Marine AgriFuture – Olakai Hawaii

Still a very young company, Marine AgriFuture offers Kahuku sea asparagus tips, a tender and crispy sea vegetable. (It also goes by the names pickleweed, glasswort, sea bean, sea pickle and marsh samphire.) Sea asparagus is packed with phytochemicals that may help to protect the liver, heart and cellular DNA. It is also rich in vitamins A, C, B2 and B15; amino acids; and minerals, such as iron, calcium and magnesium.

Perhaps its healthful properties are one reason behind sea asparagus being called the “it” crop of 2006, when Marine AgriFuture began offering it on Oahu. The company reports that this vegetable may aid weight loss, boost energy, enhance the immune system, make certain vaccines more effective and destroy some types of tumor cells, particularly lung and blood cancers.

Upon its launch in 2006, sea asparagus began showing up on the menus of several Oahu restaurants. Among them was Alan Wong’s Restaurant. Chef Wong says, “I like the crunch and burst of saltiness.” There, sea asparagus was served with moi carpaccio and fresh truffle soy vinaigrette.

Grown hydroponically on Oahu’s North Shore, sea asparagus is cultivated in salt water ponds that are inspected frequently for quality control. The region’s weather is good for year-round production.

Marine AgriFuture’s sea asparagus can be purchased at Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation farmers’ markets, R. Field Wine Co., Marukai Wholesale Mart, Times Supermarket and Tamashiro Market.

Marine AgriFutures
Marine AgriFutures is an emerging concept/company working on using ocean resources and seawater systems to produce freshwater and grow crops, blending marine technology + agriculture.

One example mentioned recently in Hawaii media describes a system that:

Uses saltwater processes with sea plants (like sea asparagus)
Converts or helps produce freshwater
Enables cultivation of crops such as ogo (limu/seaweed) and rice in environments where freshwater is scarce.

Core idea
The approach tries to solve two major global constraints simultaneously:

Freshwater scarcity
Food production in coastal or arid regions
Instead of fighting the ocean’s saltwater, the idea is to design agricultural systems that work with it.

Technologies typically involved
Projects like this usually combine:

Halophyte agriculture (salt-tolerant plants like sea asparagus)
Aquaculture + hydroponics
Saltwater desalination or biological filtration
Marine biomass farming (seaweed, algae)
Closed-loop water cycles

If it works at scale, it could help:

Produce food without using large freshwater supplies
Turn coastal deserts into productive farmland
Combine aquaculture + agriculture (“mariculture farming”)
Reduce pressure on rivers and groundwater

Many “ocean agriculture” ideas sound great but fail economically. The main problems usually are:

Energy cost of desalination
Scaling biological systems
Salt accumulation in soil
Infrastructure cost vs normal farming

Any serious Marine AgriFutures project has to prove energy efficiency + economic viability, not just environmental appeal.