Saccharina Futuro da agricultura
Ásia Oriental
Overview
Principais desafios
Em todos os países e regiões, tornou-se claro que há uma necessidade urgente de desenvolver processos com um nível mais elevado de automatização ou mecanização. Há cada vez menos pessoas dispostas a realizar trabalhos agrícolas fisicamente exigentes, e os custos com mão de obra estão a aumentar, comprometendo a rentabilidade das explorações agrícolas. Os agricultores que entrevistámos desejam sistemas novos e eficientes que utilizem tecnologias que economizem mão de obra em todos os processos.
Muitos dos agricultores com quem falámos na Coreia do Sul não tinham planos concretos para a sucessão das suas explorações agrícolas. A sua expansão também é altamente limitada à área, uma vez que não estão a ser concedidas mais licenças. Para se expandirem, teriam de encontrar novas áreas mais distantes da costa e realizar um estudo de viabilidade ambiental, o que é dispendioso.
Necessidades de inovação
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.