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Understanding Aquaponics and Growing Food

Submitted by Damien Hinkson My first true commercial farm upgrade to aquaponics (AP) is complete, the first of many more as the commercial farmers are rushing to exploit the labor saving qualities of AP. This type of farming comfortably puts you in the .3 to .7 worker per acre range, amazingly, with no additional labour…

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Submitted by Damien Hinkson
We need to produce food.
We need to produce food.

My first true commercial farm upgrade to aquaponics (AP) is complete, the first of many more as the commercial farmers are rushing to exploit the labor saving qualities of AP. This type of farming comfortably puts you in the .3 to .7 worker per acre range, amazingly, with no additional labour skill sets required. This reduction in labor is replaced with small, constant energy usage.

When upgrading, priority is to utilize materials from on-site, the aim is to keep this as simple and cost effective as possible. Most pioneering farmers have usable materials from past projects, check. I wouldn’t go as far as to advice on system design because all systems, programs and growers are unique; however experience and good system design when converting are crucial for the continuity of the farm.

As a long time consultant on all things aquaponic and farming in general there are certain dynamics I have become acutely aware of in regards to farm and farmer for a project to be a success. I have some important ones list out here.

Clearly defining expectations and limitations, when upgrading a farm it has a program set in stone that works, and it is usually all in the growers head, they went thru so many labors and taught, re-taught and adjust it so often it’s highly unlikely that the program is written down in any detail, you first must extract that program, it should take 3 weeks observation and working with the grower as the grower usually will now have to document it himself. Each farm is unique and each successful grower is just as unique, in fact I would say unless you asked for it in advance if there is a readily available written accurate program that’s a red flag the grower is green.

Find the core workers, a farm is a very efficient machine and anyone there definitely is not unproductive, at the same time farming is seasonal and the ebb and flow of seasons sees workers coming and going. There will be a set of core workers that are there because they are dependable and understand the program. Usually the amount is .3 to.7 per acre. This is your labor for the new system. Disregard everyone else. Build a relationship with these and draw the relevant information from them also beginning the process of training in building the new system, after all they are your manual labor.

When switching over to the new system your fertilization program is the biggest change, you’re going to have to heavily rely on foliar feeding until bio filtration and root zone activity is converting efficiently enough, which if done right should take one growing season. Pest control should remain more or less unchanged. With this info it is possible to keep a farm in the green during the whole upgrade. If you’re interested in upgrading your commercial farm in the most financially viable way, be sure to contact me for a quote.

86 responses to “Understanding Aquaponics and Growing Food”

  1. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    Damian

    As you well know there are pros and cons to practically everything we do in life these days. So my question is this: has there been any reseach done on the new Aquaponic method of growing food in order to test the benefits of what has been producted against the traditional method; to test the health benefits?

    In this health conscious world today and the with the increase in the cancer rate which is directly related to diet, the focus ought to be on Health rather than the efficiency and reduction of labor demand, one would hope.

    Furthemore, Pesticides which in some instances have a direct impact on our health no matter the methods that are being utilized to clean this food before consumption. In any event, I saw a documentory several years ago in Barbados, which featured these young people who were growing their own food for consumpton, and what really caught my attention was the fact that their were using Garlic water as a pesticide. And their claimed that it worked quite effectively against the pest and bugs. Have you heard of such method or are you employing it already.

  2. David Avatar
    David

    @Damien

    When you get a chance email pictures and BU will post a gallery so the BU family can get a visual of what is possible.

  3. Damian Avatar
    Damian

    For most of the 10,000 years man has been on earth we used manure from animals to fertilise our crops. Its only in the last 100 years we used chemical salts as fertiliser, and it is not working.

    Aquaponics uses manure from fish to fertilise our crops, so in truth it is not “new”, what is new is the plastic and water pumps that allow us to keep fish anywhere.

    So AP is “mordern” organic agriculture and has all the known, time tested benifits.

  4. Damian Avatar
    Damian

    I have photos on my facebook page. And Bairds village farms web site. I will send you some ASAP though.

  5. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    Bush Tea

    There is a prevailing propensity here in the infinitesimal island of Barbados to resort to school yard tactics, when one’s argument has failed to bear fruit.
    I am just a little disappointed that the people who calls themselves the educated class in Barbados think that their have to resort to puerillties and sophomoric to prove their point.

    Which in my estimation, serves no better purpose than to poison the collegiality that is conducive to the proper social discourse.

    And this mentality brings me back to the words of a good friend and mentor who said to me that,” I should always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.”

    And that is why I get everyday to cultivate my mind because boy let me tell yaa: ignorance is one of the most revolting features of the human personality.

