True Sustainability???

[Justus Walker]

I have been struggling with a question for about two years now, and that is the idea of aquaponics as a sustainable food production system. Here is what I mean. In the absence of a fish farm to buy fingerlings from and a co-op (feed store) to buy fish food from, how sustainable is aquaponics? 

I am working in central Siberia doing community development in the area of agricultural development. So far my work has been focused on field based crops and animal husbandry. I have developed a system for maintaining a year round green house, affordably. I really want to go full scale aquaponics but the issues of sustainability are, to me, paramount, since I do not have feed available or fingerlings. 

I was wondering if any one has any knowledge of work being done in this area of research. Anything anyone could suggest would be helpful!!! 

Just as a preliminary analysis the information I've been able to put together suggest that to make a system sustainable about 40 - 60% of the system would have to be dedicated to growing food for the fish? Then there is the question of running your hatchery, is this very involved? Converting algae or other aquatic plants to protein is easy, via vermiculture but again, that is more involved.

I'm not working towards a utopian system of 100% sustainability or anything like that. I guess the basic question is this: in absence of a source of fingerlings and fish food, is aquaponics even viable???

Any ideas on this?

Thanks for any ones input!!

[TCLynx]

Well Justus,

       It would all depend on how productive you expect the aquaponics to be.  There are certainly fish out there that one can breed easily enough and there are fish out there that will eat an omnivorous diet.  I would say carp might be the good choice in your area.

Now the bigger challenge is probably can you do it all while still being productive enough to be "commercial" in a small space footprint with only minimal labor.  Probably not.  So the real question is what is the goal.  And what are the resources at hand.  A fish pond can certainly be a sustainable part of a permacutlure design.  It is likely possible to add on an (aquaponic) element to such a pond if you can some how increase the feeding/stocking enough to make the water rich enough to support the veggies without causing other issues.  So then you have to decide what is "productive enough" to make it worth while.

[Vlad Jovanovic]

And the crickets chirp as the tumbleweed rolls by...

If issues of sustainability are paramount to you, as you say, then I highly doubt that you will in reality find aquaponics a sustainable agricultural model. Sorry.

AP seems great as far as water conservation goes, (especially if you are already running an aquaculture facility or have a fish pond) but that's about it. Now, there are ways to design and run a system more sustainably, or less so. Some of these involve a huge capital investment costs and/or too much additional involvement for the plants and fish you are getting out of the system too be labeled as sustainable (or even worth that much of your time/energy, again this is all relative though). While some do not. Much of it is a matter of scale much of  it isn't. In addition to being highly dependent on the petroleum industry for materials and parts, (PVC, LDPE, HDPE, plastics, PVC glue, solvent, tar, butimil etc...) AP, because of the fish, also uses quite a bit of electricity. Again alot of it will depend on your goals and what you want to get out of it (productivity). You will also need back up electric systems to keep your system alive in case of a power grid failure. I don't know what it's like in central Siberia, but here in central Serbia in the last month, I have been without power for 3 days 6 to 7 hours a day. This is potentially catastrophic for an AP system (because of the fish), yet just fine for my organic garden...

Now, if you could take the fish out of the equation and use some other form of bio-ponics...like say, rabbits, worms and hummonia...assuming they (plus you, who would be providing the hummonia of coarse) are already fulfilling other other duties on your farm you might be a step closer to 'sustainability'. No 'ocean harvested' fish feed, no electric air pumps, no worries about killing your fish every time some spider mites or white flies show up on some plants (organic insect sprays like oil or soaps can kill fish)...

There is a guy named Meir Lazar who part of a group called "fish-less systems" on this forum, here is a youtube video of some of his pee-ponic systems...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEFyMQvLOJI

There is also an (ex) Aquapon named Jim Joyner who is scaling up some previous work and running a large vermiponics experiment (because he got sick of having to over winter the fish, it seems)...

Don't think I'm trying to turn you off to AP, I'm building a 'medium' sized (200 square meter) system inside my greenhouse, myself...I just don't harbor any illusions that it is a "sustainable" method of growing plants.  

[Justus Walker]

TCLynx and Vlad, 

Thanks for taking the time to write. I am really thankful for the blunt assessment. IT seems the word "sustainable" gets thrown around so much in the AP community that it can be almost misleading. 

To be frank, I could care less about the petroleum products needed to build the system, largely because these products are available here in Siberia. So I can go and buy them at relative expense. I suppose my idea of sustainability is better defined as self sufficiency, in that I'm not too concerned about the MACRO picture as much as I'm concerned about my systems being able to operate for the next couple of decades. 

Your comments on the practicality of doing a truly self sufficient/ sustainable aquaponics are also valuable. The cost benefit analysis may be prohibitive. 

I'd love to do aquaponics because I think its a cool idea and an awesome way of growing, if you have the infrastructure. Thanks for the suggestions on "fish less" systems. I'll be looking into that!! 

200 m2!!!! Wow, thats no slouch of a system.I'm building a new, what I think of as a HUGE green house this summer and it is 96m2! Your amazing! Do you run year around? How severe are your winters? Amazing!