Our Vision
Keeping People FREE
SeaForester works to create well-paid jobs, job training, and pathways to business ownership for people returning home from prison. By supporting economic growth & financial stability for community members in reentry, we'll help them build autonomy and break cycles of poverty which cause recidivism. By providing fulfilling jobs that prioritize wellbeing, we create belonging and purpose to keep us all safe and free.
SeaForester helps people affected by systemic issues to get and stay healthy through nutrition education and healing foods like seaweed. We define healing foods as foods which are nutrient rich, tasty, accessible, satiating, culturally relevant, and connective.
Seaweed is a healing food! Seaweed is a diet staple for our and many coastal communities all over the world. Seaweed is rich in every vitamin (A, B12, C, E, K) and mineral (calcium, iron, iodine, magnesium, manganese, potassium) human beings need to thrive. Iodine in seaweed helps our thyroids manage hormone production and stress. Seaweed makes heart healthy, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant omega-3s and proteins which help protect and build tissues. Brown seaweeds like kelp have fibers, pigments, and salts which can help fight illnesses like diabetes, cancer, depression, and Alzheimer's – as well as remove environmental contaminants like heavy metals from our blood.
Seaweed is abundant (a 1,000 square foot farm can produce up to 20,000 lbs of seaweed per year), versatile, and easily preserved (3+ year shelf life). Seaweed stores carbon, makes oxygen, cools seas, creates biodiversity, and (with our support) can heal the harms of industrial agriculture.
When system-impacted people can work with seaweed to prevent & manage illnesses caused by prisons and colonization, we can build energy for successful, sustainable reentry and long-term healing.
Food Sovereignty
Seaweed is a traditional food for Yurok and many other coastal people - but gathering sites have been overharvested & harmed by colonial climate effects. SeaForester will help seaweed to recover by starting a seaweed farm! We will grow seaweeds, urchins, and some fresh produce. We'll distribute dried seaweed, seaweed seasonings & stocks, fresh urchins, and vegetables to stores, at farmers markets, and as deliveries.
This way, even the most remote members of our community can access healing foods. By bringing local, highly nutritious, tasty, & responsibly grown food to the community, we'll help people to strengthen their relationships with their bodies, Land, and culture. By working with these foods, we can recover from and fight oppressive, exploitative food systems that cause illness and disrupt relationships.
SeaForester will create opportunities for community members in Hoopa and Klamath to build true and personal sovereignty with healing foods. In the same way that a community garden has plots where people can grow their own food, our co-op will have public aquaculture tanks. SeaForester staff will assist community members in growing their own food. Worker-owners will help community members choose the kinds of seaweed they want to grow, help them to get started in tanks, and offer guidance throughout the growing and harvesting process.
To build Food Sovereignty in Hoopa & Klamath, we will also host classes where system-impacted tribal & community members can learn about and practice gathering, processing, and preparing coastal foods and medicines.
SeaForester will support incarcerated people in resisting prison food systems and building autonomy. We will be a CDCR approved quarterly package vendor. This will allow us to ship foods we grow to incarcerated people. To keep these foods free, we will create a donation program in which free people can pay for an incarcerated person’s order.
Within this time, we hope and believe AB 746 will be passed to legalize worker-controlled cooperatives within CA prisons. When/if passed, SeaForester will partner with incarcerated led co-ops to bring healing foods into prisons and bypass existing prison food systems.
Kelp Restoration
We plan serve as a place for people in reentry to build skills in aquaculture and kelp restoration. People in reentry can work with us and our partners to gain experience in kelp cultivation & nursery management, kelp forest surveys, and regenerative farming.
In time, we hope to establish ocean-based kelp arrays which: create habitat for kelp forest beings, support kelp in reestablishing themselves, and assist with bioremediation related to upriver agricultural runoff.
Our co-op facilitates respect for - and mutual healing between - system-impacted people and ecosystems. For example, urchins are native species which belong in the kelp forest ecosystem. However, due to climate crisis fueled by extractivism, their two main predators - sea otters & sunflower seastars - were wiped out in our region. Urchins overgraze and cross boundaries because they have been separated from the relationships which originally held them. Then the western environmental movement villainizes and blames urchins for harms which are actually rooted in colonial and capitalist systems of power. As a result, urchin management is characterized by wasteful practices like mass “grab and smash” culling.
SeaForester infuses respect into our relationship with hungry urchins by investing in practices which repurpose urchins as food. (Recent research from the Oregon Kelp Alliance shows that urchins harvested from the ocean and raised in an aquaculture setting can develop into good food within 3-6 weeks). When we meet more urchins than we can raise for food, we work with them to create high quality compost and natural dyes. We can invite urchins back into relationship, create valuable resources for our community, and help kelp recover. We promote community wellbeing by showing that individuals are not scapegoats for systemic harm, that strong relationships are the basis of strong communities, and those who commit harm should be included in healing.
Sustaining Our Work
The cooperative model contributes to longevity as it prioritizes people over profit. Instead of ending up in the hands of a few stockholders, profits made within a co-op are reinvested into the community and co-op members. The co-op model relies on access, equity, education and concern for community. It is an important step in a Just Transition from extractive to regenerative economies which honor people and the planet.
If you'd like to support SeaForester's work please email: info@earthequity.eco
