring in their catch, have it weighed, and then get paid.  

Ms. Warner renamed the company Atlantic Sea Farms. And she started to travel up and down the coast, working to convince the people who do lobstering to grow underwater forests. 

She didn’t talk about climate change or nutrition or sustainable food systems. She just explained the business model and promised to buy their kelp.

Since then, Atlantic Sea Farms has gone from purchasing 30,000 pounds of seaweed a year to 1 million pounds, and from two small kelp farms to 27 partner farmers, with another dozen waiting for leases from the state. It has helped make Maine, by far, the top domestic producer of seaweed.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Workers at Atlantic Sea Farms, an aquaculture firm, fill jars with seaweed salad in Biddeford, Maine. Seaweed-based foods, not a traditional part of the American diet, are gaining wider acceptance.

The growth has required a feat of logistics. Ms. Warner has had to invest in cold-storage units and refrigerated trucks, as well as build a market for all the kelp. To help do that, her company has developed a flash-freeze process that allows it to sell fresh kelp to restaurateurs and the food service industry. It also recently opened a new 27,000-square-foot facility in Biddeford, Maine, where there is a kelp nursery and production facilities.

On one recent day, a food production crew worked at stainless steel tables, mixing kelp and filling jars with seaweed salad for retail at grocery stores across the country. 

The company’s next big goal is to expand its reach beyond the “smoothie, seaweed salad, vegetarian” clientele to more mainstream customers. This is possible, Ms. Warner believes.

“Aquaculture right now – especially kelp aquaculture, but also oysters and mussels – allows us the ability to be exactly who we’ve always been,” she says. In other words, people intimately connected to the sea. 

That’s one reason Matthew Moretti farms kelp. He has always loved the ocean.

Growing up near Bangor, he regularly joined his father on a lobster boat and learned the ways that workers here tend to the long-term sustainability of the ocean. He knew, as he studied marine biology at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and then went to Northeastern University in Boston for graduate school, that he wanted to keep working the sea, producing food in a way that cooperated with the ecosystem rather than taking from it.

In 2010, his family became the new owner of Bangs Island Mussels, an aquaculture company based in Portland. Mr. Moretti started growing kelp the same year.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Workers with Bangs Island Mussels farm mussels from a raft in Casco Bay. The mussels’ growth is aided by having kelp lines nearby, which make the water less acidic.

“We started farming mussels and then immediately began farming kelp because it was the most sustainable form of protein that we’d ever heard of,” he says.

At first, his company tried to process and sell its own product. But eventually he and his family co-owners collaborated with the company that would become Atlantic Sea Farms. They now sell their kelp to Ms. Warner – some 117,000 pounds last year.

“It’s a really great partnership that’s developed between us,” Mr. Moretti says. “It lets us focus on what we do well, which is growing. And they get to focus on what they do well, product development.”

But that wasn’t the only partnership that blossomed. Like kelp, mussels require no feed, no chemicals, and very little space to produce. But they are sensitive to the pH balance in the water. And the ocean, as it absorbs more carbon molecules, is becoming more acidic – a problem for mussels and many other shell-forming creatures.

Mr. Moretti realized that when he grew kelp near the mussels, his shellfish seemed to grow larger and healthier.

He began working with scientists to study what is now called the kelp “halo effect,” or how, around a seaweed farm, the water has more oxygen and is less acidic.  

“The kelp is sucking carbon dioxide directly out of the water, and actually reducing the acidity of the water in its general vicinity,” he says. “So if you put the kelp close enough to the mussels, we have measurable, significant evidence showing that the kelp halo effect helps the mussels grow bigger and faster. It was just amazing to see that.”

The kelp also benefits, researchers have found. Mussels filter ocean water, removing possible parasites and bacteria that could  damage the kelp.

“It’s not going to solve climate change,” Mr. Moretti says. “It’s not going to solve ocean acidification. But it’s one way we can make a difference that’s measurable and significant in our local ecosystem to help the problem.”

Ella Sophie Bessette/Princeton University Press

Carolyn Chen is the author of "Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley."

No longer just somewhere to make a living, work has become a place to find purpose, and, yes, even transcendence. But what happens when the balance of life skews so heavily toward the workplace? The Monitor’s Erika Page spoke recently with sociologist Carolyn Chen, author of “Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley,” to find out. 

How did your thinking on this topic evolve?

I was interested in looking at where we see religion in secular spaces. This project started by studying yoga in studios and interviewing yoga practitioners. They would say, “Well, I practice yoga after a long day of work. It helps me relax and de-stress.” Then they would also say, “and practicing yoga makes me a better ‘X,’” and here you can fill in the blank. It might be a nurse, an engineer, a lawyer. Work figured prominently into their narrative. What was sacred was not Hinduism, the icons, or the practice. What was sacred to them was work, because work was the thing that they were willing to submit and sacrifice and surrender their lives to. 

What’s different about the role of work today?

The typical white-collar worker in the 1950s and ’60s was working 9 to 5, 40 hours a week. It was also the height of civic associations and participation in the United States. So you had contained hours, but then you had all these other options, these other sources of meaning and belonging outside of the workplace, things like faith communities, the Rotary Club, and softball leagues. So work wasn’t the only game in town. But in the last 50 years, maybe even longer, we have seen this dramatic decline in civic participation.