  6. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    Thanks for your insight Damian, it has been informative. This one area of academics that I have never taken much interest in, but it seems to be the right course on the road to better health. This what we are hoping for, to improve our eating habits and in the process it shall improve our health.

  7. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Aquatic animals raised in these contrived environments are the most polluted foods in the world. There are genetically polluted. They escape these confines and dessimate natural organisms. They represent a concentration of poisons that can be fould nowhere else. This stinking ‘business’ model is aimed at marketing fish that are times the size of wild ones in a fraction of the time. The criminals engaged in this practice try to achieve they business goals by tranfering human genes, for example, into the fish. All the recent studies, over three 3 months duration, have shown that these transgenic organisms are harmful to humans and other animals. Anybody who has any sense would not eat this garbage. This is the problem we have in these small island states, some fuking Zionist come ’bout here and tell some idiots that they could make money by effing up nature and this fool will follow, like a religion, this misguidance. And a Brassbowl full of government ministers that would let this ashole effup our most prescious resources for a few stinking dollars.

  8. Green Monkey Avatar
    Green Monkey

    Why GMOs Can Never be Safe
    by Dr Mae-Wan Ho

    The new genetics tells us that organisms need to engage in natural genetic modification in order to survive; artificial genetic modification interferes fundamentally with the natural process, and it is well-nigh impossible to avoid doing so

    This report is based on invited lectures delivered in GMOs and Food Safety International Forum 2013, 9-10 July 2013, Yunnan University of Finance Economics, Kunming, Yunnan; and 13 July 2013, Gloria Plaza Hotel Beijing, China.

    snip

    The rationale and impetus for genetic engineering and genetic modification is the ‘central dogma’ of molecular biology that assumes DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid) carries all the instructions for making an organism. Individual ‘genetic messages’ in DNA faithfully copied into RNA (ribosenucleic acid), is then translated into a protein via a genetic code; the protein determining a particular trait, such as herbicide tolerance, or insect resistance; one gene, one character. If it were really as simple as that, genetic modification would work perfectly. Unfortunately this simplistic picture is an illusion.

    Instead of linear causal chains leading from DNA to RNA to protein and downstream biological functions, complex feed-forward and feed-back cycles interconnect organism and environment at all levels to mark and change RNA and DNA down the generations (Figure 1). Molecular geneticists have coined the term ‘fluid genome’ by 1980. The fluid genome belongs in the organic quantum paradigm of interconnectedness, as Vandana says. Organisms work by intercommunication at every level, and not by control. Control belongs in the static mechanistic paradigm of the central dogma.

    In order to survive, the organism needs to engage in natural genetic modification in real time, an exquisitely precise molecular dance of life in which RNA and DNA respond to, and participate fully in ‘downstream’ biological functions. That is why organisms and ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to the crude, artificial GM RNA and DNA created by human genetic engineers. It is also why genetic modification can probably never be safe.

    More importantly, the human organism shapes its own development and evolutionary future; that is why we must take responsible action to ban all environmental releases of GMOs now. Not only have GM crops failed to deliver on the many false promises, they are unsafe for health and the environment [4] (Ban GMOs Now, ISIS publication), and obstructing the shift to sustainable non-GM agriculture that’s productive, resilient and health-promoting (see [5] Food Futures Now *Organic *Sustainable *Fossil Fuel Free , ISIS/TWN publication), and precisely what we need in times of climate change.

    http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Why_GMOs_Can_Never_be_Safe.php

  9. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    @ David
    It is time you show greater intellectual maturity. You put this thing about needing to grow food on this article. There is no reason for you to agree with every writer. More fundamentally, there should be a hard distinction between food and edible substances. What this man is talking about is the latter not the former.

  10. Damian Avatar
    Damian

    @ Pachamama. Woha dude who piss in your cornflakes?

    In AP as like everything else, what you put in you get out. So it will come down to the operator of the AP system what goes into the end product.

    I personaly use natural fish and natural seed. All my crops are breed on farm exsept for the source fish and seed I got in 2000. This is to avoid GMO’s and other unhealthy pratices and strenghen our breeds.

    The fish feed I use is Way cleaner than teristial animal feed. My tanks are the tanks that people use to store drinking water, and they are covered.

    Fish are extreamly sencitive to chemicals so pestisides, fungisides and herbisides are out of the question.

    As far as farming goes, AP is the cleanest method, hands down. And the most sustainable, it how rice has been grown in china for decades, flood the rice field and let the fish live in there for a while.

    I willing to answer your questions. You just have to put them in a clear concise format so I could understand, you sound like your operateing on false information. I will do what I can to correct you. I hope the above is a good start.

