Saccharina El futuro de la granja
Asia Oriental
Overview
Principales retos
En todos los países y regiones ha quedado claro que existe una necesidad urgente de desarrollar procesos con un mayor nivel de automatización o mecanización. Cada vez menos personas están dispuestas a realizar trabajos agrícolas que requieren un gran esfuerzo físico, y los costes laborales están aumentando y poniendo en peligro la rentabilidad de las explotaciones agrícolas. Los agricultores que hemos encuestado desean contar con sistemas nuevos y eficientes que utilicen tecnologías que ahorren mano de obra en todos los procesos.
Muchos de los agricultores con los que hablamos en Corea del Sur no tenían planes concretos para la sucesión de sus explotaciones. Su expansión también está muy limitada a la zona, ya que no se conceden más licencias. Tendrían que encontrar nuevas zonas más alejadas de la costa y realizar un estudio de viabilidad medioambiental para expandirse, lo que en ambos casos resulta costoso.
Necesidades de innovación
Breeding
In South Korea, there is a strong effort to develop temperature tolerant strains, primarily to extend the growing season beyond December and August. This would make abalone feed available in September and October. Japanese and Chinese farmers are looking for strong and high-yield cultivars. There are strong collaborations between industry and research institutes to breed high quality cultivars.
Hatchery level
The development of mechanised devices and equipment, such as seedling curtain weaving machines, automatic curtain brushing machines, automatic light adaptation systems and rope stretching devices to partially replace manual devices in different production steps is needed.
Seeding
Different innovators have tried to mechanise the process of attaching the seedlings to the culture rope and several patents exist for such devices. However, the work efficiency has been lower than manual methods and reduces yields.
Grow out
The environment is emerging as a major concern, and farmers mentioned that they are looking for early warning and forecast systems that describe the changing conditions of their farms. Furthermore, the offshore work during the winter (mostly the thinning out) is done manually and can be rough due to harsh sea conditions.
Harvesting
In many regions, the harvesting process is purely manual and is physically demanding work. Labourers typically work more than 10 hours a day carrying out the repetitive harvesting process.. A big barrier to innovation is the lack of standardisation across farm units, rope lengths and site conditions. In South Korea, the harvesting process is semi-automated, but the quality is often diminished.
Drying
The drying process is a major bottleneck for the industry due to the short time window when biomass is collected and brought to shore. The traditional method of outdoor drying is cheap, yet highly dependent on the weather. Drying indoors requires a lot of space (only for a short time), is labour intensive and often requires significant energy.
Products
Farmers in Japan complain about the price of Saccharina and would like to learn how to create more value from seaweed and get better prices. The Chinese industry is looking to create higher value products through bioactive material extraction.