Salmon in Iowa for sale on the world Market

HARLAN, Iowa —An Iowa startup company thinks it can turn salmon into a cash crop next to an Iowa cornfield, KETV-TV reports.

As Americans eat more fish, fresh Atlantic salmon are filling restaurants and stores.

“Ninety percent of the salmon consumed in the United States is imported,” said Peder Hansen, CEO of Inland Sea.

The problem, Hansen says, is that importing isn’t cheap.

“It costs from 45 to 70 cents a pound to ship fresh salmon in from Chile, Norway and the United Kingdom,” said Jackson Kimle, vice president of Inland Sea.

Kimle and his startup, Inland Sea, want to grow the fish on quiet fields outside Harlan, Iowa.

“What we are doing here is Americanizing a system that has been operational in Europe for many years,” Hansen said.

That system uses tanks, with purified water kept at just the right temperature, that move the water to keep the fish swimming like they would in a river. The investors think Harlan is the perfect place to grow them.

“The key inputs for raising salmon are feed and we grow a lot of that in Iowa,” Kimle said. “And we do it well. Electricity and we have a lot of that at very good prices, and water, we have a lot of that, too.”

And the purity of the closed system makes the fish safe enough for sushi.

“We could pull this fish right out of the tank and eat it if we chose to,” Hansen said. “Whereas fish that comes from the ocean for example would have to be frozen to a certain temperature for a certain amount of time.”

If all goes according to plan, the Harlan facility could produce more than 5 million pounds of salmon every year. Developers are looking for more investors to make the project a reality.

Inland Sea estimates construction of the proposed facility would cost $27.6 million, and bring in $16 million to $20 million in annual revenues. More information can be found here: http://www.inland-sea.com

http://www.kcci.com/news/could-salmon-be-iowas-next-cash-crop-inland-sea-says-yes/41278424?ens=1&utm_source=Local%20Breaking%20News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Local%20Alerts_54ae9af70cf2bed14021dd26_des&utm_content=20160819_1623

(Sarcasm ON)

It would be just awful if some kind of accident happened and they got loose and pretty soon all our rivers and lakes were taken over by evil, invasive Atlantic Salmon.

(Sarcasm OFF)

Why is it that invasives are always nasty, inedible, creepy, worthless critters? Why crabgrass and creeping charlie and not strawberries? Why spiny water fleas and zebra muscles instead of Golden Dorado? Why Starlings and not more ducks? Oh well.

SR

Steve Root wrote:

Why is it that invasives are always nasty, inedible, creepy, worthless critters?

One exception… Ringed Neck Pheasant.

Another… Chinook and Coho salmon in Lake Michigan

Couple more… (German) Brown Trout and the Polish Sausage.

boone wrote:

One exception… Ringed Neck Pheasant.

Oh, did you mean “ditch chicken”?

Inland rearing of sea fish has been tried before many times. What I recall is that the economics of the whole system are wrecked when electricity prices go up because unlike estuary rearing of pen raised fish (which has MANY issues), the whole inland system runs on electricity.

I’ve often thought that when it came to stocking salmon, they gave up WAY too early on Atlantic salmon in various places. Here you have a salmon that doesn’t just run once and die…

Grouse

Iowa has some great farming already. Leave low quality frankenfish out of it. There’s already a huge influx of farmed ‘swim around in your own poo and eat pellets’ salmon in stores and restaurants everywhere. Buy wild from Alaska and get a premium product. They have done much better job in recent years getting wild salmon into grocery stores in the midwest and prices have been pretty good I think. I have seen wild AK sockeye at Cub many times for 6.99/#. C

In this day and age it still blows my mind when I go into a nice food serving establishment and see ‘Salmon’ on the menu. Wouldn’t it blow your mind to go to a nice steak house and see ‘Steak’ on the menu and that’s it!? How do you want it cooked? How about what the heck kind is it first of all- and is it wild or not? There’s a big difference between king/sockeye/cohos and pinks/chums even if they are all wild. If you ask the server they say “I’ll ask the chef” and usually they don’t know what it is either.

Another neat trick they use is calling Chum salmon ‘Keta’ or ‘Silver brite’ salmon. They can advertise it as wild AK product so people think they are buying a premium product. In fine print you’ll see that most often color is added to make it look like red meat like king/sockeye/cohos have.

I’ll have the ‘steak’, that sounds yummy

Target grocery stores were selling “Keta” Salmon for a while. Chum is OK if it’s really fresh, but it’s certainly not a premium product. They also sell frozen Sockeye and we eat that at least once a week. Good stuff!

And Grouse I agree with you, it’s too bad they gave up on Atlantics in Lake Superior. On the other end of the lake, the St. Mary’s river has a pretty good run of them every summer.

SR

WAHOO!!!! corn fed salmon,yech!!
if this state doesnt stink bad enough from all of hog confinements,turkey and chicken farms now,lets throw in some fish poo and rotting fish that didnt make it as well,good grief!!

