fyl Hatfield wrote:This post is inspired by Paul's comments in podcast 120. I pretty much agree that aquaponics is not pure permaculture but I also don't want to write it off as a bad idea. Like any idea, it can evolve into the ultimate Capitalist exploitation (in this case, mostly of fish) or it can be a reasonable approach to address a particular situation. Here's mine.
I live in rural Nicaragua. While I have access to a lot of land there are many poor Nicaraguans here that are pretty much subsistence farmers. Their diets tend to be mostly beans and corn with possibly some eggs tossed in. Green veggies are close to nonexistent.
What I want to do is develop what I will call the campasino aguaponics package. That is, some minimalist system using typical materials found here such that with little invest, a diet change could be effected. My scribbles about this are at Aguaponics for the people. I confess that being a geek I am getting carried away with some automation (which will be optional) but the goal is simple: greens for the people.
Paul's concern about cruelty to fish is real. Each new aquaponics article I read suggests higher densities. This is just like chicken farms. But, systems can be designed where fish density is lower.
One other issue is food. I am looking at black soldier fly larva as one possible food source. Again, that would not be the answer for those developing commercial aquaponics systems but it could fit in well with what I want to do. With a little bit of creative design, feeding could be automated (with no moving parts other than the larva).
I got into AP from visiting "Friendly Aquaponics" web page. I bought one of their downloads with designs for small systems, and plan to buy the plans for one of their larger systems eventually.
Regarding density... The folks a Friendly's learned something from their first system, and changed their design for their next system. They found out that the fish part of their operation was not profitable, but the veggies were. So they designed a
low density system, where the main purpose of the fish is to feed the plants. This also allowed them to have a much simpler design without the need for filtering solids, etc.
