“Non-stop!” we belted out, singing along to the Hamilton soundtrack playing at full volume from our Bluetooth speaker in the middle of the field. We collectively laughed and sang through the pain as we entered our third hour of harvesting strawberries, a grueling process of deciding between back, knee, or neck pain, where the only solace is occasionally popping a plump berry into your mouth. We were apprentices in the organic fruit and vegetable program at Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment in Freeport, Maine, and the field we were in had a rather unique arrangement for food production. Just ten or fifteen feet to our left was a road that ran in a loop around the property by which the general public accessed close to a hundred and fifty coastal campsites situated along Casco Bay, some of which were on the other side of the road.

Standing in the pathway between rows of bok choy, grown in one of our open field plots that neighbored several dozen campsites. Photo courtesy of Luke Weaver, shared with permission.

The fields where we grew several kinds of flowers, cucurbits, leafy greens, legumes, and many other vegetables were essentially smack-dab in the middle of a campground and a favorite walking area for locals; an arrangement that always felt tenuous to me. Oftentimes, it felt like we were a sort of spectacle, an almost museum or zoo-like exhibit where onlookers could witness a slice of the rural agrarian life that many romanticize. This was made no clearer than when a random passerby decided to park their car near our greenhouse, take out a sketchbook, and paint a portrait of the four of us seeding trays. Or when another individual walked up a few feet away from us while we were harvesting and started photographing us on their digital camera, without asking for our consent. Other times, the presence of the general public actively inhibited us from doing our job. We got yelled at by someone whose campsite was within twenty or thirty feet of our wash station for “being too loud” and “breaking quiet hours” while we were trying to harvest greens and flowers at 7:00 am before the sun came out and it got too hot to do so. This experience shaped my view of how the general public views small-scale food production—largely as something to be oogled at, admired, and put on a pedestal, all while remaining a safe distance away from many of the day-to-day realities of the job, such as the physical toll of labor and substandard wages. All that being said, the proximity of our farm to the general public was a net win—it closed the gap between rural and urban populations, it generated public interest in learning about food production, and perhaps most importantly, made the realities of food production more visible.

I was surprised when I moved to Washington and first came across the term “social license,” specifically in the context of small-scale aquaculture production. I had assumed that, similar to my experience in Maine and at the farmer’s market, the idea of small, artisanal aquaculture farms growing kelp and shellfish would not only avoid controversy but also attract onlookers and be championed by communities who are looking to support local and diversified food production. Suffice it to say, I was not entirely correct.

Onlookers browse a variety of fruits and vegetables at the stand for my farm at the Portland Farmer’s Market in Portland, Maine. Talking with customers about the realities of farming and all the effort that goes into producing this bounty was one of my favorite parts of the job. Photo courtesy of Luke Weaver, shared with permission.

The concept of social license to operate (or SLO), has become commonplace in research around aquaculture, typically being thought of as a way to secure beneficial outcomes for aquatic farms and combat misinformation and negative perceptions, while limiting potential social conflict amongst marine users. However, the origins of the term have garnered less attention. Two researchers from Canada have explored how the term stems from the mining industry and has been used extensively there for close to three decades, as mining companies needed a framework to address risk to their operations from a lack of social acceptability and/or establishing positive community relations. If we look to mining as an example, or even commercial fisheries, industries that involve natural resource management often highlight public meetings and the ability to submit public comments as tried and true community engagement methods. However, barriers to access for participating, as well as opportunities to submit public comments occurring during later stages of project development, mean that community concerns and feedback are typically at risk of having limited ability to shape project development in a meaningful way. This approach could result in those with concerns feeling like public meetings or opportunities to submit comments are merely “checking the box,” and could explain why some groups frequently resort to litigation as a way of making their voices heard.

This history aligns somewhat well with how the term has been used more broadly within aquaculture, seeming more like a risk mitigation strategy to acquire permission to conduct aquaculture rather than a strategy to elevate community engagement as a determining factor in the shape, scale, and location of aquaculture operations. When talking about seaweed farming, the term takes on a rather unique shape.

It’s important to note that kelp has a long history in the Puget Sound, something which can be seen in many places where commercial seaweed farming is being explored. Indigenous harvest and use of kelp for personal and customary use has been occurring for millenia—whether it was the “Kelp Highway” which likely guided people along the Pacific rim, the use of kelp for fishing or cultural activities such as music, or the important role that kelp plays in the stories of traditional Pacific Northwest peoples, it’s clear that kelp is and has been a foundational element of Indigenous livelihood for a long time. The commercial production of seaweed, however, is a recent development.

Currently, the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife allows recreational seaweed harvest up to ten pounds (wet weight) per person per day, but does not allow commercial growth and harvest of seaweed except by permit. There are only a handful of permitted farms, three of which are in full production—Blue Dot Sea Farms, Lummi Island SeaGreens, and Pacific Sea Farms—with a fourth, Vashon Kelp Forest, on the verge of resolving public appeals. Both Pacific Sea Farms and Vashon Kelp Forest are located near Vashon Island, and both have faced significant albeit slightly different challenges related to social license, getting drawn into lengthy and expensive public appeals and hearings that have delayed their operational deployment. These challenges have centered around concerns with whale entanglements, opposition to visual cluttering of the marine landscape with buoys, farm site location relative to important ecosystems, and impact on native aquatic plant species. So far, appeals boards and hearings have ended in favor of the kelp farms, acknowledging that they’ve done their due diligence in mitigating potential negative impacts and complying with state and federal rules.

