There may be a case for pursuing this in developing nations in particular. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/M44rw22o5dbrRaA8F/why-and-how-to-start-a-for-profit-company-serving-emerging
Food security appears to be pretty precarious across the world (from a cursory view eg it seems like US doesn’t even have strategic reserves https://www.americansecurityproject.org/food-insecurity-why-the-u-s-needs-a-strategic-food-reserve/) & could easily lead to pretty bad outcomes; many an empire has been crushed by simple famines (including conflict). We probably shouldn’t assume that competent “hard men” to step up and take the reins, as people seemed to expected during covid.
Building up uncorrelated food portfolio seems under explored & not just for lack-of-sunlight type scenarios that Allfed have seemed primarily focused on. I’m not sure if bivalves fit this, but it definitely seems plausible that it’s sufficiently uncorrelated and should be explored further.
Most biorisk ppl seem to be largely focused on humans; vaccines, bunkers, PPE etc. But biorisks among the global food supply is also a massive failure point (crops are often clones or single species & are a lot harder to PPE lol).
Anyway, coupling the animal welfare case with global poverty/health & food security seems like an interesting combination. One could focus on regions where food security is low, malnutrition & poverty are high, and where factory farming has yet to gain a foothold.
When developing nations’ protein intake increases as their GDP rises, if they already have robust bivalve industries, they may be far less likely to be as chicken/pig heavy as current western nations. Especially if one seeds good sustainability messaging years prior etc.
Arguments around it being hard to get people to change their dietary habits are far less strong for these regions.
Somalia, might be an interesting candidate given current events & copious coastlines. Even in non-famine times you could possibly see benefits of reduced iodine/iron/zinc/protein deficiencies. Improving IQ, immunity, fertility etc https://ourworldindata.org/micronutrient-deficiency
Or Senegal given it’s already established oyster industry and Wave’s strategic placement (if relevant)
There are probably many more ways than one to approach this:
- Teaching the skills so locals can grow themselves (some charities already do this we could likely evaluate their operations to see how they stack up against other interventions. I believe some focus on teaching women, so there might be additional benefit of financial empowerment)
- Focus on methods for scaling/efficiency (since people have expressed concern as to the number of mussels that equate to a cow in caloric terms, perhaps there are larger species or growth tech that could reduce their downside uncertainty)
- Insurance for farms.
- Be ambitious and go for scale with a for-profit approach.
It also sounds like something environmentalists might also support, so perhaps lends the possibility of also raising capital from rich conservationist types, rather than solely EA funds.
On a positive. Cool dashboard :p
More pls.