Iceland shows that feeding the world doesn’t have to be complicated and expensive

What was once fishery waste is now a profitable product that is helping to increase food security in one African country

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Published: October 30, 2013

Fish vendor at an outdoor market

Commercial fishermen in Iceland once tossed fish heads and backbones back into the ocean, discarding them as useless waste.

Now they earn $70 million annually from shipping them to Nigeria, where women making their living as street vendors sell dried Icelandic fish heads as a cheap source of protein for soups and stews.

After the fish products are dried for five days at 30 C using geothermal heat, they can be stored for up to two years with no further processing or infrastructure, Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson told delegates to the recent Borlaug Dialogues conference in Des Moines, Iowa.

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It’s an example of how green energy can help address global food insecurity in the face of climate change and a rising world population, said Grimsson.

“As we move towards the 10-billion (population) mark, the challenge will be not only how to access food, but how to preserve it,” said Grimsson, noting much of the food produced in the world today is never consumed.

Alternatives must be found to our dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels — not only because those resources could run out, but because using them generates greenhouse gases, he said.

As technology goes, preserving food by drying it is as old as civilization itself, but modern technology can dramatically speed up the process and improve sanitation, Grimsson said.

“The problem is that it is so simple that most people don’t believe it,” he said. “We have all been accustomed to focusing on a high-tech solution.”

It’s also relatively low cost.

“Even the poorest of the poor can purchase healthy food through this method.”

Iceland, noted for its hot springs and volcanoes, has converted to 100 per cent green energy sources through a combination of hydro electric and geothermal development. Grimsson said that transformation helped its economy recover from its economic collapse in 2008 to where it now boasts unemployment rate of just four per cent.

About the author

Laura Rance-Unger

Laura Rance-Unger

Executive Editor for Glacier FarmMedia

Laura Rance-Unger is the executive editor for Glacier FarmMedia. She grew up on a grain and livestock farm in southern Manitoba and studied journalism at Red River Community College, graduating in 1981. She has specialized in reporting on agriculture and rural issues in farm media and daily newspapers over the past 40-plus years, winning multiple national and international awards. She was awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal for her contribution to agriculture communication in 2012. Laura continues to live and work in rural Manitoba.

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