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One Response to Would you eat food from an aquaponics farm?

1. The unique advantages of aquaponic systems are:

   Conservation through constant water reuse and recycling.
   Organic fertilization of plants with natural fish emulsion.
   The elimination of solid waste disposal from intensive aquaculture.
   The reduction of needed cropland to produce like crops.
   The overall reduction of environmental footprint for crop production.
   Small efficient commercial installations can be built close to markets therefore reducing food miles.

   Some conceivable disadvantages with aquaponics are:

   Initial expense for housing, tank, plumbing, pump/s, and grow beds.
   The infinite number of ways in which a system can be configured lends itself to equally varying results, conflicting research, and successes or failures.
   Some Aquaponic installations rely heavily on man-made energy, technology solutions, and environmental control to achieve recirculation and water/ambient temperatures but a system designed with energy conservation in mind (such as utilizing solar heating and the exploitation of gravity to reduce pumping) can be extremely energy efficient.
   Whilst careful design can minimize the risk, Aquaponics systems can have multiple ‘single points of failure’ where problems such as an electrical failure or pipe blockage can lead to a complete loss of fish stock.
   Like all aquaculture based systems, stock feed usually consists of fish meal derived from lower value species. Ongoing depletion of wild fish stocks makes this practice unsustainable. There are now, however, organic fish feeds available which may prove to be a viable alternative and negate this concern. Other alternatives include growing duckweed with an Aquaponics system that feeds the same fish grown on the system[12], as well as growing Black Soldier Fly larva to feed to the fish using composting grub growers

   

   Tinana
   June 7, 2011 at 11:25 am
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