Spirulina

Spirulina is a cyanobacterium (blue-green alga) that has been harvested as food for centuries - Aztecs collected it from Lake Texcoco, and it remains a staple around Lake Chad in Africa. Today it's cultivated globally as a 'superfood' protein source, producing 20x more protein per hectare than soybeans.

Spirulina demonstrates ancient wisdom validated by modern optimization. Traditional harvesting practices identified nutritional value that industrial agriculture is now scaling. The business parallel is traditional practices or local knowledge that contain valuable insights - often dismissed as primitive, later recognized as optimal solutions discovered through generations of experimentation.