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Controlled Environmental Farming Inc. Advances Urban Farming in Tucson, AZ
We are highly appreciative to the City for their forward-thinking Urban Farming Zoning Regulations. Tucson’s focus on food accessibility aligns well with CEF’s mission to offer healthy, affordable, fresh local food to the community as well as providing purposeful employment,” said CEO Kristen Osgood
Controlled Environmental Farming Inc. (CEF), Carlton, MN is advancing its concept of local, organic product cultivation within the city limits of a municipality through its recent preliminary site plan review success in Tucson, AZ. Making use of the highly progressive Urban Farming Zoning Regulations that the City of Tucson has, CEF presented a site plan that works well with the existing infrastructure, provides a beneficial, sustainable business to the Tucson community and is providing positive development to an odd shaped piece of property, increasing the City’s tax base. “We feel a very strong local connection when we can partner with progressive communities like Tucson.
We are highly appreciative to the City for their forward-thinking Urban Farming Zoning Regulations. Tucson’s focus on food accessibility aligns well with CEF’s mission to offer healthy, affordable, fresh local food to the community as well as providing purposeful employment,” said CEO Kristen Osgood
CEF intends to address the demand for locally grown, year-round nutritious quality food at competitive and consistent pricing through the construction of a new, patent pending, organic food production facility. The facility, engineered as a kit, can be placed anywhere geographically and permits the cultivation of a wide range of fruits, vegetables, herbs, shrimp and fish.
Ric Espiriti, the project’s Site Plan Architect noted, “Tucson’s progressive Urban Farming regulations recognize the nutritional and environmental benefits of local, Urban Farming and the benefit to the community.” In CEF facilities, product cultivation occurs through a proprietary closed loop, aquaponic water flow system that uses fish waste to provide nutrients (food) to the fruits, vegetables and herbs. The system is contained in a controlled environment facility, which has the benefit of consolidating and intensifying sustainable product growth while eliminating the risk factors that affect product quality, quantity and pricing. Processing and distribution operations are also contained within the facility which has the benefit of streamlining operations and increasing food safety.
“This concept, in the City, could be the start of something big for Tucson,” said Barrie Herr, their land Broker, at Long Reality, “I can see business and educational expansion resulting from this concept”. In spring 2020, CEF plans to start building the 40,000-square foot facility which will produce annually, 480,000 pounds of fruits, vegetables and herbs to schools, hospitals, food distributors restaurants and grocery stores. Sales will also be available directly to individuals. The project also calls for a drive – up lane, using on-line ordering and payment methods. CEF will also cultivate 48,000 pounds of tilapia and 10,000 lbs of fresh shrimp.
“I very happy with the results of our first, proposed, large city placement of one of our facilities. The City of Tucson should be commended for their advanced ideology on inner city land usage development,” remarked Bruce Carman, Owner and Director of Technology of CEF.
For more information on Controlled Environmental Farming Inc.
And its Urban Farming Model:
Bruce Carman: conenvfarm@gmail.com
US (ME): Student, Aquaponic Farmer With 22 Employees Awarded
At a special luncheon in early May, President Clayton Rose of Bowdoin College presented six seniors with awards to celebrate their personal achievements and contributions to the College.
Inaugurated in 1997 by Bowdoin President Robert H. Edwards, the President’s Award recognizes a student’s exceptional personal achievements and uncommon contributions to the College. The student’s actions demonstrate particular courage, imagination, and generosity of spirit; and they benefit the atmosphere, program, or general effectiveness of the College.
Trevor Kenkel, a biology and economics major, is the founder and president of Springworks Farm in Lisbon, an organic aquaponics business and a model for sustainable agriculture. He runs his farm while pursuing his studies at Bowdoin, earning him this descriptor: "part scientist and entrepreneur, part environmentalist and farmer—and full-time Bowdoin student."
Trevor Kenkel with President Rose
Kenkel has grown Springworks into the largest aquaponics farm in New England, employing twenty-two people and supplying organic lettuce to more than 130 customers, including Bowdoin College, UMaine Orono, Colby, and thirty Hannaford supermarkets.
Biology professor Barry Logan, who has spent time working with Kenkel at the farm, describes his student as a “collaborator” who “works really hard to create an extraordinary balance” between his classes and his impressive business venture. And a former proctor of Kenkel's praised his “warm-heartedness, willingness to welcome others, and his ease with conversation.”
