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three years ago, Stan Lyons, owner of Malamalama Farm in Honaunau, looked over his devastated coffee crop, lost to the cherry borer beetle, and asked himself, "What's next? I've got no water and no soil."
Seen the above the other day , in comments on the New Jersey article someone brought up Aquaponics .
Aquaponics is a specific arena of organic farming that is based on fish ponds and an enclosed hydro-circulation system. The foundation of Lyons' entire operation is a 5-by-10-foot fish pond that is 5 feet deep and built in cement and under cover. All the water for the system is from catchment, and fueled by 20 or so tilapia and koi that glide past in blends of orange, white and black. "In a true aquaponic system, you're supposed to eat the fish too," Lyons explained. "But we can't do that. These guys are our pets." In a typical aquaculture system, the pond water generates waste product from the fish. Aquaponics puts that by-product to work. Leading away by gravity feed from the pond, the water flows into a filter tank that divides the solid material and the water. That is the first stage of its nutrient breakdown. The bottom of the filter tank has a valve that allows the solid material to be collected. "This is incredible organic fertilizer. I put it directly on my raised beds and the results are phenomenal," Lyons added.
(Score: 2) by caseih on Monday August 10 2015, @02:11PM
Again though, we have to remember that any time we produce food that is hauled away to consume, those nutrients are taken away from the system and don't come back. There may be available nutrients in the system and some in the rocks as you say, but eventually those will be used up too over the course of years (may be decades but still finite). Still worthwhile to explore, but it's not magic, and it's not ultimate any more sustainable than any other form of agriculture in this sense.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Monday August 10 2015, @06:22PM
Agreed. The only way I know of to solve the problem you're talking about is the way they did it in ancient China and Japan: collect human waste in barrels and carry it back out to the fields. One side effect was periodic cholera outbreaks, but that's not so hard to solve if you know why it happens, either by brief aerobic composting or longer anaerobic composting. But those people really knew how to do it sustainably after growing the same crops in the same place for many thousands of years, and the waste redistribution was considered essential to the point that it had a substantial market value. Not sure if my numbers are exactly right, but from what I've read something like four people living in a very small apartment in a Japanese city could pay their entire rent from the value of their excreta. I also hear it's still common for Chinese farmers with land near a highway to build a little outhouse by the road for passers-by to use for free. I would bet they even compete to have the nicest one in the area. If only modern gas stations had that incentive...
(Score: 2) by caseih on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:34PM
Human waste could be processed at waste treatment facilities into clean, healthy, compost or maybe into some granular or liquid concentrate form.