Over the past 16 years, Chile has become the world's largest producer of farmed salmon. On the surface, fish farming—or acquiculture—seems like an ideal solution to the overfishing that has depleted the world's wild fisheries, as well as a possible answer to world hunger. But in this conversation, Eric Nee, the co-host of Social Innovation Conversations, and managing editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, interviews Rodrigo Pizarro, director of Chile's Terram Foundation, who reveals that acquiculture, in fact, has generated many serious and unforeseen environmental and social problems.

Pizarro details Terram's successful pilot project to cultivate kelp in salmon enclosures as a means of absorbing excess nitrogen produced by salmon feces. The project, which was awarded the 2007 Intel Environment Award, administered by the Tech Museum in San Jose, Calif., has proven to be a sustainable win for the environment, the local economy, and indigenous coastal peoples in Chile.