#164 Brandon Barney, Co-founder of Primary Ocean

Brandon is an American broadcast journalist and serial entrepreneur with a social conscience. He is co-host of Southern California’s longest-running public radio program covering the digital revolution: KPFK 90.7 FM’s Digital Village Radio. His segment, DigitalCulture.LA, co-produced and co-hosted with Brittney Gallagher, is on investigation into the history and future of science and technology and how computers and the internet are changing our society. 

Mr. Barney is a leading researcher on technological disruption and has advised government officials and corporate leaders from around the world on the impacts of emerging technologies. Brandon is committed to the advancement of the Southern California and specifically the innovation ecosystem known as Silicon Beach. Mr. Barney manages the Non-Profit, Intellectual Property, and Startup groups at the Barney Law Firm. He trains students of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds in after school and summer school programs throughout Southern California that provide Americans with real world experience on the front lines of technology working with the most innovative organizations to solve the biggest problems facing humanity. 

Brandon has made his home in the creative soul of Los Angeles: Venice Beach. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Venice Symphony Orchestra and the Open Temple and he volunteers at the Israel Levin Senior Center helping Los Angeles’ most senior citizens live well. Brandon is the co-founder of Primary Ocean and is working now to connect Silicon Beach to the new blue economy and the potential of seaweed to heal the sea, soil and air.

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Bigger Than Us #164

This transcript has been lightly edited.


Host Raj Daniels 00:47

Brandon, how are you doing today?

Brandon Barney 01:16

You know, I’m so grateful to join you. I just got back from a walk. It’s a beautiful day in sunny southern California. And I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Host Raj Daniels 01:26

Brandon, I am too, and this may sound like a strange place to start, but how do you farm kelp?

Brandon Barney 01:33

Well, nature does most of the work, to be honest with you. We try to get our equipment, which is very sustainable, into position. That’s the most difficult part. Getting your kelp farm anchored in the ocean floor — or if it’s floating — really requires a set of marine engineering skills and courage that is uncommon. It’s a little bit different than fishing. The ocean is sort of a final frontier of sorts. It’s less explored than many planets and the energy in the ocean from the tides and the moon is extraordinary. That’s the hard part. But once you get your seeded lines, and you see them on land in position, you don’t need any fertilizer, you don’t need any water, you don’t have to irrigate your kelp farm. And from there you visit it and make sure all the equipment and everything is in good order, but the kelp really grows on its own. It is a miracle plant. Our species, giant kelp, is the fastest growing photosynthesizing sort of organism. It’s reported to grow two or three feet a day. I haven’t seen it grow on our farm that fast. And they keep telling you, don’t worry. It’s coming. But it does grow extraordinarily fast. It’s a miracle plant, I like to call it.

Host Raj Daniels 03:00

It sounds like the bamboo of the water.

Brandon Barney 03:02

Yes, exactly right. And in Asia, where kelp farming is done at a scale where you can literally take satellite photographs and see it from space, bamboo plays a special role in the sustainable drying of kelp. Bamboo poles are basically used to hold seaweed up as it air dries. I learned that recently and I’ve been inspired. We’re looking, as we continue to expand our future production, to embrace bamboo potentially as a way of teaming with seaweed to reach a regenerative and sustainable future.

Host Raj Daniels 03:39

And you mentioned seaweed. How is kelp different from seaweed?

Brandon Barney 03:42

You know, kelp is a type of seaweed. They’re used interchangeably by many people. That’s very familiar, and you’re not misspeaking if you use them. But if you talk to a seaweed scientist, or if you go to a seaweed research conference and dig into it a little bit, the kelps are mainly the brown larger types of seaweed, whereas there are red and green types of seaweed that are not usually referred to as kelps.

Host Raj Daniels 04:10

I’m laughing because you mentioned the seaweed conference.

Brandon Barney 04:13

Well, I’ll tell you the last seaweed conference I attended was extraordinary. I was with the CEO of our company, Scotty Schmidt, and a team of our friends from all around the world. It took place in Korea on Jeju Island. This was before the pandemic, of course. I think it was April 2019, I believe, but it happens every three years. There are seaweed researchers from all over the world. And I can tell you that from the ice cream that you may enjoy at dessert tonight to the organic food that you plan to pick up from the market later today or even sustainable packaging, seaweed is all around us, in our lives and in many supply chains. It’s just an exciting time to be in the community. These conferences have been suspended due to COVID. But I believe the next one is going to be in Australia and Tasmania. And I’m looking forward to it.

Host Raj Daniels 05:17

Since we started speaking about kelp. Can you give the audience an overview of Primary Ocean and your role at the organization?

Brandon Barney 05:23

Yes. So Primary Ocean is one of the US’s leading seaweed companies. We’re very proud to say that. Founded four years ago. I co-founded the company with two of my best friends, Scotty and Brian Schmidt. We’ve been lucky and we’ve worked hard. And we are currently involved throughout the value chain, from cultivation to processing to marketing and sales of seaweed products, increasingly around the world. We talked about kelp farming. That’s what we’re most well known for. Because we’re one of a group of companies, and we’re not alone. 

And our partners are very experienced companies, many of them from Europe or even Chile. Other parts of the world. We’re leading the commercialization piece: how to turn this kelp farm’s kelp into valuable products that solve human problems. But our cultivation wing is very exciting because of the prospect of farming large amounts of the ocean in a clean and sustainable way. To then take that rich superfood and do things with it that we need urgently in the soil, to help regenerate the soil, improve yield, and reduce the need for chemicals in our agriculture; or then, to replace certain petrochemicals. As we want to move away from fossil fuels, we need to replace certain chemicals that fossil fuel derivatives are involved in many supply chains. And seaweed is a kelp. Giant kelp is a major resource for that. 

But it goes on and on, even into biofuels, sustainable aviation fuel, etc. It’s just in the cultivation side, there’s so much excitement to no longer take from the natural world and to really use the power of the ocean, one of nature’s super-weight heavyweights in terms of biomass productivity, and then to use all this biomass and then work to solve with others many of these other problems. Super exciting. 

