Saturday, March 16, 2013

Urban Aquaponics


Aquaponics is a method of combined fish and vegetable farming that requires no soil. The farmer cultivates freshwater fish (aquaculture) and plants (hydroponics) in a recirculating water system that exchanges nutrients between the two. Wastewater from the fish serves as organic fertilizer for the plants, while the plants clean the water of fish feces and urine. The net result: a 90 percent reduction in freshwater use compared with conventional fish farming, and a significant reduction in added nutrients such as fossil fertilizers. The system can be run without pesticides and, because the fish environment is spacious and clean, without antibiotics.

I had first heard about aquaponics from a friend in Nashville, Tenn., where I ran the North American branch of Franke, a Swiss espresso equipment supplier. I was intrigued by the method’s natural resource efficiency and its potential for large-scale urban cultivation. But it took me until this moment in Graber’s lab to recognize how dramatically aquaponics would change my life and that it could radically change how we feed the booming cities around the world.

The Farming Technique That Could Revolutionize the Way We Eat (The Atlantic Cities)

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