  11. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    @ Damian
    We don’t eat cornflakes, thank you! And if we did it must be organic 100% of the time. We don’t know how it is possible to ‘strengthen a breed’ by inbreeding. Only in Barbados inbreeding could be used to strengthen a breed or a class of people. The fish feed you use is most likely imported from the same people who support genetic pollution and you are in no position to speak to efficacy. You can have no answers for us. We are organically trained farmers who are decidedly against commecial agriculture, aquaculture

  12. millertheanunnaki Avatar
    millertheanunnaki

    @ Dompey | October 1, 2014 at 5:22 AM |

    Why don’t you stop misrepresenting what I said? You can believe in whatever god you want to. I have the right not to.

    But what can be more childish (puerile to use your big word) than a big intellectual giant like you actually believing in the Adam & Eve story as it is written in the Judeo-Christian book of myths and legend. The Elohim including Utu and Enki must be having a good laugh at you Dompey Fenty for believing in their instructions plagiarized by Jewish scholars while in exile in Babylon.

    I wish you along with Bushie would read (again) what Buddha is alleged to have said about believing in things and people.
    It is said Buddha lived some 500 years before Yeshua. Don’t you think he, Sage Buddha, too should be listened to?
    Please read and comprehend (even if not believing) what is written below.

    “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” ~Buddha

    I rest my case!

  13. millertheanunnaki Avatar
    millertheanunnaki

    @ Pachamama | October 1, 2014 at 8:32 AM |
    “We don’t know how it is possible to ‘strengthen a breed’ by inbreeding. Only in Barbados inbreeding could be used to strengthen a breed or a class of people.”

    That’s a deadly stab there, Pacha!
    Only in Barbados can such a class exist in the modern world of diversity.
    Another 50 years and that class will not exist as a ‘social species’.
    At least the British Royal Family (the Firm) recognized that and introduced different blood lines or stock to improve the quality of the gene pool and the possible survival of the business.

  14. Damian Avatar
    Damian

    AquaCULTURE is farming aquatic animals for food.

    AquaPONICS is useing the manure from aquatic animals to grow vegetables.

    Or let me put it this way. Insted of first running behind a cow with a bucket to collect the cow shit, or shoveling out chicken pens. Second processing that shit by stock pileing or Hot/cold composting then finaly after waiting a year or so till the manure is ready you then aply it to the plants root zone. By top dressing or mixing it in. This is the tradisional hands on approch to organic farming. The farmer has lots of phisical contact with shit.

    With aquaponics you feed the fish, the fish waste is disolved in the water. You then water plants directly with it. The farmer has little to no phisical contact with the shit.

    Now to speak to your concerns.

    Its not IN breeding, its called Seletive breeding. Witch simply means use the best parents to get the best children. This is standered pratice in organic farming and your “training” should have covered this. If not, get your money back.

    I checked my source of feed and they are aceptable to me. No GMO or wild caught fish. To get any better I would have to make it my self.

    Your againts commertial AG? Seriously? I am sure your awear that there is 1 farmer for every 100 people world wide. These people never grow a thing in their lives and don’t know how to. So are you sugesting we force them to grow their own food?

  15. millertheanunnaki Avatar
    millertheanunnaki

    @ Damian | October 1, 2014 at 9:08 AM | Its not IN breeding, its called “Seletive breeding. Witch simply means use the best parents to get the best children. This is standered pratice in organic farming and your “training” should have covered this. If not, get your money back.”

    That’s an excellent idea. Why not let us try it on human beings in Barbados? Maybe it could result in a better cadre of leaders than the current dysfunctional incestuous lot who have inherited extremely faulty physical and intellectual genes from dipping too often into the pool that comprises the local political class.

  16. David Avatar
    David

    Thanks Damien for responding to the Pacha man.

  17. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    @ David
    You said that if though we have conceded, we have not. We just lack the energy currently. This Damien has said nothing to justify any of the commercial cultures

  18. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    @ Pachamama,

    How would you grow enough food Organically to feed 280,000 people on a 166 sq.mile Island ?

    Cuba did it successfully for a period of time ( after they lost the support of the Soviet Union ) but they had the land, the labour and the entomologists.

    Barbados would have to revolutionized by a “Castro or Che” and we know that will not happen.

    http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr118h.htm

  19. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    Millertheanunneki

    “The Gene dipping too often into the pool that comprises the local political class”

    I have four simple questions I must ask you, and given the nature of your intellect, I quite confident that you’ll get all four correct.

    (1) Let’s hear your definition of what constitutes the pool of the local political class?

    (2) One of the greatest academic minds in the Caribbean emerged from the lower echelon of society. Care to make an educated guess?

    (3) Now, what has Human-Intellect to do with what caste one is/was assigned to by the devine hands of God?

