Hello everybody! My name is Jacob and I am currently a junior at College of the Ozarks. I am starting this site to document my work with aquaponics for my benefit and anyone else who may choose to learn from our success and failures. My eventual goal with aquaponics is to create a viable alternative to traditional agriculture so that we as a people can be more self sustainable and environmentally friendly, while also getting higher quality food.
How I got into Aquaponics
To start with I grew up in a very health conscience family. It was always stressed that we should have a healthy lifestyle and diet. I was taught you only get what you put into something and your body is no different.
As I got older I saw on the news the oceans being over-fished, crops being sprayed down with poison, chemical waste polluting the environment, E. coli outbreaks, pesticide resistant bugs, crop failures, and several other things that made me think everything might not be peachy keen!
I was quite surprised to find that even with all these problems the vast majority was not concerned enough to try to change the system.
I began looking up alternative agriculture and stumbled upon a charity organization in Wisconsin called Growing Power. They were using a inventive way to grow food that was good for the environment and even better for the people. Eureka! Aquaponics was discovered! A simple system of using fish to fertilize the plants and plants to filter the fish water.
It really seemed to good to be true. Much higher yields on the plant side compared to traditional agriculture using a fraction of the space and water. Plus there was a fish crop that could be harvested too giving another source of diversified income. Also if the system was ran correctly it would guarantee Organic produce which fetch a higher premium.
It seemed to me that anybody who was anybody in agriculture would be doing this but to my surprise there were only a few small pockets of people actually running aquaponics commercially.
That gave me the motivation to be apart of the solution.
As I got older I saw on the news the oceans being over-fished, crops being sprayed down with poison, chemical waste polluting the environment, E. coli outbreaks, pesticide resistant bugs, crop failures, and several other things that made me think everything might not be peachy keen!
I was quite surprised to find that even with all these problems the vast majority was not concerned enough to try to change the system.
I began looking up alternative agriculture and stumbled upon a charity organization in Wisconsin called Growing Power. They were using a inventive way to grow food that was good for the environment and even better for the people. Eureka! Aquaponics was discovered! A simple system of using fish to fertilize the plants and plants to filter the fish water.
It really seemed to good to be true. Much higher yields on the plant side compared to traditional agriculture using a fraction of the space and water. Plus there was a fish crop that could be harvested too giving another source of diversified income. Also if the system was ran correctly it would guarantee Organic produce which fetch a higher premium.
It seemed to me that anybody who was anybody in agriculture would be doing this but to my surprise there were only a few small pockets of people actually running aquaponics commercially.
That gave me the motivation to be apart of the solution.