Meanwhile, professional workers have devoted an increasing amount of time and energy to work. Part of this has to do with a shift in our economy in the late ’70s and ’80s. In an industrial economy, you increase your profits by lowering labor costs, or you have better technology. But in a knowledge economy, the most important asset for a company are human workers. 

So how do you increase your assets? Well, you can educate your workers and give them more sophisticated skills. But there’s also this spiritual dimension. How do you make sure that your workers give their full selves? How do we align the souls of our workers with the mission and goals of the company? You make work a meaningful place, where they find identity and belonging and purpose. So work is demanding more from high-skilled workers than it did 50 or 60 years ago. But it’s also giving more.

"Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley," by Carolyn Chen, Princeton University Press, 272 pp.

How are tech workers “finding their souls” at work, as you write?

Tech companies have come to understand this spiritual dimension of the human worker – though they don’t necessarily say “spiritual” – and the need to capitalize on that. In many of the companies I studied, folks in human resources would say, “I nurture the souls of the employees,” or “I bring wholeness to the workplace.” These companies provide meditation and mindfulness, they bring in spiritual and religious leaders to give inspirational talks, and for their senior leaders, they hire executive coaches, which one HR person called “spiritual guides.” In most Fortune 500 companies, it’s really basic to have an explicit mission, a set of ethics, an origin myth, and often a charismatic founder or leader – some of the basic elements of religious organizations. So it’s not just happening in Silicon Valley; you see this in so many organizations. I get asked all the time, “Really, are they really happy? Are they really whole?” And I have to just go by what people tell me. People say that they’re really happy, that they’re feeling so much more spiritual because of work.

What’s the downside?

These tech companies are meeting a need that most professionals simply don’t have the time for [but] otherwise actually really crave. But there is a social cost. When people get so wrapped up in their workplaces, they disengage from the public sphere and other realms of life. In what I call “Techtopia,” workplaces act like these giant, powerful magnets that essentially attract all of the time, energy, and devotion of the community. Institutions like the family, faith communities, neighborhood associations, even small businesses start to grow weaker and smaller in comparison to this giant workplace.

Some pastors talked about, “Well, work is so important, why don’t we shift our attention to providing a workplace ministry?” But then you take away from the focus you might have on families or children or other members. That Bible study or prayer time, that becomes a workplace perk. And so these things which we might have understood in a different time and place as being public goods meant for the well-being of everyone in society, they start to become cloistered behind the walls of the tech workplace.

In Silicon Valley, all of the institutions line up to “get Google money,” as I call it. This is what I saw with meditation and mindfulness teachers, who used to be teaching in community centers, in yoga studios, in retreat centers. But with the increasing cost of living in the Bay Area, they can’t do that anymore. So what do they do? They basically have to monetize the practice and figure out how to teach it at Google or LinkedIn. But to do that, you need to alter the teaching dramatically to fit within the logic and goals of the workplace.

How do we bring back a balance?

I hope we can name these “invisible cathedrals” we are worshipping, these secular institutions that shape us, spiritually form us, and direct our devotion. We stop worshipping work by finding other sources of fulfillment. Almost everyone I interviewed had a deep spiritual longing and yearning, whether they called it spiritual or not. They were driven by these very human desires: to create, contribute, and belong. What if we were to start from that assumption and think about how we build up other “houses of worship”? They don’t need to be actual religious institutions. How do we create a life that can be flourishing for everyone, not just for tech workers who have this army of human resources people to make them happy? What’s been fun about this project is I’ve spoken to so many different groups of people who are really trying to create those spaces, those alternative ways of creating community and belonging and meaning. And it comes in all different shapes and forms.

Reuters

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal speaks during a July 4-5 conference in Lugano, Switzerland, on postwar construction of Ukraine.

At a big huddle in Switzerland on Tuesday, many of the world’s democracies pledged to help pay for the economic recovery of Ukraine – even before the war with Russia ends. Coming days after Ukraine was invited to apply for European Union membership, the pledges should give its people “the certainty that they are not alone,” said Swiss President Ignazio Cassis.

Yet strengthening Ukraine’s war resolve was not the only reason for the offers to fund reconstruction. Much of Europe is inspired by the sacrifices Ukrainians are making on its behalf.

“They are fighting for the respect of international laws and our values,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the Swiss conference. Democracies must ensure Ukraine “wins the peace,” she added, even as it struggles to win back territory.

In addition, prepping for a rebuild now sends a message. “The Kremlin’s goal is the military, political, and economic destruction of Ukraine,” said Ms. von der Leyen, a former German defense minister. “They want to undermine Ukraine’s very existence as a state. We cannot and we will never let that happen.”

Ukraine’s recovery plan, released for the Swiss meeting with a $773 billion price tag, ranges from mending broken bridges to rebuilding thousands of homes destroyed in more than 1,000 cities and towns retaken by Ukrainian forces. Yet it also includes details on rejuvenating Ukraine’s economy to become more digitized, green, and resilient. Or as British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss put it, the recovery will show that Russia’s attempt to destroy Ukraine has “only produced a stronger, more prosperous, and more united nation.”

The pledges help lift the war’s aim beyond mere liberation of territory taken by Russia. It is also an investment in European and world security, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, told the 42 donor nations.

Not all wars are fought with weapons. Just as effective can be a collective effort to undercut the reasons for a war. The promises to restore Ukraine will now be added to the country’s growing arsenal.