Publication date: 5/10/2019
In A Basement in Stockholm, The Inhabitants Grow Their Own Fish and Vegetables - Cycling Cultivation Provides Extremely Grown Food
PUBLISHED FÖR 14 DAGAR SEDAN.
Different forms of urban cultivation are becoming increasingly popular and Dag-Tore Johannessen from the Circulation Company is testing aquaponics in a basement room. Photo: Yle / Linda Söderlund
In a few months the residents of Solberga in Stockholm can go and catch the dinner fish in the basement. At the same time, they can harvest salad, tomatoes and herbs. The cycling plant is tested to get locally produced food in town.
You first go through a bicycle cellar and then you come to a basement room, where the former storehouse was kept. An aquaponic cultivation has now been built, which provides both the fish and vegetables for the needs of the tenants.
THIS IS HOW AQUAPONI WORKS
- I jumped on the project right away. I am interested in food production and I also work with it. It seemed interesting to have friends with neighbors and raise fish and plants in the basement, says Markus Jantunen, one of the tenants in Solberga.
Torbjörn Frisö and Markus Jantunen read about the various hydroponic cultivation techniques. Photo: Yle / Linda Söderlund
The entire plant is a biological system that works with bacteria. The plants get nourishment from the fish bait, and at the same time the plants help to clean the water so that it can return to the fish farm.
In two open tanks, tilapia swims, one of the world's most cultured fish. Tilapia grows fast and thrives on a small surface and one expects to get 200 kg of fish a year from here.
Tilapia is an African fish that is grown a lot in especially Asia and the USA. Photo: Yle / Linda Söderlund
The fishermen sprinkle and swim up to the surface when Torbjörn Frisö pours half a cup of fish feed into the water.
- The only thing we add to the culture is oxygen and fish food, says Frisö.
Frisö founded Kretsloppsbolaget and he and Dag-Tore Johannessen have built the cultivation plant in the basement. Cultivation is part of the EU project Green Solberga and here in southern Stockholm several different climate-smart and sustainable innovations are tested.
The cultivation can provide 1500 basil pots per year
In the basement, three different hydroponic cultivation beds are tested, where one grows in water. Here grow lush basil, tomatoes, sugar peas, fennel and chili.
Basil is the main product right now and one expects 1500 basil pots per year.
The NFT technology with pipes is especially suitable for growing herbs. Photo: Yle / Linda Söderlund
THREE DIFFERENT HYDROPONIC CROPS
The big challenge is to maintain the balance in the biological system.
- Secondly, it is important to raise the level of bacteria, which converts the fish's poo ammonium to nitrite and then to nitrate. The pH value is important, as is the alkalinity, says Torbjörn Frisö.
With climate change, interest in urban cultivation is growing
Markus Jantunen believes that in the future it will become increasingly important that one can also produce their own food in the cities.
- We city dwellers do not have many options, compared to people living in rural areas. Then such solutions are needed to become self-sufficient in food.
He also appreciates the social part, to do something for the climate together with the neighbors.
- We are destroying our soil, we are depleting the soil and surpassing them elsewhere and we are fishing out of the sea. Then it is this that will be the future.
Ebb and river technology are suitable for different types of perennials, such as tomatoes. Photo: Yle / Linda Söderlund
The ecocycle company also believes that interest in urban cultivation continues to grow. People are becoming increasingly aware of climate change and want to influence themselves with active choices.
It is hoped that this type of aquaponic plant will be built in several basements around Stockholm. According to the circuit company, the plant has many advantages.
- This food is extremely popular if you think of the tenants living in Solberga. Water consumption is smaller than in normal cultivation and so we have the premises that are already heated, says Dag-Tore Johannesson.
The cultivation requires supervision a few times a week
Now the inhabitants are learning how to manage the cultivation. It is a group of about ten people who have been allowed to register and eventually they take over the responsibility for the cultivation from the Circulation Company.
- It requires supervision two or three times a week, depending on how the plant has been set up. It takes some time, but at the same time it is fun, so I think it will be fine, ”says Jantunen.
Photo: Yle / Linda Söderlund
Torbjörn shows Markus how to best sow basil. He uses regular seed soil and seeds sold for commercial use, they have much better germination than regular seeds.
- The first pots we put - oh, oh, as soon as it grew! It is amazing !, describes Torbjörn and shows with his hands how quickly the basilica grew.
"So the problem is that it gets so much that you don't know what to do about it?" Asks Markus.
- No, it's just eating it! We usually make pesto at home, it will be fine, Torbjörn tips and laughs.