But we do have a sort of contract factory, which we’re very proud of. It’s one of our jewels. We’re able to produce our liquid organic agricultural input. It’s a giant kelp product that’s currently being used by farmers throughout the United States, increasingly. We’re happy to send anyone any trials. It’s actually available on Amazon. It’s called OrganiKelp. Our factory also produces some animal feed products, like chicken feeds, and cosmetic products. But our focus is on our agricultural division right now, especially as the US is facing historic drought, and many other food-producing regions of the world are dealing with increasingly difficult conditions due to climate change. 

And so we’re really focused on trying to solve this water crisis and the soil crisis with our giant kelp seaweed product portfolio. Recently, we added to our board some very senior executives in the global BioAg linkages community led by Roger Tripathi. And we’re really looking forward to this upcoming quarter working with them and continuing to work with more farmers around the world to address these major crises that we’re facing.

Host Raj Daniels 08:33

Now. How did you and your friends decide to become kelp farmers?

Brandon Barney 08:37

The original story is that one of my best friends and one of our partners, Brian Schmidt, was in a monastery. And he was eating mainly spirulina as a nutrient while fasting. He returned, and he told his brother, one of my dear friends, Scotty, that seaweed was going to be his future. At that time, I was really focused on hosting and producing a show about the future of science and technology. 

And so I told Brian, I said, “Hey, if you are interested in seaweed, in the future of seaweed, let’s call a bunch of seaweed scientists and call a bunch of seaweed companies and see. What will people tell us about these articles that we’ve read, that seaweed can address methane mitigation and livestock, or that seaweed can address these different problems?” And so we started doing that. For about a year we would, every week, call another research group, whether in Norway, or Korea, or in Kansas, or a company in Maine, or Alaska, or in Chile. And eventually, we learned a lot. 

We ended up investing in a company called the Catalina Sea Ranch, which was the US’s first offshore mussel farm, which also had seaweed rights and, later, one large US research grant to farm seaweed. And so we sort of went to grad school, so to speak. Spent about a year, just calling every seaweed company in the — there’s an international seaweed symposium, so you can go to the library and get the book of the last one. And then at the back, it has everyone who attended the email addresses and phone numbers. We just, like investigative journalists, hit the books and just called up a bunch of people. And what ended up happening is we discovered a really fast-growing industry where there is no major industry for kelp farming or large-scale kelp processing in California. 

And so we’re able to participate in this international exchange of knowledge, experience, and advanced technology and put all these pieces together to address some of the major goals of California and the US: to become more sustainable, etc. So, we did not get our Ph.D.s in seaweed prior to starting our company. But we have gotten a Ph.D. in hard work and endured many different challenges. And ultimately we are very happy to be working with people who have been working in this field their entire lives. 

So the principal investigator on our ARPA-E grant is Javier Infante, and he is a Chilean expert among experts of seaweed farming with experience, specifically, in giant kelp. And our team also includes Olavur Gregersen, who is the great Faroese seaweed farmer of Northern Europe, operating one of the largest, most offshore seaweed farms in the Arctic Ocean. And also Hortimare, the leading seaweed hatchery company. And so we’re combining the experts from around the world. And we see ourselves largely as cheerleaders and largely as people who are the glue that pieces together the cultivation, the processing, and the product performance for the customers, studying how we can formulate the products to meet the needs of our end customers. We work throughout the value chain to increase the rate of which this sort of revolution can really impact people’s lives.

Host Raj Daniels 12:14

What are seaweed rights?

Brandon Barney 12:17

There’s a film, actually, that is the best overview of this. It’s called “They Say It Can’t Be Done.” Our challenges to get the seaweed rights are discussed in the film. The coast of the US is governed by a variety of different organizations and institutions: the Coast Guard, the California Coastal Commission, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the US Navy, and US Army Corps of Engineers, and many different organizations have a right to the water around the coast in some way, shape, or form. And so to have a seaweed farm, or even to wild harvest seaweed from a location, you have to complete a tremendous amount of paperwork with all the relevant interests to explain what you’re doing and how it’s going to be beneficial for society. And that whole process is what I’m referring to by “the seaweed rights.”

Host Raj Daniels 13:19

And how long does it take to get permission to form seaweed or get seaweed rights?

Brandon Barney 13:24

If you have to ask, the industry is not for you? How badly do you want the CME rights?

Host Raj Daniels 13:34

That long, huh?

Brandon Barney 13:36

What I can say is that I could tell you something that I believe, but if it took longer than that, I would not want you to — what we’ve learned is that when you’re dealing with a democratic society, a big state like California, in particular, there are a lot of interests. 

We had hoped that California would expand the areas for seaweed cultivation in a faster way. We’re very optimistic that the recent news — with respect to the governor and the president announcing the large offshore wind project in Northern California, and that the Navy is finally signed off on that — will open up California waters to renewable energy projects and other renewable projects. We don’t really see it as any particular group’s fault, or that there’s any issue as we become wise in the process. This is new. The people are curious, and they want to know. 

Many of these technologies are in development or have been only recently made possible through the amazing revolution of technology that we’ve all lived through. So I’ve tried to become very patient as we are working our way through the regulatory process. And I’m very optimistic that the permits for all the projects that we’ve applied for and many of our sister projects and other research groups and companies will be approved. But currently there is a backlog. 

You know, we welcome people to call their Senator. I saw that California had a large surplus. I said, “Hey, let’s, let’s increase the staffing, perhaps, maybe on a contract basis for a lot of the agencies that have been understaffed, just to help boost the economic development of the state.” We’ve heard from regulators and different people in different offices, that they wished that they had more help, that there’s a lot of work. We hope that California would lead and that the United States would lead the world in the use of the ocean because we have a lot of it. 

