Intriguing

After evaluating more than 700 kinds of salt-tolerant plants, Hodges thinks the lowly coastal succulent (official name: Salicornia bigelovii) is the crop of the future. Sea asparagus can be sautéed (it's salty and crunches like snap peas), crushed into a protein-rich meal (Hodges has made it into cookies), or pressed into oil (it cooks like safflower oil). Hodges says the most likely market for edible salicornia is animal herders looking for cheap feed supplements, and he thinks the oil could catch on in poor countries. Salicornia can also be turned into biofuel—one that can power cars without hogging freshwater or distorting food prices. nasa scientists estimate that growing saltwater plants like salicornia across an area the size of the Sahara could supply more than 90 percent of the world's energy needs.

Hodges recently turned 1,000 acres of desert in Sonora, Mexico, into a "seawater farm" that includes fields of salicornia flooded with ocean water to mimic tidal estuaries. He's also identified about 50 other potential desert sea-farming sites in 34 countries, which he calculates could suck up enough ocean water to counteract the predicted rise in sea levels in 10 years. . . .

The Saline Solution