The Green Solberga project also includes cultivation in pallet collars, a project with water stairs that can take advantage of stormwater and to test a biotechnology that removes bad odor during waste sorting. The project is run by IVL Svenska Miljöinstitutet and Stockholmshem.
US (AZ): Farming Sustainably With Aquaponic Produce
It began years ago with a pledge from Chef Ken Harvey to provide his guests at Loews Ventana Canyon with food made from the freshest possible ingredients, and Harvey hasn’t cut any corners in sourcing his meats, cheeses, breads and produce from sustainable purveyors.
But it was his first meeting with the founders of Merchant’s Garden, a local aquaponics farm, which put his nearly pathological commitment to the principle of sustainability on an exciting new path. This ultimately resulted in his vow to grow and harvest onsite enough lettuce to serve his tens of thousands of guests per month, year-round, with only one percent of the water that’s used in conventional farming.
Occupying a climate-controlled storage space that wasn’t being fully utilized, the new hydroponic garden is the last stop on the lettuce’s journey before it lands on a guest’s plate. That journey begins aquaponically at Merchant’s Garden, where the lettuce spends its newborn month being fed through its young root system by water enriched by nutrients from biofiltered tilapia waste. It’s then transported live to Loews Ventana Canyon, 7000 N. Resort Drive, in floating containers, with its roots still submersed in the nutrient-rich water, for a subsequent cycle of hydroponic growing prior to harvest.
Harvey is currently growing Bibb and Red Cherokee lettuces, as well as three varieties of Romaine. His garden system’s capacity is nearly 300 heads per harvest, with multiple harvests per month, which equates to a full acre of farming if the lettuce was grown in the ground. And he tells me that he’s only using 200 gallons of water per month in a recirculating system that only loses water through evaporation and transpiration.
Publication date: 5/9/2019
In This Toms River Greenhouse, Fish Help Grow Organic Lettuce
Producing Aquaponic Greens is a Group Effort
For The Family Behind HS Farms.
By Lauren Payne | | April 23, 2019
Appears in the April 2019 issue
Photo by James J. Connolly
Heather and Mike Scannell started growing aquaponic lettuce in 2016 in their garage. Their three children gobbled it up. Next, the Toms River couple moved their garage system to their backyard. After a successful growing season, Mike, a financial advisor, cut back his work hours to focus on growing more greens.
Heather Scannell places a lettuce seedling into a styrofoam clip that will hold it in one of the holes on a floating raft (pictured below). In 55 days, the sprout will develop into a perfect head of lettuce.
Photo by James J. Connolly
Today, Heather and Mike operate HS Farms, the state’s only organically certified home-delivery aquaponics farm. Aquaponics is an agricultural method that combines aquaculture (growing aquatic animals) with hydroponics (growing plants in water). This symbiotic process can yield a perfect head of lettuce in about 55 days, much faster than the average 90 days for lettuce grown the traditional way, in dirt.
At HS Farms, the process starts with fish. The two 300-gallon tanks in the Scannells’ 1,500-square-foot greenhouse each hold about 50 fish—a mix of goldfish, cod and tilapia. Their waste feeds tens of thousands of minuscule shrimp in a smaller, connected tank. The shrimps’ digestive systems and bacteria help convert the waste to nitrates; the nitrate-rich water then spills over a tank of clay balls, crushed clam shells and worms, further enriching and filtering the water.
Finally, the water is fed into troughs covered with floating foam rafts.
Michael and Heather Scannell with children,
from left, Allison, 12; Ryan, 11; and Jacqueline, 8.
Photo by James J. Connolly
“The process is chemical free and entirely sustainable,” says Mike. Seedlings of spring greens, romaine, butter-crunch lettuce and kale are clipped in place through holes in the rafts, their roots dangling in the enriched, pH-balanced water. The resulting produce tastes incredibly fresh. “I haven’t bought store-bought lettuce in two years,” says Heather.
Michael and daughter, Allison, survey one of the 300-gallon fish tanks. Photo by James J. Connolly
Mike tends the crop daily. Heather, a physical therapist, puts in several hours each week, planting seeds and separating seedlings. On weekends, Allison, 12; Ryan, 11; and Jacqueline, 8; all pitch in, planting, feeding the fish or, in Jacqueline’s case, digging for baby worms nestled deep in the clay balls. “I love worms,” she says. “I name them all Squirmy and Fasty.”
The Scannells deliver their produce to families in Ocean and Monmouth counties. Mixed greens run $4 for 5 ounces. Their organic lettuce is also available at the four Dean’s Natural Food Market locations in New Jersey.