The government, in our research group, funds our research because the Department of Energy looked out and they said, “Wow, look at all this great ocean space. If we could do something useful with it, that was not harmful to the ecosystem, we could better utilize some of our land resources and return some areas of land back to nature with the US’s exclusive economic zone. But it is a process and we appreciate — like this conversation with you — people learning about the issue and getting involved, whether they’re for or they’re almost for what we’re doing. They’re lukewarm. We hope to convince them. I have to tell you: one of the groups we’ve been in discussions with very early is the fishers, the fishing group. 

And a lot of fishers feel that the environmental protection in California has protected large areas of the coast, so they’re not able to fish in those areas. And they’re worried that if seaweed farming or offshore wind and all these new projects keep coming, then some of their ancestral livelihoods are threatened. There are interests of Native tribes, Indigenous tribes. One of the black swans of our planning, so to speak, which we feel is probably just, or we agree is just, is the complexity of dealing with all of the Native tribes in California, what historical burial grounds may be under the ocean, or what unknowns may be associated with it. So our industry is very public in the sense that, at least with respect to the farming of the ocean, the ocean is a common heritage of all humanity. The ocean on California’s coast is a particular interest to people in California. So we do appreciate all the support that we can get. 

For people who love seaweed: if you eat seaweed, feel free to call your representative and say, “Hey, you know, maybe we don’t want more fossil fuel. But we do want more biofuel, we want more seaweed, we want sustainable aviation fuel. We think that we can produce those things. We want to bring those jobs and that economic development where we live in California.” So we’re working to achieve that.

Host Raj Daniels 17:59

Now, you mentioned projects; earlier, we were talking about the different products. What about — I’m looking at your website — the bioremediation. How do you envision using seaweed or kelp for bioremediation?

Brandon Barney 18:10

This is one of the most important questions. I’m so happy that you asked. To some extent, seaweed is doing this naturally. And we can benefit from this. For illustration, as a part of our agricultural activities in California, we fertilize the land. The Green Revolution is one of the most impactful things that ever happened. 

One out of every three people — something in that area, maybe more — are alive because of the Green Revolution, where we learned how to create nutrients for plants. A lot of that wonderful fertilizer actually runs off into the ocean when it enters the ocean. It can disrupt the ecosystems and some sensitive coastal regions. There’s a lot of research done not only here in California, but also on the east coast, in Alaska, in Europe, and in other places that show that seaweed installations or seaweed farms can absorb a lot of the agricultural runoff. And then we can recycle the nutrients back into the soil and close this loop. 

Rather than continuing to mine more and more and produce more and more fertilizer, we may be able to just absorb some of the runoff and then recycle it to the soil. That’s a major vision that we have and it’s one of our key goals: we can help remediate coastal waters and regenerate ecosystems and fish habitat by essentially farming seaweed.

Host Raj Daniels 19:44

That’s very interesting. And I’m going to shift gears here to get to the crux of our conversation, which is the why behind what you do. You mentioned your friend’s brother, I believe who was in the monastery, he came and told you about seaweed. So you saw potential opportunity there. Maybe part of it was an economic opportunity. But now you’ve dedicated your life — or a small part of your life, the last four years — towards farming kelp, seaweed. What’s your “Why?” What drives you? What made you say, “This is the area I want to double down on?”

Brandon Barney 20:13

Well, for me, what I read about — I’m just somewhat of a bookish person. I grew up in the software generation. My idols were Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. And I believe that software was the solution to many problems. And I still believe that. I think that we’re still at the birth of the software revolution. 

I started to read in a lot of different journals that biology was also coming in. It was empowered by software. Now with Bioinformatics, computers, lower cost, microbiological tools, and refinements in our handling of sensitive biological materials, microscopes, and whatnot, there’s going to be another evolution. Maybe DNA was the original software. 

And so I kind of thought to myself, “How can I, you know, unify my software and computational and quantitative approach and engage in this revolution of biology, given the context of climate change?” And my personal opinion was that, typically in the computing world, my instincts are to go where the power is. Where is the most powerful supercomputer? Or what is the most efficient operating system? What is the most widely used HTML version? 

I’m interested in impact. And when I studied biology, I was really focused on the best: the biggest, the fastest, the strongest, and the best. And what I found myself really concentrated on are what they call the primary producers. In the ecosystem, microalgae, macroalgae, these things along with land plants are the basis of the entire ecosystem. They produce the biomass, which is then eaten by something and eaten by something else, and eaten by something else. They are the solar cells of the biosphere, so to speak. And then within that, I said, “Which is the biggest and the baddest and the best?” Giant kelp is that winner, actually. Among all the photosynthesizing organisms, it has the most productivity per area. And so that’s how I went through this process of selection. I said, “What can be done with kelp? How can you do it?” 

We stumbled into — it reminds me almost of the internet. In the 1970s, during the the first major oil crisis, the US government, General Electric, and Gas Research Institute put an enormous amount of money at the problem: farming giant kelp in the ocean. And then, after 10 or 15 years, it goes overseas; in China, they really scale up their farming — they have a similar type of seaweed. And so a lot of the intermediate markets have actually been captured by alginate producers in China. But the resource issues have come back in the same way that they were in the 1970s. And so there’s been a fresh round of investment in the European Union, in America, in automated seaweed farming. 

It was too soon in the 1970s. The technology wasn’t there. The costs were too high. Now, with the reductions in costs, floating wind turbines, improved, cheap, high-resolution satellite photography, underwater drones, and all of this amazing fruit of the information technology revolution, it’s now going to be possible for automated, large-scale seaweed farms to exist well off the coast, beyond their line of sight, producing enough biomass to really address some of these critical issues that we’re facing. And it’s some of our most populated coastal regions in their regions around them. 

I was boxed into it, actually. I want to try to solve the problem. I did not study biology. So I just had to filter what is the most powerful species within nature according to the criteria that I set out. And that’s how I kind of have reached this strong conviction that, among many other things, we need to study nature very carefully to understand, as we’re starting to learn, the power of microbes, microbiology, and the microbiome. But I think we also have to respect the insects. 

