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Could salmon be Iowa's next cash crop? Inland Sea says yes

Could salmon be Iowa's next cash crop? Inland Sea says yes

An Iowa startup company thinks it can turn salmon into a cash crop next to an Iowa cornfield, KETV-TV reports.

As Americans eat more fish, fresh Atlantic salmon are filling restaurants and stores.


"Ninety percent of the salmon consumed in the United States is imported," said Peder Hansen, CEO of Inland Sea.

The problem, Hansen says, is that importing isn't cheap.

"It costs from 45 to 70 cents a pound to ship fresh salmon in from Chile, Norway and the United Kingdom," said Jackson Kimle, vice president of Inland Sea.

Kimle and his startup, Inland Sea, want to grow the fish on quiet fields outside Harlan, Iowa.

"What we are doing here is Americanizing a system that has been operational in Europe for many years," Hansen said.

That system uses tanks, with purified water kept at just the right temperature, that move the water to keep the fish swimming like they would in a river. The investors think Harlan is the perfect place to grow them.

"The key inputs for raising salmon are feed and we grow a lot of that in Iowa," Kimle said. "And we do it well. Electricity and we have a lot of that at very good prices, and water, we have a lot of that, too."

And the purity of the closed system makes the fish safe enough for sushi.

"We could pull this fish right out of the tank and eat it if we chose to," Hansen said. "Whereas fish that comes from the ocean for example would have to be frozen to a certain temperature for a certain amount of time."

If all goes according to plan, the Harlan facility could produce more than 5 million pounds of salmon every year. Developers are looking for more investors to make the project a reality.

Inland Sea estimates construction of the proposed facility would cost $27.6 million, and bring in $16 million to $20 million in annual revenues. More information can be found here: