Why aquaponics is not a revolution in agriculture

         Welcome back! Last week we talked about water and drought, some of the problems we face, and most importantly, some easy solutions we can all implement to help regenerate local and regional water cycles. I go so far as to say with enough effort the world over, we can positively affect the world's water, carbon, and climatic cycles while reversing climate destabilization. If we can destabilize the whole planet, then we can repair the damage and reverse course, it's not too late to take meaningful action.

         This week, in response to an article I read and questions from friends, I want to get into dealing a dose of reality about aquaponics, or rather our global westernized mentality and how aquaponics, though revolutionary in itself, is not a revolution in thought and will not revolutionize agriculture. Only a systemic change in how we think about, interact with, and treat the world around us will accomplish that. Lets start with a basic description of what aquaponics is, how it's revolutionary in food production, and some of its applications. From there I will be able to describe how aquaponics fails to address mentality. I will end on the changes in mentality and actions that must happen before any agricultural revolution can take place.

My Experience

         You already know my story and progression with outdoor conventional and organic soil farming. I've also grown vegetables indoors for three years. I grew organically in soil and with both synthetic and organic hydroponics using deep water culture (DWC), nutrient film technique (NFT), and aeroponics. I've found that with a lot of labor input and energy, indoor soil can be competitive in both yield and growth rate with hydroponics, however that extra input mitigates those benefits as compared to the labor involved in hydroponics. On the flip side, I've never had a great tasting crop of anything come out of my hydroponics systems, they weren't bad they just weren't any better than what you get at the grocery. My soil systems, whether indoor or outdoor, have always produced phenomenally flavorful foods.

         I've seen and may attempt a hybrid system with cloth bags that are sub irrigated with what looks like an NFT setup, however I've stopped and do not recommend indoor growing of anything because of the resources consumed and the carbon footprint in powering the lights necessary for good crop yields. I do make exception for seed starting under florescent light to guarantee a long enough season for some crops , however the mercury vapor in florescent bulbs is a dangerous poison and the spent bulbs need to be taken to a reputable recycler for disposal. If I do build a setup to try the hybrid system, it'll have to be outdoors and seasonal only or, possibly year round in my greenhouse if it proves to be highly productive with low labor and few inputs. I'm concerned about how the soil media could affect my aquaponics nutrient levels and pH, I've read wood chips make a great hydroponics media and from experience growing outdoors in wood chip piles, I totally agree. However the varying chemicals in the wood could be toxic to the fish in an aquaponics system, this is where some of my concern for soil bags in aquaponics comes from. As well, I have concerns about mineral salinization of the soil since the bags promote growth and massive roots by means of evaporative capillary action. Time and experimentation will tell, now to the the bulk of the article.

 Aquaponics in a nutshell

         Aquaponics is the net positive combination of fish farming (aquaculture) and hydroponics, two very resource intensive and environmentally damaging forms of food production. Aquaculture produces high amounts of concentrated fish waste that needs to be disposed of regularly. If the aquaculture system is set up in natural bodies of water, the wastes pollute the local watershed and kill off most of the native species while contributing to large algae blooms. If the aquaculture system is in a sealed system, the wastes must be removed regularly, which requires more labor or mechanical input. The systems are poorly regulated and more often than not the wastes wind up in local watersheds or going down the drain, which overloads water treatment and increases the use of toxic chemicals for denaturing nitrogen and phosphorus and increases resource consumption while damaging local ecosystems. Some of the wastes end up in landfills, contributing to methane greenhouse gas production and not being used for beneficial agricultural uses while a very small percentage ends up being used as fertilizers for the home garden or industrial agricultural uses. All in all its horrible system that causes more damage than benefit. Aquaculture is short sighted and has far reaching implications that endanger the stability of ecosystems, dramatically affect climate, and contribute to lowering planetary habitability for all species including humans. Frankly it should be illegal in open water and strict regulations implemented for sealed and dry land fish farms.

Aquaculture illustration

         Hydroponics is growing plants, namely but not limited to vegetables and leafy greens in a water and nutrient solution, with or without an aggregate media. With hydroponics, you get significantly more root contact with nutrients, and significantly better yields than soil alone. As well, by comparison hydroponics requires significantly less maintenance and labor than gardening or farming in soil. I'm an advocate for deep organic soil, and though some soil techniques can compete with hydroponics, the scales are heavily weighted in favor of hydroponics for yield and speed of production. In addition, the recirculating water guarantees that about 1/10th of the water is used in hydroponics than in conventional gardening or farming, though drip irrigation gets soil gardening really close to being competitive with hydroponics on water usage.

Nice example of an easy to make diy NFT hydroponics system

         So where is the downside to hydroponics? Hydroponics is capital intensive and relies on chemical (organic or synthetic) inputs for its nutrient source and if you trace the products back to their source you'll find the deferred costs in fuel used, generated pollution, resources consumed, and ecological damage in the manufacturing and distribution of organic and synthetic chemical nutrients far outweighs the benefits of increased yields. To carry this further, synthetic nutrients noticeably taint the flavor the foods at best, and at worst remain in the foods and are toxic to human health and the environment. Organic nutrients, though generally not harmful to human health or the local ecosystem (in highly concentrated doses they can be however), tend to foul up hydroponic systems because they promote system colonization by beneficial bacteria that make the nutrients more readily available to the plants. This then creates considerably more labor and higher costs, mitigating the maintenance and labor benefits of hydroponics while producing a concentrated and potentially toxic waste product similar to the fish wastes in aquaculture.

         So if both systems are so bad in practice, how would combining them be any better? Simply put, aquaponics uses the fish wastes as the organic nutrient source for plant growth thus making use of an otherwise concentrated toxic sludge waste while closing the manufacturing and distribution loop of the nutrient source for hydroponics. In aquaponics, a healthy and vibrant biological community is necessary for proper nitrification of the fish wastes, thus reducing maintenance and labor by creating a need for bacterial communities that would be problematic in hydroponic systems. Aquaponics is an almost closed loop system with few inputs and low capital requirements, however the inputs must be considered in order to gain a complete picture of both the benefits and drawbacks to aquaponics.

  Illustration of simple aquaponics system and the nitrogen cycle

         One input and potential drawback is feed. Though you can produce supplementary feed on site such as duckweed in the aquaponics system or compost worms, meal worms, crickets, and black soldier fly larvae from food scraps, the reality is you will need to bring in feed from an outside source and must consider the carbon and ecological footprint (deferred costs) of that feed source. Another drawback is that aquaponics systems tend to run deficient in iron and can run deficient in potassium and other nutrients, thus requiring outside inputs and consideration of the deferred environmental costs of those inputs.

         As well, Aquaponics produces a small amount of potentially toxic or polluting undissolved waste solids that need to be purged from the system. However, the amount is small enough that they can be diluted and used as a nutrient rich and biologically active soil additive for home garden soils. Commercial producers should consider packaging and resale as a concentrated soil amending garden product. As well a bumper crop of prawns or crayfish can be used as biological water filters that eat a considerable amount of the solid wastes and convert them into more soluble nutrient forms. All things considered, aquaponics is a revolutionary shift in thought for both aquaculture and hydroponics with a net positive output as compared to its inputs.

          Aquaponics has both home and commercial scale applications on more of a continuum than a dividing line. That is, home scale systems can be a supplemental food source thus lowering living expenses and environmental impact per individual, or they can be large enough to produce all home food needs and a modest side income. Commercial systems can be small farm to mega plantation in size and scale. I believe every home and commercial rooftop (warehouses, office buildings, grocery stores, etc...) should house aquaponics outdoors or in greenhouses while mega farms should not exist as they are allergic to biodiversity and flexibility by design. This is a logical viewpoint for sustainable solutions to part of our food production system. However that's the ideal, what looks good on paper, not necessarily representative of western thought, industry practice, or general reality.

         Home scale production is a possibility for the majority of urban and suburban houses everywhere. As aquaponics becomes more mainstream and industry standards more prevalent, I believe this part of 'the ideal' could become reality. Year round rooftop greenhouse production of food is being proven by several companies in Canada and the U.S., and seems to be gaining momentum as the millennial generation is demanding more local and ethically run businesses. However, intensive decentralized production across urban environments is less likely due to varying degrees of bureaucracy and regulation in just these two countries alone. Bummer!

