Water-Food Nexus // An Analysis of Future Sustainable Aquatic Farming

By Sidney Batchelder, Robert Le, William F. Terry IV and Jeff Thomas. As a result of the world population growth in the next 100 years, it will be necessary to find more viable methods of food production. This report examines the prospect of using a sustainable oceanic farm to feed future populations. Advances in genetic engineering to develop salt-tolerant rice will allow rice to be grown alongside algae to feed the growing population. Future strides in robotics will be an enabling technology to manage and to make the farm viable. Economic models were constructed to determine if halophytic farming is viable as well as what factors affect our findings. Results of this modeling have shown that certain factors can be optimized in the future to make oceanic farming viable.