You and I, Raj, have previously maybe discussed this in some depth, but I personally think that from seaweed, I look at nature. What’s the next step? If I walk down a beach, what is nature telling me? And then I try to study that very carefully, those interactions, and then I try to think very carefully about the big problems, the crises that are happening, and how I can swim with what nature is doing but direct it towards some human problem.

Host Raj Daniels 25:06

I like the idea of swimming with what nature is doing. You mentioned microalgae and macroalgae. Have you seen the recent movie on Netflix, Fantastic Fungi?

Brandon Barney 25:15

Yes, I have. Absolutely. It’s amazing. This is such an important thing that you mentioned. Your podcast is called Bigger Than Us, if I’m not mistaken.

Host Raj Daniels 25:25

That’s correct.

Brandon Barney 25:26

Okay. So like, the world consists of fungi. And we don’t talk about them at all. You can go back to what they tried to teach us when we were all children in middle school. They’d sit you down, I don’t know, middle school, high school, or wherever you’re in the world, wherever they sequence it. And they say, “There are bacteria, there are animals, there are plants, there are protists, and there are fungi.” Now I go out and I read the newspaper, all these guys are having all these brilliant ideas of uses of fungi. And I have to ask myself, “Why didn’t I ever think about fungi?” My biology teacher tried to help me. She didn’t elevate the — it was all there. Those are the kingdoms of life. These are the things that are here. You know, I want to tell you something about fungi that gets me really, really excited. I’m almost giving away a business but I want competition in this area. I like to read a lot. I read some papers that fungi, certain species of them, can eat radioactive waste.

Host Raj Daniels 26:19

That’s amazing.

Brandon Barney 26:20

And I hear everyone’s trying to make leather. Just wait till I finish this seaweed thing. I’ve got a plan for fungi. We need to follow nature. They’re the decomposers of nature.

Host Raj Daniels 26:29

They are. So now earlier, you mentioned solving problems. So what’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned on your journey so far?

Brandon Barney 26:37

The biggest problem is what the spiritual people are talking about. It’s inside myself. the reason why I have not achieved the goal is, in part, because I haven’t yet figured out how to reach out to everyone. I was talking to one of my friends, a very devout Christian. And we were talking about, “Was Jesus serious when he said to love your enemies the way you love yourself?” My friend commented something that I didn’t know, that Martin Luther King said, “If we just nonviolently go to jail and peacefully protest, we can change people’s hearts.” And I believe that he was right to some extent. Maybe the work is not yet finished, but I think that some of these spiritual ideas about the way to solve a problem is not necessarily raising a bigger round, hiring more smart people, having a better PR firm, but trying to love the regulators, maybe. How could we love them? What can we do? How can we think about this in a different way? I only comment that in a lot of countries where I’ve seen the rapid expansion of the industry, some of our competitors have this very close coupling between the coastal people, the farmers, the processors, and the government. And they’re all together, and they’re all on the same team. It’s hard for me to understand how to replicate that success as I see how some of our competition overseas is doing it without thinking that maybe it’s not that we need just more money. We need to approach the institutions and the other elements, at least if we are looking to produce here in North America and create more and more unity, like there is in Korea or in Japan, in some of our regions.

Host Raj Daniels 28:21

So what’s your lesson in that?

Brandon Barney 28:24

The lesson is that it’s not just brainpower. It’s not just financial resources or brainpower. For seaweed farming to succeed, and for lots of seaweed products, especially in agriculture, we have to listen and engage with these major other groups. It’s not like software, where we can find a data center somewhere where there’s hydropower, it’s going to be clean energy, and we have guys in their laptops in their apartments. No one can kind of really see what’s happening. Our business is in the water, it’s public. And so we can’t just be right, it has to feel right for everyone. Which is difficult. It has to feel right for the people to accept it. It can’t just be intellectually right or scientifically correct.

Host Raj Daniels 29:13

I can understand that. Now, speaking of feeling, right, let’s move into the future. It’s 2030. Let’s say Newsweek, Businessweek, or Fortune were to write a headline about Primary Ocean. What would you like it to read?

Brandon Barney 29:28

Primary Ocean has reached 100 million acres covered by organic kelp, regenerating key agricultural land essential for the continuation of the human species.

Host Raj Daniels 29:45

That’s a beautiful headline.

Brandon Barney 29:46

We’re working every day to achieve it, but we need your help.

Host Raj Daniels 29:49

I’m on board. I love it. I love it. Well, before I get to my last question, can you share more information about the movie “They Say It Can’t Be Done” and where people can find it.

Brandon Barney 29:58

Yes. So there is a film that addresses not just our company, but other exciting and very interesting companies, including organ printing, to replace organs for people who need them; different ways of producing meat, where you don’t have to harm any living creature. You may be able to produce chicken in a factory, in a cleanroom, the same way you can produce a vaccine. I think that the best way to find out more information is to either go to the website, theysayitcantbedone.com. And on that website, depending on whether you use Apple TV, or YouTube. or you have a particular cable provider, you’ll be able to link to the best way for you to watch the film, which I highly recommend. But of course, you can also just search on YouTube. There are trailers. Pretty much on Apple TV or any streaming platform, if you search, “They Say It Can’t Be Done,” you should be able to find it.

Host Raj Daniels 30:55

I appreciate that, Brandon, and I’ll put it in the show notes too. Now, last question. Earlier you mentioned listening and engaging, which is also advice and words of wisdom. But if you could share some specific advice, words of wisdom, or recommendations, and it could be professional or personal, with the audience, what would it be?

Brandon Barney 31:11

I started to basically wake up earlier and to try to walk 10,000 steps, which is about five miles, just walk — whether talking on the phone or listening to audiobooks — every day, since I’ve been on Zoom back-to-back and very busy. And I have to say that I believe that it’s helped me. It’s the most help that I could do, was to try to take care of myself, and not just wearing masks and following public health advice. I definitely could say that if we all just walked around our neighborhoods more and actively kept our bodies in good shape, we would meet our goals and achieve things much more effectively.

