A damaged life trajectory which led him to create a model of marine farm taken up today by some 10,000 new farmers: such is the fascinating story that the American Bren Smith gives us here.
The little fisherman becomes a globalized plunderer
He was born in a village in Newfoundland, Canada, a fishing island who would live there all his life. When his family moved to the United States, he lost his bearings and left school at 14. After a chaotic period, at the age of 17 he became a fisherman in Alaska. The 1980s, “those of herrings stuffed with heroin”, which allowed us to pay the bills, were also those of the industrialization of the oceans, which transformed the small fisherman into a globalized plunderer: “To satisfy the voracious desire for junk food , we crushed entire ecosystems with trawls. »
Ten years later, the collapse of cod stocks finally put fishermen out of work. Bren Smith then tried his hand at aquaculture – a real “environmental nightmare”, which requires 10 kg of wild fish to obtain one kilo of farmed salmon – before finding his way into oyster farming.
A bet to win
But, after two hurricanes ravaged his farm, he decided to diversify his production, combining algae and various native molluscs. All that remains is to persuade consumers to eat these “sea vegetables”. To do this, he will embark on the adventure of great chefs and gradually win his bet by offering a solution to feed the 9.8 billion people who will make up the world population in 2050, while respecting the ocean.
