Your underestimating the amount of food cows need to eat a day and likely overestimating global seaweed production in relation to even supply only 1% of cattle feed.
89 millions cows in the US alone eating eating 20+ pounds of food a day is 890,000 tons or nearly 325 million tons per year. That’s per day. Global production of seaweed was 358,200 tons in 2019. Only about 11% of what would be needed to be included in 1% of feed of every cow in America. And that wouldn’t leave any seaweed to be used for any of its other uses or the millions of other cows around the world.
Seaweed grows very quickly. The historical production was much higher a hundred years ago, but there's been relatively little need for seaweed in recent decades. It would not be hard to farm more of it, if there were demand.
"Seaweed" means thousands of different species. When we see a cluster of seaweeds in a rock some of them are not even in the same kingdom than their neighbors. Its life cycles and chemical properties are totally different.
The truth is that some species are really picky and some take decades to regrow after harvested. Just because brown seaweeds are fast growers does not mean that red seaweeds are.
> there's been relatively little need for seaweed in recent decades
You may not be aware of how much of our everyday stuff includes algae. The demand of toothpaste has not fell. I would dare to speculate that the demand of laboratory stuff is probably higher than ever since Covid.
> This is like saying that trees grow quickly. [...] The truth is that some species are really picky and some take decades to regrow after harvested.
It's more like saying weeds grow quickly. If it were slow-growing, I would probably just call it macroalgae. In any case, I was under the impression from previous discussions that the particular variety needed for the supplement grew quickly.
> You may not be aware of how much of our everyday stuff includes algae. The demand of toothpaste has not fell.
The demand for alternative sources of potash in Allied nations, however, has declined dramatically since the end of WW1. They required a tremendous amount of kelp for manufacturing explosives.
Your underestimating the amount of food cows need to eat a day and likely overestimating global seaweed production in relation to even supply only 1% of cattle feed.
89 millions cows in the US alone eating eating 20+ pounds of food a day is 890,000 tons or nearly 325 million tons per year. That’s per day. Global production of seaweed was 358,200 tons in 2019. Only about 11% of what would be needed to be included in 1% of feed of every cow in America. And that wouldn’t leave any seaweed to be used for any of its other uses or the millions of other cows around the world.
https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/how-many-cows-in-...
https://beef.unl.edu/cattleproduction/forageconsumed-day
https://fppn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s43014-022-0...
https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/0990814231045205...