About 97.5% of the water on earth is seawater, but can you use untreated seawater to create productive farms on desert coastlands? The Seawater Foundation, based in Arizona, has developed technology to create coastal farms which can be irrigated using seawater from the oceans of the world. This is done by directly using the seawater - not through desalting.

Using new salt tolerant crops, The Seawater Foundation believes impoverished and arid coastal areas of Africa, Asia, and South and Central America can use the technology with the benefits of:

• Grow crops and marine animals for food production using seawater.
• Using seawater for agriculture leaves more freshwater for human use.
• Coastal farms in arid areas would absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide to help reduce global warming.
• Farms can produce oil from seed crops that can be used to create bio-fuels.
• Tens of thousands jobs can be created in locations where few jobs exist.
• Using the effluent from aquaculture farms (shrimp farms, etc.) to protect marine environments.
• Encourage bio-diversity by providing new environments for animals and insects.

Other benefits to local communities can include factories and jobs to make edible oils, particle board, lumber, fire bricks, fish leather goods, goat cheese, cereals, shrimp and fish specialties and other finished goods.

Seawater Farms Bahia Kino (BFBK) is one of the their projects in Mexico which has received the support of President Vincente Fox and the State of Sonora and will be one of the first projects certified by the BioCarbon Fund. The entire project is designed to cover 30,000 hectares and will produce seaweeds, oysters, finfish and seawater based crops that can replace or complement the world’s production of wheat, rice, alfalfa, and soybeans.

Mangrove forests irrigated with seawater will produce animal fodder, wood for lumber, pulp production and honey in another BFBK project.