Loveland, Colorado, Fyn River Farms Prototype Grows Basil With Nutrients Produced By Fish
Loveland, Colorado, Fyn River Farms Prototype Grows Basil With Nutrients Produced By Fish
By Craig Young | Reporter-Herald Staff Writer
POSTED: 03/31/2018
Jason Rider, co-owner of Fyn River Farms, clips basil from some plants Tuesday at the indoor farm on the outskirts of Loveland. Goldfish provide most of the nutrients for the hydroponically grown basil plants. (Jenny Sparks / Loveland Reporter-Herald)
The farmers at Fyn River Farms near Loveland don't have much acreage to speak of, and their hired hands don't even have hands. That's the way of this aquaponic operation: The field is inside a building, and most of the workers are goldfish who create the nutrients to feed the crops.
Business partners Jason Rider and Mike Bennett have converted a 2,400-square-foot shop building just east of Loveland into an indoor growing operation that they call a farm. The system was ready to go in mid-January, and they are harvesting basil leaves as big as their hands now.
Fyn River Farms' prototype farm is an aquaponic operation, combining aquaculture — the growing of aquatic animals or plants — with hydroponics, the growing of crops in water.
The company's name is a nod to both aspects: Fyn is pronounced like the fin of a fish, and River refers to the water running through.
They grow their crops in a small amount of peat moss inserted into holes in a four-level system of blue plastic pipes, almost 2 miles' worth, filled with continuously running water. Grow lights hang over every section of pipe.
At the end of the building sits a 5,000-gallon tank housing goldfish and koi. The ammonia-rich droppings from the fish provide the nutrients for the plants — after the waste is run through a biofilter to produce nitrates. That water is pumped slowly through the pipes, nourishing the crop.
Fish are "workers on the farm"
Unlike in some aquaponic operations, Fyn River's fish aren't harvested for their meat because federal regulations would make a much larger operation necessary to maintain profitability, Bennett said.
"They're just workers on the farm," he said of the fish. "They get room and board."
The four-level setup enables the farm to fit a large number of plants in a small footprint. Scaffolding allows workers to reach the crop without bending. And the farm can grow almost any kind of crop — the basil is just an easy one to start with, the owners said.
Bennett, who represents the sixth generation of a farming family in Colorado's San Luis Valley, said his interest in the unusual indoor farm is all about sustainability.
"Farming has always been something I loved, but it's always been inefficient," he said. "In the pit of my stomach, I knew how inefficient we were in using our land and water resources."
For example, he said a center-pivot irrigation system requires almost 1,000 gallons of water a minute to operate, and some fields are irrigated 17 hours a day.
"We'll use less than 200 gallons a day," he said of the first Fyn River farm, which holds 7,000 gallons total. The pipes have spaces for more than 14,000 plants; an equivalent amount of basil grown on a traditional farm would need 10 acres, he said.
"We have optimized every inch of space in this building," he said.
That many basil plants will produce a harvest of 10,000 to 15,000 pounds each month year-round, regardless of the season, Rider said.
Bennett said he has been involved in a variety of agricultural operations over the years. Most recently, he owned KM2 Farms, a similar but smaller operation in Fort Collins.
When Rider was working on the idea of an aquaponic farm last spring, he contacted Bennett, for whom he had consulted at KM2. The two decided to partner in the new venture.
Relying on technology
Although the use of aquaculture dates back thousands of years, Fyn River's operation would not be viable without the technology developed in the past 10 years, Bennett and Rider said.
In fact, the partners said, they are reaping the benefits of innovations developed by black-market marijuana growers.
One way that law-enforcement investigators have found illegal indoor pot-growing operations is by looking for suspiciously large electricity bills, Bennett said. So growers figured out how to more efficiently use electric power. Grow lights have become more efficient, too, he said.
Fyn River has two propane burners suspended from the ceiling that give off carbon dioxide to help with plant growth, another technique used by indoor marijuana operations.
An automation system designed by Colorado Controls in Fort Collins allows the owners to monitor energy and water use, water temperature and pH, humidity in the building and more, Rider said. Using a mobile app, he can turn lights and fans on and off remotely.
"We create an environment that's perfect for growing, an ecosystem that allows the plants to thrive," Bennett said.
Though the relatively small space is packed with equipment and technology, the system is so efficient that Fyn River can compete with large farms in Mexico, California and Hawaii, Rider said.
"We run our farm with only a fraction of the human resources" of a traditional farm, he said. "Three people can run this farm full-time."
A global impact
So far, Rider and Bennett have been providing basil just to some local restaurants as they fine-tune the operation. But their real aim is to connect with distributors who can take their produce to a regional and national market.
If a market develops somewhere else in the country, the partners said they could set up a farm in the space of a few months to supply that area, at the fraction of the cost to start a traditional farm.
Having the farm close to the consumers is important in today's world, they said, when "local, fresh and real" are important to shoppers.
And if the bottom falls out of the market for a certain kind of produce, they can change out an entire crop and be heading to harvest in six weeks, Bennett said.
Bennett and Rider say the feasibility of their system would allow it to be used in areas of the world where food security is a problem.
"Agriculture is not sustainable the way we grow right now. A system like this can literally change the world hunger problem, to be honest with you," Bennett said. "This empowers people to have food. That's important to me."
Craig Young: 970-635-3634, cyoung@reporter-herald.com, www.twitter.com/CraigYoungRH.
Goldfish swim in a tank at Fyn River Farms on Tuesday. The fish — about 5,000 right now — provide most of the nutrients for the Loveland farm's hydroponically grown plants. (Jenny Sparks / Loveland Reporter-Herald)