Heather and Mike plan to build two more greenhouses within the next several months. “Our goal,” says Mike, “is to grow everything you need to make a salad.”
Salmon And Baby Chard, Brought To You By A Brooklyn Farm
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
Edenworks, an aquaponics operation in East Williamsburg, already sells salads at a local Whole Foods and is looking to scale up.
March 28, 2019
Brooklyn is not what most people envision when they think of farm country.
But if you take the L train to Montrose Avenue and walk a block, past the liquor store and catty corner to Louis Tommaso funeral home, you’ll find Edenworks. It’s an indoor aquaponics operation is raising salmon, shrimp and a hybrid striped bass on the lower level, with teeny tiny salad greens known as baby greens and microgreens, upstairs. A stone’s throw away is Oko Farms, also doing aquaponics, but outdoors and with an educational focus. And Smallhold, which grows mushrooms in its Minifarms in several New York City locations, is headquartered in nearby Fort Greene.
By housing fish and crops under one roof in East Williamsburg, Edenworks is putting a modern spin on an ancient form of agriculture. Chinese rice farmers have been putting carp in their flooded paddies for centuries, and the Aztecs grew crops on “chinampas,” or artificial islands, in lakes. The fish fertilize the crops and can be eaten at the end of the growing cycle.
The Edenworks version—urban, with a focus on premium products—should appeal to the growing category of shoppers looking for local, sustainable, healthy food that comes with lots of flavor and a good backstory. The company already sells two-ounce Spicy Microgreens and Mighty Microgreens Personal Salads for $4.49 each at the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, location of Whole Foods Market. (Sorry locavores, but for now, the fish are only available to a select few at promotional or local events.)
A worker feeds Atlantic Salmon in a tank
Photographer: Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
Novel farming operations have proliferated in recent years, and several have attracted huge investments, notably indoor farms Plenty, which raised $200 million in 2017, and Bowery Farming, which pulled in $90 million in December. But profitability is elusive, and investments in such startups dipped last year, dropping 7.3 percent to $601 million, according to researcher AgFunder, even as the overall agri-tech sector raised a record-breaking $16.9 billion.
The hard part is turning small-scale operations into big ones. Several have failed, among them PodPonics in Atlanta, FarmedHere in Chicago and another Brooklyn aquaponics enterprise, Verticulture Farms. The indoor farming niche is “more challenging than many other ag-tech categories,” says Louisa Burwood-Taylor, AgFunder’s head of media and research. “Investors might be more wary until they’ve seen some of these concepts proven out.”
Welcome to the Aqualab
Edenworks co-founder Jason Green, a technologist with a background in neuroscience, believes he has a winning formula. The company closed a $5 million seed round in May, with investors including venture capitalists and food industry veterans. The bet is that Edenworks’s (relatively) simple plan to go to market, with a focus on greens before scaling the seafood, will land it alongside such aquaponics operations as Wisconsin’s Superior Fresh, which now produces 1.8 million pounds of leafy greens and 160,000 pounds of fish each year.
Green, who runs Edenworks, founded the company with construction manager and systems engineer Matt LaRosa and chief technology officer Ben Silverman in 2013, originally building a pilot system raising tilapia and a variety of vegetables. Now they’re growing only baby greens and microgreens, with itty bitty versions of red kale, chard and cabbage—and the lowly tilapia has been abandoned. That commonly farmed species, Green concedes, is never going to be a marquee item. “You can’t brand or market your way out of it being a tilapia,” he says.
Jason Green | Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
Edenworks’ ecosystem harnesses the power of the microbiome instead of pesticides, antibiotics or synthetic fertilizers. The ground-level Aqualab is where the fish live. The waste, mostly feces along with a bit of ammonia from the fish urine and uneaten food, is run through a mechanical filter to separate liquids from solids. Bacteria grown from a starter culture then convert the ammonia to nitrates, sending fertilizer-rich water to the greens in the Farmlab two flights up. For now the solids are aerobically digested, a bacterial sewage treatment process, similar to the ammonia’s conversion to nitrates. (In future facilities, Green said, they’ll be gasified to generate energy.) The result is yields more than twice industry averages and more than eighteen months of farming without any foodborne pathogens, according to the company.
A ‘Win-Win-Win?’
The next step is ramping up the operations into a larger, New York metro area farm in 2020. But scaling vertical farms, even those just focused on a single production system, has been a challenge.
