S2KN05

Have anyone here heard of Aquaponics? It's basically a system that uses fish poop as fertilizer to grow plants. This type of system is better than Organic. It can be grown to 100% natural with non GMO plants while Organic is 95% natural and with/without GMO plants. GMO is Genetically Modified Organism which is human made and the effects of eating GMO is largely unknown.

The advantage of Aquaponics are plants grow 2x as fast, no need of soil, no need to buy fertilizer, substantially less water usage because of it's closed system.

Aquaponics /ˈækwəˈpɒnɨks/ is a sustainable food production system that combines a traditional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as snails, fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. In the aquaculture, effluents accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity for the fish. This water is led to a hydroponic system where the by-products from the aquaculture are filtered out by the plants as vital nutrients, after which the cleansed water is recirculated back to the animals. The term aquaponics is a portmanteau of the terms aquaculture and hydroponic. from wiki.

A video explaining what it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCV7DABEz20


My system startup:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKKuCkVEqF8

I'll update periodically.

TougeHorseman

This is awesome!!

rob-2

Way cool you're applying this to real life.

Now if only we could find a good use for chicken poop we could clean up most of the river systems.

S2KN05

If there's a will, then there's a way. This guy uses chicken poop as feed and fertilizer. We just need to replicate what nature does in a system. One of the main problem of our nation's factory produced crops and meat is money subsidies from the government which makes it harder to change into a new farming system. When this is gone, we'll see an explosion of new producing systems to feed the people without damaging mother nature.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crCqYzpxQ5Y

AP2CRazy

Very Interesting

TougeHorseman

My family does our best to be self-sustainable.

We use our llama/alpaca/donkey manure to fertilize our fruit tree orchard, roses, and flower/veggie gardens.
We do our best to grow healthy grass seeds in our series of pastures to feed the farm animals (though we still have to buy extra hay).
We water all our plants/animals (and ourselves) with our own well water.

We heat our house with mostly firewood from fallen trees on our own property. The chimney and core of the house is built with cinder blocks that hold the heat within the house.

We heat (a portion of) our water with solar water heating.

rob-2

From my research it's the scale and cost of collection, transporting and proper handling of such chicken poop from the regions that raise chickens to the areas that grow crops.

The problems in our system, industrialized food supply are a double edged. You get the benefits of cheap, quality food products but not the upsides of smaller scale more sustainable production.

What does the average family need to change to support a 50% increase in food costs? Who drives the cost?

We can complain about the programs in place. But they were developed at a time when the average American family spent 30% of their take home on food. It's now down to 10-15%. The long term results have made us wealthier. Maybe people prefer to buy iPhones and spend time on Facebook over enjoying clean rivers.