Host Raj Daniels 31:50

It sounds like coming back to that “swimming with nature” idea.

Brandon Barney 31:54

We’re bipedal, I’ll tell you. We’re bipedal organisms. I tell people, as much as I love going to the gym for other people, I really believe that we were meant to walk around a little bit more than we’re doing right now. I’d love to go on a walk with you, Raj. I’ll see you in Dallas or if you ever come to LA. It’s one of my favorite things.


Host Raj Daniels 00:47

Brandon, how are you doing today?

Brandon Barney 01:16

You know, I’m so grateful to join you. I just got back from a walk. It’s a beautiful day in sunny southern California. And I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Host Raj Daniels 01:26

Brandon, I am too, and this may sound like a strange place to start, but how do you farm kelp?

Brandon Barney 01:33

Well, nature does most of the work, to be honest with you. We try to get our equipment, which is very sustainable, into position. That’s the most difficult part. Getting your kelp farm anchored in the ocean floor — or if it’s floating — really requires a set of marine engineering skills and courage that is uncommon. It’s a little bit different than fishing. The ocean is sort of a final frontier of sorts. It’s less explored than many planets and the energy in the ocean from the tides and the moon is extraordinary. That’s the hard part. But once you get your seeded lines, and you see them on land in position, you don’t need any fertilizer, you don’t need any water, you don’t have to irrigate your kelp farm. And from there you visit it and make sure all the equipment and everything is in good order, but the kelp really grows on its own. It is a miracle plant. Our species, giant kelp, is the fastest growing photosynthesizing sort of organism. It’s reported to grow two or three feet a day. I haven’t seen it grow on our farm that fast. And they keep telling you, don’t worry. It’s coming. But it does grow extraordinarily fast. It’s a miracle plant, I like to call it.

Host Raj Daniels 03:00

It sounds like the bamboo of the water.

Brandon Barney 03:02

Yes, exactly right. And in Asia, where kelp farming is done at a scale where you can literally take satellite photographs and see it from space, bamboo plays a special role in the sustainable drying of kelp. Bamboo poles are basically used to hold seaweed up as it air dries. I learned that recently and I’ve been inspired. We’re looking, as we continue to expand our future production, to embrace bamboo potentially as a way of teaming with seaweed to reach a regenerative and sustainable future.

Host Raj Daniels 03:39

And you mentioned seaweed. How is kelp different from seaweed?

Brandon Barney 03:42

You know, kelp is a type of seaweed. They’re used interchangeably by many people. That’s very familiar, and you’re not misspeaking if you use them. But if you talk to a seaweed scientist, or if you go to a seaweed research conference and dig into it a little bit, the kelps are mainly the brown larger types of seaweed, whereas there are red and green types of seaweed that are not usually referred to as kelps.

Host Raj Daniels 04:10

I’m laughing because you mentioned the seaweed conference.

Brandon Barney 04:13

Well, I’ll tell you the last seaweed conference I attended was extraordinary. I was with the CEO of our company, Scotty Schmidt, and a team of our friends from all around the world. It took place in Korea on Jeju Island. This was before the pandemic, of course. I think it was April 2019, I believe, but it happens every three years. There are seaweed researchers from all over the world. And I can tell you that from the ice cream that you may enjoy at dessert tonight to the organic food that you plan to pick up from the market later today or even sustainable packaging, seaweed is all around us, in our lives and in many supply chains. It’s just an exciting time to be in the community. These conferences have been suspended due to COVID. But I believe the next one is going to be in Australia and Tasmania. And I’m looking forward to it.

Host Raj Daniels 05:17

Since we started speaking about kelp. Can you give the audience an overview of Primary Ocean and your role at the organization?

Brandon Barney 05:23

Yes. So Primary Ocean is one of the US’s leading seaweed companies. We’re very proud to say that. Founded four years ago. I co-founded the company with two of my best friends, Scotty and Brian Schmidt. We’ve been lucky and we’ve worked hard. And we are currently involved throughout the value chain, from cultivation to processing to marketing and sales of seaweed products, increasingly around the world. We talked about kelp farming. That’s what we’re most well known for. Because we’re one of a group of companies, and we’re not alone. 

And our partners are very experienced companies, many of them from Europe or even Chile. Other parts of the world. We’re leading the commercialization piece: how to turn this kelp farm’s kelp into valuable products that solve human problems. But our cultivation wing is very exciting because of the prospect of farming large amounts of the ocean in a clean and sustainable way. To then take that rich superfood and do things with it that we need urgently in the soil, to help regenerate the soil, improve yield, and reduce the need for chemicals in our agriculture; or then, to replace certain petrochemicals. As we want to move away from fossil fuels, we need to replace certain chemicals that fossil fuel derivatives are involved in many supply chains. And seaweed is a kelp. Giant kelp is a major resource for that. 

But it goes on and on, even into biofuels, sustainable aviation fuel, etc. It’s just in the cultivation side, there’s so much excitement to no longer take from the natural world and to really use the power of the ocean, one of nature’s super-weight heavyweights in terms of biomass productivity, and then to use all this biomass and then work to solve with others many of these other problems. Super exciting. 

But we do have a sort of contract factory, which we’re very proud of. It’s one of our jewels. We’re able to produce our liquid organic agricultural input. It’s a giant kelp product that’s currently being used by farmers throughout the United States, increasingly. We’re happy to send anyone any trials. It’s actually available on Amazon. It’s called OrganiKelp. Our factory also produces some animal feed products, like chicken feeds, and cosmetic products. But our focus is on our agricultural division right now, especially as the US is facing historic drought, and many other food-producing regions of the world are dealing with increasingly difficult conditions due to climate change. 

And so we’re really focused on trying to solve this water crisis and the soil crisis with our giant kelp seaweed product portfolio. Recently, we added to our board some very senior executives in the global BioAg linkages community led by Roger Tripathi. And we’re really looking forward to this upcoming quarter working with them and continuing to work with more farmers around the world to address these major crises that we’re facing.

