Europe's seaweed farms - 19th September 2022

Seaweed is an amazing crop. Sea farmers are keen to farm it in the North Sea.

Seaweed has so many uses these days. Seaweed is very popular in soups. It has a lot of other uses too. Farmers use seaweed to feed animals and use it as fertiliser for crops. Seaweed is used in beauty products. It is used for packaging which means less plastic.

Seaweed is a very valuable crop and most of it is grown in Asia. Some people are now thinking about growing seaweed in Europe's North Sea. They think the value will continue to grow. It's already worth $40 billion. Seaweed is so useful and some believe growing more would be a good business.

The European Union is paying for seaweed projects in Scotland, Ireland and the Netherlands. The Dutch want to increase the amount of seaweed they produce, in the future.

Not everybody agrees with growing large amounts of seaweed. Environmentalists are worried about sea life in the ocean. It will create problems for other sea life.

The Seaweed Company, a Dutch business, is still very keen to grow their company.