This type of exchange may sound familiar to anyone who’s paid attention to community challenges to industries that involve environmental trade-offs, such as solar and wind energy. Broadly speaking, the sorts of social conflicts seen in these industries can be thought of as a nesting doll of various issues, ranging from competing visions for the role and methods of developing land or aquatic spaces, historical misunderstandings regarding the value and ethic of agricultural and rural land, disputes around property rights, uncertainty about what the social costs are of development and who ought to bear them, or a clash of opinions about the environmental impacts of certain kinds of development. There’s a tendency I’ve noticed amongst environmentalists to, perhaps jokingly, categorize many of these concerns as NIMBYism (“not in my backyard”) or BANANAism (“build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone”). However, there seems to be more to the story here. Throughout my time at SMEA conducting research into kelp aquaculture for both classes and my thesis, my initial assumption that people generally support small-scale food production and admire it has largely seemed to hold true. Rather than perpetuating the, in my opinion, problematic and at times disingenuous way that resource intensive industries have typically gone about viewing communities and their pushback to development—seeing them as a social risk to be mitigated through “outreach” and “education”—aquaculture has a unique opportunity to honor, understand, and address the perspectives of coastal communities. If taken, this opportunity could lay the foundation for sustainable industrial development and serve as an example of how to effectively incorporate community engagement into local and regional development. This is especially important as coastal communities begin looking to “Blue Economies” in the near future.

Rather than perpetuating the, in my opinion, problematic and at times disingenuous way that resource intensive industries have typically gone about viewing communities and their pushback to development—seeing them as a social risk to be mitigated through “outreach” and “education”—aquaculture has a unique opportunity to honor, understand, and address the perspectives of coastal communities.

That level of engaged communication cannot simply be a way to spread the gospel of aquaculture, and it remains to be seen whether headlines—like portraying the industry’s potential as a gold rush, discussing its hype, pondering its relation to kale—that focus on kelp farming’s potential benefits have an impact on moving the needle in terms of public perceptions around aquaculture. In addition to honestly exploring the benefits and drawbacks of kelp farming, communication around the industry should serve as a method to build policy bridges between participants, improve regulations and support farmers, and cultivate strong relationships with communities, both those interested in participating in aquaculture and those who are not. This means moving beyond NIMBYism and promises of environmental benefits towards understanding the more nuanced drivers of community hesitations around land and aquatic development, which may include legitimate concerns around cluttering the landscape or historical patterns of not having a voice in development decisions. Additionally, conversations around social license typically focus on the general public, despite communication and relationships between governance systems and their actors (state and federal agency staff, municipal leaders, etc.) and industry participants, as well as information sharing between industry participants, having extreme importance in the early stages of developing an industry.

In addition to honestly exploring the benefits and drawbacks of kelp farming, communication around the industry should serve as a method to build policy bridges between participants, improve regulations and support farmers, and cultivate strong relationships with communities, both those interested in participating in aquaculture and those who are not.

One way in which the industry could seize this opportunity is for Washington state to invest resources into mirroring the type of collaborative and broad partnerships that have been leveraged for kelp conservation, shellfish industry development (including a shellfish aquaculture coordinator within state government), and addressing ocean acidification. These efforts are notable for uniting many interested parties across different sectors and scales, ranging from local to national, public to private, non-profit to for-profit, and including early partnership with Tribal entities. The Washington Seaweed Collaborative has emerged as a somewhat similar effort to connect prospective kelp farmers, knowledge holders, and those interested in the nascent industry, however it does not have the sort of state-supported directive to grow the industry like organizations in Alaska (such as the Alaska Mariculture Task Force), or Maine (such as the state-established Aquaculture Innovation Center). Both states have explicitly identified aquaculture as playing an essential role in the future economic livelihood of their coastal communities and have committed resources to exploring strategic and sustainable industry development at the regional and statewide levels. These resources have resulted in the creation of multi-stakeholder, state-wide coalitions and partnerships that are intended to catalyze industry development while honoring the place-based nature of aquaculture and different visions of success from community to community.

These resources have resulted in the creation of multi-stakeholder, state-wide coalitions and partnerships that are intended to catalyze industry development while honoring the place-based nature of aquaculture and different visions of success from community to community.

In Washington, kelp farmers are perhaps bearing the brunt of the current approach—they are already navigating a relatively new industry, with little infrastructure and no playbook of how to make it work. They are navigating complex permitting that spans state, federal, and Tribal levels, and investing significant financial resources into an industry that remains relatively unproven in terms of contributing towards a stable economic livelihood. The lack of strategic and coordinated industry support at the statewide level means farmers are pressured into also being industry advocates, experts, educators, community liaisons, and more to succeed, a large burden in an industry that could largely be described as experimental and carries a large amount of risk (specifically when it comes to kelp—the shellfish industry has a history of state support and widespread success).

I have little doubt that small-scale kelp farmers will eventually get to the point where they may find themselves in a similar situation as to what I did in Maine—supported nearly universally and admired (sometimes to a problematic degree) as beacons of small-scale food production, or even being part of climate solutions such as bioplastics or biostimulants for agriculture. However, to build broad consensus and agreement about the role that kelp farming should play in Washington, the places it should happen, and all its complexities and nuances, the state should invest in building the kinds of broad, inclusive multi-stakeholder partnerships that it has leveraged for shellfish and kelp restoration.  It should transform conversations around social license from centering on social risks to social responsibility, and champion the kinds of regional coalition-building and strategic planning early in the lifecycle of an industry that will be resistant to political shocks, and hopefully more sustainable long-term. Maybe then, like my experience in Maine, a kelp farm could be just offshore from a campground.