Host Raj Daniels 08:33

Now. How did you and your friends decide to become kelp farmers?

Brandon Barney 08:37

The original story is that one of my best friends and one of our partners, Brian Schmidt, was in a monastery. And he was eating mainly spirulina as a nutrient while fasting. He returned, and he told his brother, one of my dear friends, Scotty, that seaweed was going to be his future. At that time, I was really focused on hosting and producing a show about the future of science and technology. 

And so I told Brian, I said, “Hey, if you are interested in seaweed, in the future of seaweed, let’s call a bunch of seaweed scientists and call a bunch of seaweed companies and see. What will people tell us about these articles that we’ve read, that seaweed can address methane mitigation and livestock, or that seaweed can address these different problems?” And so we started doing that. For about a year we would, every week, call another research group, whether in Norway, or Korea, or in Kansas, or a company in Maine, or Alaska, or in Chile. And eventually, we learned a lot. 

We ended up investing in a company called the Catalina Sea Ranch, which was the US’s first offshore mussel farm, which also had seaweed rights and, later, one large US research grant to farm seaweed. And so we sort of went to grad school, so to speak. Spent about a year, just calling every seaweed company in the — there’s an international seaweed symposium, so you can go to the library and get the book of the last one. And then at the back, it has everyone who attended the email addresses and phone numbers. We just, like investigative journalists, hit the books and just called up a bunch of people. And what ended up happening is we discovered a really fast-growing industry where there is no major industry for kelp farming or large-scale kelp processing in California. 

And so we’re able to participate in this international exchange of knowledge, experience, and advanced technology and put all these pieces together to address some of the major goals of California and the US: to become more sustainable, etc. So, we did not get our Ph.D.s in seaweed prior to starting our company. But we have gotten a Ph.D. in hard work and endured many different challenges. And ultimately we are very happy to be working with people who have been working in this field their entire lives. 

So the principal investigator on our ARPA-E grant is Javier Infante, and he is a Chilean expert among experts of seaweed farming with experience, specifically, in giant kelp. And our team also includes Olavur Gregersen, who is the great Faroese seaweed farmer of Northern Europe, operating one of the largest, most offshore seaweed farms in the Arctic Ocean. And also Hortimare, the leading seaweed hatchery company. And so we’re combining the experts from around the world. And we see ourselves largely as cheerleaders and largely as people who are the glue that pieces together the cultivation, the processing, and the product performance for the customers, studying how we can formulate the products to meet the needs of our end customers. We work throughout the value chain to increase the rate of which this sort of revolution can really impact people’s lives.

Host Raj Daniels 12:14

What are seaweed rights?

Brandon Barney 12:17

There’s a film, actually, that is the best overview of this. It’s called “They Say It Can’t Be Done.” Our challenges to get the seaweed rights are discussed in the film. The coast of the US is governed by a variety of different organizations and institutions: the Coast Guard, the California Coastal Commission, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the US Navy, and US Army Corps of Engineers, and many different organizations have a right to the water around the coast in some way, shape, or form. And so to have a seaweed farm, or even to wild harvest seaweed from a location, you have to complete a tremendous amount of paperwork with all the relevant interests to explain what you’re doing and how it’s going to be beneficial for society. And that whole process is what I’m referring to by “the seaweed rights.”

Host Raj Daniels 13:19

And how long does it take to get permission to form seaweed or get seaweed rights?

Brandon Barney 13:24

If you have to ask, the industry is not for you? How badly do you want the CME rights?

Host Raj Daniels 13:34

That long, huh?

Brandon Barney 13:36

What I can say is that I could tell you something that I believe, but if it took longer than that, I would not want you to — what we’ve learned is that when you’re dealing with a democratic society, a big state like California, in particular, there are a lot of interests. 

We had hoped that California would expand the areas for seaweed cultivation in a faster way. We’re very optimistic that the recent news — with respect to the governor and the president announcing the large offshore wind project in Northern California, and that the Navy is finally signed off on that — will open up California waters to renewable energy projects and other renewable projects. We don’t really see it as any particular group’s fault, or that there’s any issue as we become wise in the process. This is new. The people are curious, and they want to know. 

Many of these technologies are in development or have been only recently made possible through the amazing revolution of technology that we’ve all lived through. So I’ve tried to become very patient as we are working our way through the regulatory process. And I’m very optimistic that the permits for all the projects that we’ve applied for and many of our sister projects and other research groups and companies will be approved. But currently there is a backlog. 

You know, we welcome people to call their Senator. I saw that California had a large surplus. I said, “Hey, let’s, let’s increase the staffing, perhaps, maybe on a contract basis for a lot of the agencies that have been understaffed, just to help boost the economic development of the state.” We’ve heard from regulators and different people in different offices, that they wished that they had more help, that there’s a lot of work. We hope that California would lead and that the United States would lead the world in the use of the ocean because we have a lot of it. 

The government, in our research group, funds our research because the Department of Energy looked out and they said, “Wow, look at all this great ocean space. If we could do something useful with it, that was not harmful to the ecosystem, we could better utilize some of our land resources and return some areas of land back to nature with the US’s exclusive economic zone. But it is a process and we appreciate — like this conversation with you — people learning about the issue and getting involved, whether they’re for or they’re almost for what we’re doing. They’re lukewarm. We hope to convince them. I have to tell you: one of the groups we’ve been in discussions with very early is the fishers, the fishing group. 

And a lot of fishers feel that the environmental protection in California has protected large areas of the coast, so they’re not able to fish in those areas. And they’re worried that if seaweed farming or offshore wind and all these new projects keep coming, then some of their ancestral livelihoods are threatened. There are interests of Native tribes, Indigenous tribes. One of the black swans of our planning, so to speak, which we feel is probably just, or we agree is just, is the complexity of dealing with all of the Native tribes in California, what historical burial grounds may be under the ocean, or what unknowns may be associated with it. So our industry is very public in the sense that, at least with respect to the farming of the ocean, the ocean is a common heritage of all humanity. The ocean on California’s coast is a particular interest to people in California. So we do appreciate all the support that we can get. 

