Everyone we spoke to in the early days had the same objection: you cannot compete with cheap imported prawns, so there is no business here. They were right about the prawns and wrong about the business.
SHRMP.bio is not a prawn farm, and is very unlikely to become one. The reasoning took two years, a set of future scenarios, a surprising detour through national security, and a close look at what has happened to the best-funded companies in the field. This is that reasoning, in order — not the order it was written in, but the order it makes sense in.
Two movements: first, the world the strategy answers to; then, the strategy itself.
I — The world we are building in
The forces that make the near term look impossible and the long term look inevitable.
A future arriving early, and the national stakes underneath it.
- Scenarios for 2050, arriving early A 2024 forecast of the food future, turning up two decades ahead of schedule — and from the direction I did not expect.
- Australia says it has no food-security problem. I am not convinced. The Food half. An export surplus that depends entirely on trade staying open — and the nutrient gap underneath it.
- The day I agreed with an admiral The Security half. Why, in an uncertain world, what cannot easily be taken is what is most worth owning — and why you start building it two decades early.
II — What we concluded
Own the layer underneath the industry.
Not a better farm — the layer every farm depends on.
- Everyone is building a better shrimp box. We aim to build what every box needs. The core move: not a better farm, but the biology and breeding layer every farm depends on and none can make for itself.
- The work worth most in 2050 is the work no one wants to pay for in 2026 Why the near-term economics do not close, why that was never the bet, and why the window to build it is now.
- On three continents, the state is paying Land-based prawn farms exist where governments fund them — not where the market does. The highest-leverage place to put public money is the IP layer, not another farm.
- Two companies proved the market is real. Then production nearly killed them both. SwissShrimp and Atarraya settle the demand question — and prove the fight that decides who lives is the cost of every kilo. Which is why we are looking for a research home.