“It sounds like a win-win-win,” says Henry Gordon-Smith, founder and managing director for Agritecture Consulting, an urban-farming consulting firm one L stop away. “But the challenge is anytime you combine multiple systems and make them depend on each other, things get complicated.”
To start, the technology does not scale linearly. “When you have more lights, people, systems and plans, the calculations and requirements to create the consistent micro-climate get more challenging,” he says. Running a farm indoors, as opposed to outdoors in consistently warm weather, drives up energy usage, too. Then there’s the feed problem. The vast majority of commercially available fish feed is made from seafood taken from the already fish-depleted ocean.
Microgreens growing at Edenworks | Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
Green recognizes these challenges: Edenworks is growing only baby and microgreens, high-value crops with short growth cycles. Plans for a larger facility include a more precise “climate delivery” (as opposed to “climate control”) system that will help avoid problems encountered by other vertical farms. For the time being, the company will raise only as much fish as necessary for the salad side, a ratio of 1 pound of seafood for every 10 pounds of produce, until it’s satisfied with the greens business. Automation will restrain labor costs; new farms will use renewable energy technology.
Edenworks is experimenting with plant-based feed and plans to adopt fish-free feed when it becomes globally available in the next year or so, Green says. Jacqueline Claudia, CEO of aquaculture-based company Love the Wild, says increasingly sustainable feeds options are already available at reasonable prices. Still, she adds, Edenworks is likely ahead of most of the seafood industry. “Anytime you can grow more food, in the space you have, close to market, it’s a win,” she says. “What you’re really talking about is splitting hairs.”
Gordon-Smith is also confident in the company. “I’m optimistic they’re going to be able to navigate the challenges,” he says. While the obstacles are real and not every crop can be grown this way, farms like these are a piece of more sustainable future. “As the climate gets worse, we will need adaptation strategies.”
A Beginner’s Guide To Help You Grow Plants Indoors
In the last 5 to 10 years, a number of exciting technologies have come forward that may change the way people garden forever
Do you ever feel like your garden just won’t grow right, no matter how many nutrients, pesticides, or hours of care you throw at it?
If you answered yes, you are not alone! Growing up, many of us have seen our parents or teachers work magic with plants in their garden, dealing with cold weather, frost, bugs, animal invasions, and other tedious garden tasks. Many of us are left wondering how dealing with the elements and bugs can be worth it for anyone!
In the last 5 to 10 years, a number of exciting technologies have come forward that may change the way people garden forever. No longer do gardeners have to brave the elements and deal with cold winters where nothing grows. Indoor gardening has gained global attention, and there are countless innovators working on indoor growing solutions for the home and office.
Here are a few of these technologies. We hope these tips can empower you grow more food for more of the year!
LEDs
Horticultural LEDs have revolutionized indoor gardening in more ways than any other technology could. With access to controlled indoor light that isn’t too expensive to run, anyone can turn their soil or hydro container farm into an indoor set up, eliminating the need for sunlight and the risk of climate damage to crops. With the right LEDs giving your crops light, you can also expect way higher yields and fuller growth from your plants!
Hydroponics
This is the most popular of the indoor growing methods today. Hydroponics is the process of growing plants using no soil, suspending them in or over a nutrient rich solution for food and often using LEDs or artificial lighting to induce day/night cycles for plants and allow them the energy to photosynthesize. There are many kinds of hydroponic system designs and configuration, all of which carry out different approaches for different plants and outcomes.
Aquaponics
Similar to hydroponics, this growing method allows the user to grow plants without soil. Using slightly different irrigation and feeding methods, aquaponics takes fish waste from a fish tank and circulates it into the hydroponic root system, giving plants truly organic natural food. The plant roots then soak up the waste and clean the water, which can then be circulated back to the fish and the cycle repeats. This technology most closely mimics a natural energy cycle, and also has the added benefit of producing more than just plants, but seafood in your home too!
Container Gardening
Container gardens can be either indoor or outdoor, and are the lowest tech and oldest indoor gardening solution. Using a container with a water catching tray underneath, anyone can move their plants indoors, eliminating many of the pest and climate issues commonly associated with container gardening outdoors. Besides being the lowest cost indoor gardening solution, container gardens are a great way to transition from soil gardening outdoors to soilless gardening indoors using something like a hydroponic system. Whether using LEDs or natural light from a window, container gardening will keep you growing right through the winter months with a little less work and risk.