    (4) And shouldn’t blame be casted on the academic institutions which produces or modern leaders and the culture which fuels the nature of their conduct?

    And can we concluded that your political- bigotry undermines the contemporary social order of what a democratic state ought to represent?

  20. Hants Avatar
    Hants

  21. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    David, Pacha and Damian.

    The above video is in 4 parts on YouTube.

    It is very interesting.

  22. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    @Hants
    Thanks for your farsightedness. We are real busy today. But some of us have to get our heads out of our asses and try to find creative, community based, solutions for all the neccesities of life. Nobody should make money off anything people NEED to live! Not want! Need

  23. David Avatar
    David

    @Pacha

    A journey can be completed in stages if it is efficient and strategic to do so.

    On Wednesday, 1 October 2014, Barbados Underground wrote:

    >

  24. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    Pacha and Miller, I really did not appreciate the way In which the both of you tried to underminde Damian confidence today. Okay, perhaps, the both of have had a better insight about Aquaponics than first thought, but that still did give the both of you the right to belittle the man’s effort, no matter how much insight he may have had. The fact of the matter is, he shared his knowledge with people like myself who had a clue regarding Aquaponics. The blog I assume, is here to educate, inform and cultivate our understanding with respect to the important issues which affects the lives Barbadian people, both foreign and domestic, and not vitiate, marginalized and belittle the efforts of others.

  25. millertheanunnaki Avatar
    millertheanunnaki

    @ Dompey | October 1, 2014 at 5:31 PM |
    “Its not IN breeding, its called “Seletive breeding. Witch simply means use the best parents to get the best children.”

    It possible if such an experiment had been carried out at the time of your conception, today we might just have Einstein Fenty contributing to the blog instead of Dopey Fenty.

    We are sure you would not mind being a test tube baby in a eugenics experiment.
    You wouldn’t mind being called a Dr. Mengele baby, would you now Little Hitler?

  26. SuckaBubby Avatar
    SuckaBubby

    Keep pushing Damian, you have my support.Many can talk but you are doing something.Good luck man.

  27. Damian Avatar
    Damian

    @ Pachamama

    “Nobody should make money off anything people NEED to live! Not want! Need”

    Your agurment is flawed. Some people don’t want to grow food, they just don’t, there will always be buyers.

  28. David Avatar
    David

    Let us timeout to acknowledge the death of lifelong agriculturist Keith Laurie who passed to the great beyond.

  29. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    @David
    Why are you always so deferential to White people. People die everyday. Death is a part of life. But, is this the same Keith Laurie who acted in concert with three other White men to overthrow an elected government of Barbados? Some time ago we wrote and submitted AN ARTICLE on the death of C Livingston Carter and up to now you have not published it. Now, you have the nerve to use this man’s death for political theater!

  30. David Avatar
    David

    @Pacha

    Mention was made of Laurie because of his contribution to agriculture and this is a blog about agriculture. Stop the melodrama.

  31. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    @ David
    What melodrama? C Livingston Carter made significant contributions to the social, economic and political life of Barbados too, but for you he was a nobody.

  32. David Avatar
    David

    @Pacha

    When it was not posted did you inquire why? Was it received, was it missed in the torrent of messages BU receives daily etc? Is there a history of BU not publishing your submissions. Good life is about being fair.

  33. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Damian
    First, let Bushie say how impressed he is at your very mature and gentlemanly response to Pacha’s digging…. Proper !!
    Next you have managed to get our friend Dompey to actually sound intelligent on a subject…
    Shiite man……you don’t want to be Prime minister?

    @ Pacha
    Boss man, the very best means of making money is to produce things that people NEED to live…..the only alternative is a communist or cooperative approach….and you will need sensible people for these to work, not BBs…

    Um is only Bajan BBs who look to depend on making their living off shiite that people don’t really NEED…like tourism and tax avoidance….and begging….

  34. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    @ Bushie
    You should let it be known that we prefer the cooperative approach as practiced by Mondragon. It must be a more enlightened approach ’cause the current model, as used in Barbados, has some ambiguities.

  35. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    @ David
    If you look at the other place we were known to publish, you will find it. Also after your unresponsiveness we opted to post it on a thread some days later.

    And yes and in all honesty BU has been at nearly all other times be more than fair to us with its editorial policy. Having said that nobody but Bushie is to be immune from criticism by us. LOL

  36. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    @ Pachamama your “Mondragon” approach would only work in Barbados if there was a radical change to a socialist government with honest leaders.

    Under a “Mondragon” system the war between the BHTA and the BAS would not happen.

    It is sad and pathetic that these two entities cannot negotiate a solution to their conflict.

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