Mussel farming as a way of taking nutrients from the Baltic Sea, back into circular food production is something we think could be really effective in the future. We are not alone in this. We are working with a number of projects together with Anders Kiessling, who is professor in aquaculture at the Swedish Agricultural University (SLU) and Aleksandar Vidakovic, a researcher at SLU. They where co-authors of a report written in 2019 called Mussel farming in the Baltic Sea as an environmental action - new positive data from three ongoing projects (in Swedish ”Musselodling i Östersjön som miljöåtgärd – nya positiva data från tre pågående EU projekt”.)

Data from several years of test farming show that it was not only a good and economically feasible way to take excess nutrients from the the Baltic, but it also worked better than expected.

Mats Emilsson show on the picture above has worked a number of years with improving the design of both the methods and the tools used in mussel farming in the Baltic. Mats works with the organisation Aquafarming Center East (Vattenbrukscentrum Ost) in Sweden.

We at Johannas work with Anders Kiessling and Aleksandar Vidakovic to test new recipes for fish feed, partially based on mussels, but also including insect larvae fed on plant based food waste from food production. This is part of our project Matsvinn 2. The end goal is that have a fish feed that is completely based on regional resources, which are included in a circular system that we are designing and building. The end result will be an improved regional environmental status of the Baltic Sea, decreased import of soy, fish meal and fish oil as part of fish feed, better feed for the fish and a decreased environmental impact of our food production.

One can read more about the results from the mussel farming (in Swedish) Östersjön: Musselodling i Östersjön som miljöåtgärd – nya positiva data från tre pågående EU projekt”.