For people who love seaweed: if you eat seaweed, feel free to call your representative and say, “Hey, you know, maybe we don’t want more fossil fuel. But we do want more biofuel, we want more seaweed, we want sustainable aviation fuel. We think that we can produce those things. We want to bring those jobs and that economic development where we live in California.” So we’re working to achieve that.

Host Raj Daniels 17:59

Now, you mentioned projects; earlier, we were talking about the different products. What about — I’m looking at your website — the bioremediation. How do you envision using seaweed or kelp for bioremediation?

Brandon Barney 18:10

This is one of the most important questions. I’m so happy that you asked. To some extent, seaweed is doing this naturally. And we can benefit from this. For illustration, as a part of our agricultural activities in California, we fertilize the land. The Green Revolution is one of the most impactful things that ever happened. 

One out of every three people — something in that area, maybe more — are alive because of the Green Revolution, where we learned how to create nutrients for plants. A lot of that wonderful fertilizer actually runs off into the ocean when it enters the ocean. It can disrupt the ecosystems and some sensitive coastal regions. There’s a lot of research done not only here in California, but also on the east coast, in Alaska, in Europe, and in other places that show that seaweed installations or seaweed farms can absorb a lot of the agricultural runoff. And then we can recycle the nutrients back into the soil and close this loop. 

Rather than continuing to mine more and more and produce more and more fertilizer, we may be able to just absorb some of the runoff and then recycle it to the soil. That’s a major vision that we have and it’s one of our key goals: we can help remediate coastal waters and regenerate ecosystems and fish habitat by essentially farming seaweed.

Host Raj Daniels 19:44

That’s very interesting. And I’m going to shift gears here to get to the crux of our conversation, which is the why behind what you do. You mentioned your friend’s brother, I believe who was in the monastery, he came and told you about seaweed. So you saw potential opportunity there. Maybe part of it was an economic opportunity. But now you’ve dedicated your life — or a small part of your life, the last four years — towards farming kelp, seaweed. What’s your “Why?” What drives you? What made you say, “This is the area I want to double down on?”

Brandon Barney 20:13

Well, for me, what I read about — I’m just somewhat of a bookish person. I grew up in the software generation. My idols were Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. And I believe that software was the solution to many problems. And I still believe that. I think that we’re still at the birth of the software revolution. 

I started to read in a lot of different journals that biology was also coming in. It was empowered by software. Now with Bioinformatics, computers, lower cost, microbiological tools, and refinements in our handling of sensitive biological materials, microscopes, and whatnot, there’s going to be another evolution. Maybe DNA was the original software. 

And so I kind of thought to myself, “How can I, you know, unify my software and computational and quantitative approach and engage in this revolution of biology, given the context of climate change?” And my personal opinion was that, typically in the computing world, my instincts are to go where the power is. Where is the most powerful supercomputer? Or what is the most efficient operating system? What is the most widely used HTML version? 

I’m interested in impact. And when I studied biology, I was really focused on the best: the biggest, the fastest, the strongest, and the best. And what I found myself really concentrated on are what they call the primary producers. In the ecosystem, microalgae, macroalgae, these things along with land plants are the basis of the entire ecosystem. They produce the biomass, which is then eaten by something and eaten by something else, and eaten by something else. They are the solar cells of the biosphere, so to speak. And then within that, I said, “Which is the biggest and the baddest and the best?” Giant kelp is that winner, actually. Among all the photosynthesizing organisms, it has the most productivity per area. And so that’s how I went through this process of selection. I said, “What can be done with kelp? How can you do it?” 

We stumbled into — it reminds me almost of the internet. In the 1970s, during the the first major oil crisis, the US government, General Electric, and Gas Research Institute put an enormous amount of money at the problem: farming giant kelp in the ocean. And then, after 10 or 15 years, it goes overseas; in China, they really scale up their farming — they have a similar type of seaweed. And so a lot of the intermediate markets have actually been captured by alginate producers in China. But the resource issues have come back in the same way that they were in the 1970s. And so there’s been a fresh round of investment in the European Union, in America, in automated seaweed farming. 

It was too soon in the 1970s. The technology wasn’t there. The costs were too high. Now, with the reductions in costs, floating wind turbines, improved, cheap, high-resolution satellite photography, underwater drones, and all of this amazing fruit of the information technology revolution, it’s now going to be possible for automated, large-scale seaweed farms to exist well off the coast, beyond their line of sight, producing enough biomass to really address some of these critical issues that we’re facing. And it’s some of our most populated coastal regions in their regions around them. 

I was boxed into it, actually. I want to try to solve the problem. I did not study biology. So I just had to filter what is the most powerful species within nature according to the criteria that I set out. And that’s how I kind of have reached this strong conviction that, among many other things, we need to study nature very carefully to understand, as we’re starting to learn, the power of microbes, microbiology, and the microbiome. But I think we also have to respect the insects. 

You and I, Raj, have previously maybe discussed this in some depth, but I personally think that from seaweed, I look at nature. What’s the next step? If I walk down a beach, what is nature telling me? And then I try to study that very carefully, those interactions, and then I try to think very carefully about the big problems, the crises that are happening, and how I can swim with what nature is doing but direct it towards some human problem.

Host Raj Daniels 25:06

I like the idea of swimming with what nature is doing. You mentioned microalgae and macroalgae. Have you seen the recent movie on Netflix, Fantastic Fungi?

Brandon Barney 25:15

Yes, I have. Absolutely. It’s amazing. This is such an important thing that you mentioned. Your podcast is called Bigger Than Us, if I’m not mistaken.

Host Raj Daniels 25:25

That’s correct.