I like salmon well enough,but give me a walleye or a panfish any day,and I would prefer them caught in the wild,not pen raised,so what if they are loaded with chemicals,or so they say they are.

if you havent seen how fish are raised in pens over seas,look it up on youtube,it will make you sick,why?? they raise chickens in pens over the fishes rearing pens,all of the chickens waste drops into the water along with any food that is scratched out by the chickens,non for me thanks,fish or chicken from there.

I guess I am just fed up with confinement operations of any sort,they claim that the water is so pure,you could eat the salmon raw,okay,instead of doing that,why dont we clean up the water we have spent so many years polluting so the fish we do eat from the wild doesnt glow in the dark????
and forget feeding the world,lets feed who we have here that go hungry everyday,the rest of the world can learn to feed itself.
rant over

Steve Root wrote:

And Grouse I agree with you, it’s too bad they gave up on Atlantics in Lake Superior. On the other end of the lake, the St. Mary’s river has a pretty good run of them every summer.

I have wanted to fish the Atlantics in the St. Mary’s for some time, but it’s just far enough up there that it always strikes me as foolish when for a little more effort and time, one could go to Quebec.

I’m sure there is some novelty in casting the fly from a boat, but it’s hard for me to get it out of my head that “real” Atlantic fishing is done with a 2 handed rod and while wading.

Grouse

Iowa needs to think bigger!! Instead of $27 million if these guys would spend $500 million they could get the residents to pay the whole load or at least 60-70%. Just promise jobs and tax revenue.

Iowa needs to put their big boy pants on and send somebody up here to look at our stadiums. We can find several people who can talk your state legislators into paying for the project.

OK, carry on with your fish project.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Steve Root wrote:</div>
And Grouse I agree with you, it’s too bad they gave up on Atlantics in Lake Superior. On the other end of the lake, the St. Mary’s river has a pretty good run of them every summer.

I have wanted to fish the Atlantics in the St. Mary’s for some time, but it’s just far enough up there that it always strikes me as foolish when for a little more effort and time, one could go to Quebec.

I’m sure there is some novelty in casting the fly from a boat, but it’s hard for me to get it out of my head that “real” Atlantic fishing is done with a 2 handed rod and while wading.

Grouse

The St. Marys Rapids are tough wading and they also fish best from the Canadian side so besides the distance you’re dealing with passports and customs and all that stuff. Quebec, you ever price any of those places? The Gaspe peninsula is heaven (no, it really is) but I’d have to mortgage my house to afford it. I wonder what it would really take to fish the St. Mary’s?

SR

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

have wanted to fish the Atlantics in the St. Mary’s for some time, but it’s just far enough up there that it always strikes me as foolish when for a little more effort and time, one could go to Quebec.

You may not have to go that far to catch an Atlantic Salmon. South Dakota GF&P is looking into planting Atlantic’s in Oahe? They sent a questionnaire out to fisherman to get some feedback awhile back.

The “keta” branding is really cute. I spent a summer fishing commercially in Alaska seven years ago and still get a kick out of the money people pay for it. I feel like they ship it here and laugh about it.

Build it and they will come

Atlantics are super expensive to raise and as I understand it quite temperamental. Both reasons the MN dnr have cited for discontinuing that program a few years back. I was lucky enough to get in on that fishery before it went bye-bye in Lake Superior and have three Atlantics to my credit. They are one ugly fighting fish and like to spend a lot of time in the air while on a line.

Farm raised salmon are not of the same quality as wild fish and I wouldn’t spend a penny on any.

Steve Root wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>TheFamousGrouse wrote:</div>

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Steve Root wrote:</div>
And Grouse I agree with you, it’s too bad they gave up on Atlantics in Lake Superior. On the other end of the lake, the St. Mary’s river has a pretty good run of them every summer.

I have wanted to fish the Atlantics in the St. Mary’s for some time, but it’s just far enough up there that it always strikes me as foolish when for a little more effort and time, one could go to Quebec.

I’m sure there is some novelty in casting the fly from a boat, but it’s hard for me to get it out of my head that “real” Atlantic fishing is done with a 2 handed rod and while wading.

Grouse

The St. Marys Rapids are tough wading and they also fish best from the Canadian side so besides the distance you’re dealing with passports and customs and all that stuff. Quebec, you ever price any of those places? The Gaspe peninsula is heaven (no, it really is) but I’d have to mortgage my house to afford it. I wonder what it would really take to fish the St. Mary’s?

SR

My understanding is that the best way to actually catch salmon on the St. Mary’s is to fish them from a boat. Basically like fishing smallmouth with the fly rod.

Quebec, as with Scotland has really expensive fishing and then not-so-expensive alternatives. As with any type of migratory fish, timing is everything. A prime beat on a prime river, at prime time may be very good fishing or very bad fishing depending on timing.

I know a guy up in Quebec that fishes some of the smaller and lesser-known rivers. Timing is everything, it reminds me very much of steelhead fishing.

Grouse

As a side note, I work in ag lending. When there is a flood and your crop insured catfish farm looses its “crop”, the inspectors don’t exactly know how to inspect loses that just swam away.