Behind the building, a biodiesel generator and waste vegetable oil boiler, both dormant during the summer months, attest to the aquaponic system's thirst for energy—the pumps, filters and bioreactor run year-round at a sometimes deafening whir, and the winter brings a need to heat the tanks and power overhead lights, as well.
These demands make it tough to compete with foreign and industrial-scale aquaculturists on the metrics of price and size alone. (Luckily, the fast-growing vegetable crops are the primary moneymaker.) Cabbage Hill's customers are mainly local restaurants and markets that prize what Ferry refers to as "farm-to-table" relationships. "These systems are fairly expensive," Rakocy notes. "So you have to raise really high-value crops and look for niche markets."
Rakocy has sought to drive down the price of aquaponics by developing projects that run on waste energy. UVI was part of a consortium that, with the help of a $150,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2001, built a landfill gas–powered aquaponic facility at Rutgers University's EcoComplex, a research center at the Burlington County, N.J., landfill. "In the future," he says, "I could see aquaponics setups ringing landfills," mining their waste gas to produce food.
Even in its present energy-hungry state, Rakocy points out, aquaponics has an advantage in the preservation of another precious resource: water. Much of the irrigation water in traditional agriculture runs off the soil or evaporates before it reaches the roots. In a recirculating aquaponic setup, by contrast, "the plants just take what they need, and the rest stays in the system and goes back to the fish," he says. In fact, the UVI system is so efficient that its occasional losses are entirely replenished by a rainwater catchment system, Rakocy adds.
Martin Schreibman, a biologist at Brooklyn College in New York City and an advocate for urban aquaculture, concedes that aquaponics poses myriad challenges but, like Rakocy, he sees the tank as half full. "Every revolution had its own problems: the Industrial Revolution, the Green Revolution, the agricultural revolution," he says. "Now the blue revolution that people are talking about, sure it has problems, but you can get around them. I think these are problems that are resolvable."
In fact, Schreibman adds, adopting aquaponics near population centers could present solutions to other intractable problems. "Natural fish stocks are all depleted, we have problems with tainted food coming in from abroad, we have unemployment here, we have a bad economy," he says. "This kind of urban aquaculture and urban aquaponics addresses these questions."
Schreibman notes that criticism of the energy requirements for aquaponics plays down "the energy that's used boating something from China or flying it up from Ecuador," two of the primary importers of seafood into the U.S. "So it's a trade-off. We're not trucking it miles."
As fuel prices for imports rise and more and more environmental issues linked to food production come to light, the level of interest in aquaponics is "increasing astronomically," Rakocy says. He leads a short course at UVI on aquaponic methods, for which he says attendance has more than doubled from 33 to 73 students in the past three years. "This year we had to reject a bunch of people," Rakocy says. "I've been getting so many inquiries saying, 'Put me down on the waiting list for next year.'"
Slide Show: Take a Guided Tour of the Cabbage Hill Aquaponic System.
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14 Comments
Add CommentHow does the nutrient content of the vegetables compare to that of plants grown outdoors on organic soil? Toxicity of any kind?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunatly your right. For example, we have designed several electric cars that don't use gas at all and we like the hybrid more because that is less about our lives that we have to change. I learned all about the things people have discovered that would make our life so much easier on the enviroment. There are several reasons why we don't change, including: ignorance, convience, imediate cost, lack of intrest, and the simple fact that we are have a consumer market economy. None of those people care more about the enviroment then they do about making money, and those that do care usualy go out of buisness rather quickly because their prices are more expensive
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBefore your write off this sort of project as "too expensive", consider that what you have seen here is merely 1 approach; there are more. I have been spending my "butter and egg money" for the same length of time as this farm, and I am just months away from a producing full scale closed loop system. I know what I have performs at a an equal or higher level of total efficiency, and is scaleable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen one learns what this field of science can deliver, the whole concept of cost and payback is turned around. There will be many competing system approaches in the coming years, but all will be leveraging some aspect of this technology.
My approach was to marry the scientific understandings of biology and horticulture with the shared wisdom of 4th generation East Texas farmers; it's taken me a career of experiences to do this, and 7 years of working in the back yard to get to where we are now.
Bottom line folks, this stuff works, and you will be benefitting within a couple of years.
The costs and benefits of this new kind of system (although hardly new-- I was working for a aquaponics farm-- Bioshelter, in Sunderland, Mass-- 15 years ago) must be considered in relation to transportation costs and energy expenditures. According to the NYTimes, transportation fuels are not taxed by international agreement! That seriously skews the real costs of transportation-- basically subsidizing the costs of transporting foods across the world-- foods that are grown in wasteful conditions. If the playing field for energy consumption were leveled- perhaps the costs of aquaponically produced foods would appear much more reasonable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see great promise to this ecotechnology but it seems that community is a necessary requirement for these technologies to work. I mean dedicated people motivated by something more meaningful than Wall Street. Coincidentally, I visited the New Alchemy Institute (MA) in the 80�s where this veggies-fish and biological wastewater processes where at work just fine then. Why it didn�t take over the world since? I guess there is more profit in war.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis system seems really efficient in breaking down and utilizing the nitrogen waste, but what about all the other macro and micro nutrients required by developing plants? Does this sort of system still need to import fertilizers to supplement these, or is it claiming the plants are sustained completely by the fish by product?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd this was funded by Mr. Carter's efforts during the end of the Carter Administration:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe most interesting renewable thing in the area was south of that location -- Kaplan Slaughter. They had a perfect, except for size, operation where some 4000 vealers that were fed under a roofed area and their waste was washed into two, sequenced million gallon anaerobic fermentation tanks - financed with a million dollar grant obtained in the Carter renewables era. The neat part was a series of ponds to take care of the waste water overflow inter-fed by inverse gravity -- ending in a pond in which tilapia were raised -- as cat food -- and the bones returned to Kaplan's operation to be added to the feed. The biogas ran a power system that provided much of the electricity for the slaughter house. Just remnants of the operation remain -- too bad -- the size, it seemed to me -- was too small. But a feed lot -- without odors -- marvelous.
my pleasure
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismy pleasure
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPut the tanks under the plants and set them in the desert in greenhouses. Use solar energy and wind energy to power the place, provide shade and use reverse osmosis and entropy recovery to keep water production higher than loss. Large enough tanks will stabilize the temperature. Pull nutrients from the salt water with algae. Work from the coasts inwards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPut the tanks under the plants and set them in the desert in greenhouses. Use solar energy and wind energy to power the place, provide shade and use reverse osmosis and entropy recovery to keep water production higher than loss. Large enough tanks will stabilize the temperature. Pull nutrients from the salt water with algae. Work from the coasts inwards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would love to hear more about the system you have been "playing" for the last 7 years of your life! Anyway to learn more? Anemail address, a web site?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks
Roger Pilon, http://ponics.org
DIfferent strokes, different folks! Like cars, you can buy a Rolls Royce or a Smart Car. Some aquaponcis sytems are top of the line, computers, pumps, and so on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the contary, some are very simple and low budget! Just type on Yahoo search: barrel ponics yahoo group. You will see! An aquaponic KISS system!
Roger Pilon
ponics.org
There is a consensus here, with mounting transport costs and a predicted human population explosion this proven technology needs to be rolled out now. We need elegant designs and cheap manufacture to produce village sized aquaponic units and set them up around the globe. A volunteer troubleshooter team needs to be able to travel globally quickly to rescue failing aquaponic farms, educate, upgrade and proselytize! aquaponics.me.uk
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