The foundations of Earthrise were begun 20 years ago. Larry Switzer, a visionary bioneer and catalyst, founded the progenitor, Proteus Corporation, in 1976 to develop spirulina blue-green algae as a world food resource. Proteus was funded by a group of private California investors committed to the vision and hope spirulina represented. Joined by myself, this team began cultivation in the late 1970s.

• Part 1: The Early History of Spirulina Cultivation in the USA.
• Hope for the World and its Children.
• Our First Prototype Farm in the California Desert.
• Should we cultivate spirulina in algae farms or harvest blue-green algae from lakes?
• Building the Second Prototype Farm.
• Part 2: Introducing Spirulina and Building Earthrise Farms.
• Fortunately we were not alone.
  Many other algae bioneers emerged around the world.
• Introducing Algae to the Natural Food Market.
• The First U.S. Production: Earthrise Farms.
  

If this blue-green algae were cultivated and consumed by millions of people, it would have tremendous benefits, especially for the world's children and our planet's future. Spirulina seemed to be the solution we needed. However, it was all theory - it hadn't been done yet!

No one had yet successfully cultivated spirulina on a large scale, produced it as a safe food, and convinced anyone they should indeed eat algae! If it was an idea whose time had come, it was, nonetheless, a daunting task.

Larry first tried to convince the government of Nigeria to build spirulina farms along Lake Chad where it was already growing naturally. But at that time, Nigerians were more preoccupied with developing oil. They questioned if anyone in America was eating this algae. If not, why should poor Africans eat it? They were right.

Clearly, to promote algae to the world's hungry people, we first needed to demonstrate its remarkable health benefits to the developed world and establish it as a valuable new food for everyone.

With this in mind, Larry and I left the comforts of Berkeley for California's hot Imperial Valley in early 1977. This desert climate was ideal for growing spirulina, and was far from urban pollution. We were joined by a lake ecologist from Berkeley, Dr. Alan Jassby, who helped design the early systems and cultivation programs.

Our trailer.

Growing up a culture in small trays and wading pools.

However, innovative projects are not easy, and this was no exception. For three years this small entrepreneurial team sweated in the desert to build a successful farm model. Just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and every problem had to be overcome.

In August 1977, our first farm was totally wiped out by Hurricane Doreen! This unusual August storm caused a one in a hundred year flood, and our little farm was in the middle of ten square miles submerged under 4 feet of water!
The Flood of '77:
On a raft and diving under water to retrieve pumps and machinery.

Was this flood a message? Naturally, this setback caused us to reconsider our strategy. If growing spirulina was going to be so difficult, why not just harvest wild blue-green algae from lakes, where it's already growing? We investigated the feasibility of lake harvest schemes.

Once again, we redoubled our efforts to cultivate spirulina, for three reasons:

1. Spirulina could be scientifically controlled for a safe product.
   Natural lakes had mixed blooms of algae throughout the year which we could not control. Some blue-green algae, like some plants, are toxic. We were concerned about producing a contaminated food, and became even more convinced that we needed a scientifically controlled spirulina blue-green algae farm to assure safe food.
2. Spirulina production could improve world food and environmental problems.
   Harvesting wild algae from lakes would not likely develop into a global business capable of changing world food problems. Cultivating spirulina sustainably and ecologically meant producing food at phenomenally high growth rates. We believed if early bioneers were successful, algae farms would spread all over the world. This would have tremendous economic and environmental impact.
3. Spirulina could gain the support of the world scientific community.
   Scientists have minimal interest in potentially toxic blue-green algae, such as microcystis, anabeana or aphanizomenon flos-aquae. In contrast, over the past 30 years there has been an explosion of published scientific studies on safe spirulina and chlorella. We realized without the support of world scientists to show the medical community reputable research, algae would not become an accepted world food. In fact, almost all reported medical and health claims made for blue-green algae are based on years of scientific research on spirulina.

We asked our investors for more funding, relocated, and started a second farm. Ron Henson showed up to help with construction, and eventually became the Operations Manager of the current Earthrise Farms. Today he is the Vice-President of the company's Animal Health global sales division.

We developed larger growing ponds, tested harvesting and drying operations, and felt confident we could build a commercial size farm.

Then we began looking for a new funding source, several million dollars. To interest investors, we now had to prove we could actually sell algae to someone. We began importing spirulina, and developed a partnership with a Japanese company that had just begun growing it in Thailand.