Kelp Lines in Farmstead World — building in the game, and what it is on a real farm.
A kelp line is seeded rope strung between floats in coastal water: the kelp grows down the line with no feed, no fresh water and no land of its own.
While it grows it takes up nitrogen and phosphorus from the water, so a seaweed farm can improve water quality where it is sited — which is why nutrient-trading programs pay growers to remove exactly that.
The crop is dried and ground into kelp meal, a feed and soil additive.
Farm facts about kelp lines
Fish farming is ancient - China's oral tradition tells of carp culture 4,000 years ago, and the oldest fish-culture manual, Fan Li's 'Classic of Fish Culture', dates to about 475 BCE. (en.wikipedia.org)
Ancient Chinese fish farmers fattened their trapped carp on a diet of insect nymphs and silkworm droppings. (en.wikipedia.org)
Aboriginal Australians may have farmed eels on engineered volcanic floodplains as early as 4,580 BCE - one of the oldest known aquaculture sites in the world. (en.wikipedia.org)
Romans bred fish in ponds and farmed oysters in coastal lagoons before 100 CE; medieval monks later kept fish ponds for the roughly 150 meat-free fasting days each year. (en.wikipedia.org)
In the 1700s, German naturalist Stephan Ludwig Jacobi hatched brown trout using artificial fertilization, earning a reputation as the founder of artificial fish-rearing. (en.wikipedia.org)
In the 1940s, US trout farmers learned to manipulate the day-and-night cycle, tricking their fish into spawning year-round. (en.wikipedia.org)