Brandon Barney 25:26

Okay. So like, the world consists of fungi. And we don’t talk about them at all. You can go back to what they tried to teach us when we were all children in middle school. They’d sit you down, I don’t know, middle school, high school, or wherever you’re in the world, wherever they sequence it. And they say, “There are bacteria, there are animals, there are plants, there are protists, and there are fungi.” Now I go out and I read the newspaper, all these guys are having all these brilliant ideas of uses of fungi. And I have to ask myself, “Why didn’t I ever think about fungi?” My biology teacher tried to help me. She didn’t elevate the — it was all there. Those are the kingdoms of life. These are the things that are here. You know, I want to tell you something about fungi that gets me really, really excited. I’m almost giving away a business but I want competition in this area. I like to read a lot. I read some papers that fungi, certain species of them, can eat radioactive waste.

Host Raj Daniels 26:19

That’s amazing.

Brandon Barney 26:20

And I hear everyone’s trying to make leather. Just wait till I finish this seaweed thing. I’ve got a plan for fungi. We need to follow nature. They’re the decomposers of nature.

Host Raj Daniels 26:29

They are. So now earlier, you mentioned solving problems. So what’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned on your journey so far?

Brandon Barney 26:37

The biggest problem is what the spiritual people are talking about. It’s inside myself. the reason why I have not achieved the goal is, in part, because I haven’t yet figured out how to reach out to everyone. I was talking to one of my friends, a very devout Christian. And we were talking about, “Was Jesus serious when he said to love your enemies the way you love yourself?” My friend commented something that I didn’t know, that Martin Luther King said, “If we just nonviolently go to jail and peacefully protest, we can change people’s hearts.” And I believe that he was right to some extent. Maybe the work is not yet finished, but I think that some of these spiritual ideas about the way to solve a problem is not necessarily raising a bigger round, hiring more smart people, having a better PR firm, but trying to love the regulators, maybe. How could we love them? What can we do? How can we think about this in a different way? I only comment that in a lot of countries where I’ve seen the rapid expansion of the industry, some of our competitors have this very close coupling between the coastal people, the farmers, the processors, and the government. And they’re all together, and they’re all on the same team. It’s hard for me to understand how to replicate that success as I see how some of our competition overseas is doing it without thinking that maybe it’s not that we need just more money. We need to approach the institutions and the other elements, at least if we are looking to produce here in North America and create more and more unity, like there is in Korea or in Japan, in some of our regions.

Host Raj Daniels 28:21

So what’s your lesson in that?

Brandon Barney 28:24

The lesson is that it’s not just brainpower. It’s not just financial resources or brainpower. For seaweed farming to succeed, and for lots of seaweed products, especially in agriculture, we have to listen and engage with these major other groups. It’s not like software, where we can find a data center somewhere where there’s hydropower, it’s going to be clean energy, and we have guys in their laptops in their apartments. No one can kind of really see what’s happening. Our business is in the water, it’s public. And so we can’t just be right, it has to feel right for everyone. Which is difficult. It has to feel right for the people to accept it. It can’t just be intellectually right or scientifically correct.

Host Raj Daniels 29:13

I can understand that. Now, speaking of feeling, right, let’s move into the future. It’s 2030. Let’s say Newsweek, Businessweek, or Fortune were to write a headline about Primary Ocean. What would you like it to read?

Brandon Barney 29:28

Primary Ocean has reached 100 million acres covered by organic kelp, regenerating key agricultural land essential for the continuation of the human species.

Host Raj Daniels 29:45

That’s a beautiful headline.

Brandon Barney 29:46

We’re working every day to achieve it, but we need your help.

Host Raj Daniels 29:49

I’m on board. I love it. I love it. Well, before I get to my last question, can you share more information about the movie “They Say It Can’t Be Done” and where people can find it.

Brandon Barney 29:58

Yes. So there is a film that addresses not just our company, but other exciting and very interesting companies, including organ printing, to replace organs for people who need them; different ways of producing meat, where you don’t have to harm any living creature. You may be able to produce chicken in a factory, in a cleanroom, the same way you can produce a vaccine. I think that the best way to find out more information is to either go to the website, theysayitcantbedone.com. And on that website, depending on whether you use Apple TV, or YouTube. or you have a particular cable provider, you’ll be able to link to the best way for you to watch the film, which I highly recommend. But of course, you can also just search on YouTube. There are trailers. Pretty much on Apple TV or any streaming platform, if you search, “They Say It Can’t Be Done,” you should be able to find it.

Host Raj Daniels 30:55

I appreciate that, Brandon, and I’ll put it in the show notes too. Now, last question. Earlier you mentioned listening and engaging, which is also advice and words of wisdom. But if you could share some specific advice, words of wisdom, or recommendations, and it could be professional or personal, with the audience, what would it be?

Brandon Barney 31:11

I started to basically wake up earlier and to try to walk 10,000 steps, which is about five miles, just walk — whether talking on the phone or listening to audiobooks — every day, since I’ve been on Zoom back-to-back and very busy. And I have to say that I believe that it’s helped me. It’s the most help that I could do, was to try to take care of myself, and not just wearing masks and following public health advice. I definitely could say that if we all just walked around our neighborhoods more and actively kept our bodies in good shape, we would meet our goals and achieve things much more effectively.

Host Raj Daniels 31:50

It sounds like coming back to that “swimming with nature” idea.

Brandon Barney 31:54

We’re bipedal, I’ll tell you. We’re bipedal organisms. I tell people, as much as I love going to the gym for other people, I really believe that we were meant to walk around a little bit more than we’re doing right now. I’d love to go on a walk with you, Raj. I’ll see you in Dallas or if you ever come to LA. It’s one of my favorite things.


Before we go, I’m excited to share that we’ve launched the Bigger Than Us comic strip, The Adventures of Mira and Nexi.

If you like our show, please give us a rating and review on iTunes. And you can show your support by sharing our show with a friend or reach out to us on social media where you can find us at our Nexus PMG handle.

If there’s a subject or topic you’d like to hear about, send Raj Daniels an email at BTU@NexusPMG.com or contact me via our website, NexusPMG.com. While you’re there, you can sign up for our monthly newsletter where we share what we’re reading and thinking about in the cleantech green tech sectors

Raj Daniels

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