 Image: Great IBC aquaponics setup I plan on mimicing for my setup

You can download the IBC of Aquaponics from Backyard Aquaponics here.

The Backyard Aquaponics homepage is here. 

The revolution

         So now we have a quick snapshot of what aquaponics is, where it came from, and its applications. I've let my bias slip, I love aquaponics and I think it's a phenomenal low tech way of producing lots of healthy food in a small space with a low to neutral environmental impact. So how could it fail to revolutionize our waning agriculture industry? This is where were going to shift gears and take a look at our cultural mentality and industry practices when it comes to technology in food production and how they prevent any revolution from taking place. Were going to take a look into the history of our thought process and what it will take to revolutionize the way we approach food production and the world.

         Throughout the history of agriculture, reaching all the way back to the first seeds sewn in ancient Mesopotamia, population growth has always outpaced food production in agricultural societies. Check out David Mongomery and Jared Diamond for an in depth look into this subject. It basically breaks down to more food production or better technology allowing for higher yields will lead to population increases and not to greater food abundance. The addiction then begins when societies choose to either innovate new technologies or move to more fertile lands, causing the whole cycle of overtaxing land resources and population outpacing production to start over. It's a positive feedback loop that will always end in failure to thrive and demand new resources or technologies. This is not a natural state of being however, this is a mentality and thought process that negates critical thought about itself and fails to recognize the need to change thought and action in order to fix the problems it caused. It's a form of collective mental illness, insanity. As Albert Einstein put it, Insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

         Enter scene: aquaponics, a revolutionary technology that has serious potential for producing more food with significantly lower inputs than current systems. Just like plowing was a technological revolution, and synthesized atmospheric nitrogen, and mined organic and mineral phosphorus, and deeper plowing, and mechanization, and so on. I hope you're getting the point, technological advancements have come to the rescue time and again while the prevailing beliefs in infinite resources and uncontrolled over-consumption have not been addressed. As we've covered, aquaponics is not without its downsides and not without its inputs. Simply replacing current technology with another without consideration to things like exponential population growth; resource depletion; linear lines of production, distribution, consumption, and waste; and so on, will only serve to perpetuate the systems and problems as they exist today. We have to be careful not to mistake the revolution in technology for a revolution thought, they are no synonymous.

         This all runs deep in the cultural mentality of Western societies and we are on the cusp of environmental and societal collapse worldwide. Change has to come by necessity, either revolution or collapse and natural systems don't care which. This is not to say we are destined for collapse or that our mentality about the world and everything in it is the sole cause, only that the path we are on as dictated by our collective mentality is headed in that general direction. However, there are many other factors that could exacerbate or mitigate this. One possibility is Bill Mollison's permaculture as an ethic and a life governing philosophy. We must think of everything as a cyclical system, every waste as a production for something else; every resource consumed has to be reusable or replaceable; in order to maintain planetary homeostasis (the ability to support life, including our species), we have to actively keep the world's systems in balance. It's a naturalist fallacy of logic to argue that natural systems innately balance themselves when disturbed, therefore non-action would be the best action. As a species we have cognitively separated ourselves from those natural systems and have actively damaged, destroyed, and destabilized them. The responsibility then falls to us, not the damaged natural systems, to repair and balance out what we have done.

         As much as I love aquaponics, it is not and will not be a revolution in agriculture because the revolution has to come in the form of the philosophy we keep and actions we take. Don't take my word for it, look at the world around you and question if it sustainable long term and what effect we are having on everything we touch. The science and research has been there for nearly a century now and the time for hiding behind our own cognitive dissonance is over. The time to take positive and meaningful action is now, really it was 40 to 50 years ago however there's never a better time for anything than the present.

         I've been talking a lot about environmental conditions, both here and in my daily activities. They're very important and have immense consequences for our futures no matter what course of action we take. However I want to get off this broken record train for a while. With that in mind, next week I want to switch things up and talk about solar power, specifically hybrid PV/T systems, as I plan on running my greenhouse aquaponics system on solar power and heating/cooling the greenhouse itself with passive systems or very low input from active systems like fans. I've been considering several setups and options, and this is where I think I'll settle myself when that time comes this winter to next summer. Have a wonderful week and look for ways to take daily action to improve the world we inhabit.