a plant to grow shrimp in the desert and take on the foreign companies which dominate the american market. scott mcmanus is the ceo. >> 1.4 billion pounds brought into the u.s. last year approximately and 90% of that comes from overseas. >> reporter: country tries like thailand, china and in the shri business. so is indonesia and some south american nations too. the bottom line is if you eat shrimp here, odds are they came from somewhere over there. but this place hopes to take a tiny sliver of that business back. each of these tanks can hold 100,000 shrimp, and they hope to harvest a half million pounds a year. >> why hasn't this been done before? >> well, the big issue is, is how do you deal with the affluent within the system. >> the waste? >> the waste, exactly. >> the waste is one of the biggest complaints about shrimp farming. leftover feed, fertilizer and other chemicals in some places