Smart Gardening
The newest of these options, smart gardening utilizes a plug and play growing appliance or device which controls lighting, feeding, watering, and monitoring your plants for you. This is the most effortless and failure free gardening option for homeowners anywhere. Whether you have a colder climate, a busy job, or a full social life, having a smart garden guarantees you the space and time to grow a garden without the hassle, time commitment, or pesticides. Smart gardens often utilize full climate control systems to guarantee your plants an optimal environment, and produce much less waste, toxins, and runoff than any other indoor gardening solution. Smart gardens come in all shapes and sizes, growing everything from herbs and greens to tomatoes and cannabis! If you are looking to up your gardening game for good, you can’t do better than a Smart Garden!
Many people we meet and talk to at Aeroasis agree on a few key things:
First, gardening is an incredibly rewarding experience, minus one or two very tedious and time consuming tasks. Second, limitations like seasonality make it hard to keep their garden up year after year, and this affects people’s willingness to garden over time. Third, everyone is looking for a better way to grow, spending more time and money on their plants directly and less on tertiary tasks like weeding, spraying, and watering their crops. With the option to garden inside, all of the more tedious aspects of growing become significantly less limiting, and seasonal plants are a thing of the past!
We at Aeroasis hope to keep empowering more people to grow their food indoors, and to spread the joy of controlled environment agriculture globally!
LEARN MORE ABOUT OASIS
"Do Organic Farmers Using Soil Have A Right To Exclude Aquaponic Farmers?"
Marc Laberge pleading for including all plants in organic rules
If there's one thing the soil-growing and out-of-soil producers can agree on, is that the debate around the organic & soil production is upsetting. If there's two, it's that hydro- and aquaponics should not be entering the organic world via a back door. But how should it be? In- or excluded? With one week to go before the Quebec public consultation on aquaponics ends, Marc Laberge with ML Aquaponics holds a plea for including all plants in the Quebec organic rules.
"Aquaponics is here to stay and is a great way of farming. Aquaponics has the potential to supply year-round organic fruits, vegetables and fish at a reasonable price, yet this entire type of farming, this fundamental Mother Natures’ purest, most organic, way of growing clean, dirt-free plants is at stake here", Marc with ML Aquaponics says. His aquaponics farm ML Aquaponics has harvested millions of crops of lettuce and rainbow trouts over the years. Following the Canadian Aquaculture Organic Laws, none of these has ever been certified organic - but that can change since the organic certification requirements of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SFCR) were extended to aquaculture products early this year.
Roots in water
"However Quebec’s organic watch dogs, the CARTV, are still not convinced that plants having their roots growing in water should be allowed to carry the organic certification", Marc explains. Currently the CARTV is asking for he public's opinion on this matter and Marc doesn't want the industry to miss out on this opportunity.
"We have every right to be called organic and are proud of it. Although our voices are outnumbered by at least a 1000 to 1, does this mean we have no rights?"
He shows Google answers on the search for organic:
1. Relating to or derived from living matter. “organic soils”. Synonym: living, live, animate, biological, natural.
2. (of food or farming methods) produced or involving production without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial agents. Synonym: pesticide-free, additive-free, chemical-free, nonchemical, natural
"If you look at the evolution of plants on this planet, you will find that they derived from water, starting out as some type of algae. Water is the essence of life on plant Earth, the Mother of all “Mother Natures” if you like", he says. "Organic farming is a method that grows plants in living matter without using synthetic chemicals. Synthetic fertilizers mean man made, we’re not talking about salts and minerals that are extracted from nature by man, but rather created by processes that would most likely never take place naturally."
Synthetic vs organic
"One of such procedures that comes to mind, is the use of petroleum to create nitrogen and then used as a synthetic fertilizer. So then, what is living matter? Besides the obvious, can soils be considered living matter? Of course, they can if they haven’t been burnt-out by harsh chemicals. What about water? The same applies, cities must kill off many living organisms in order to provide safe drinking water, but take a look under a magnifying glass at water from a natural source such as lakes, rivers, ponds and you will see life, lots of life."
Out of habit
Continuing on this point of view, Marc says that the combination soil-organic is mainly a combination made out of habit. "Organic farming using soil has been around for a long time, so long as a matter of fact, that some people are now saying that organic farming must use soil. Aquaponics is a farming method using fish to provide nutrients to plants that are grown in water. Although aquaponics has been around longer than soil farms, only in the last few decades has this way of producing food intensively, under controlled environments become of interest, to a new generation of organic farmers."
Questioning
That's why Marc now urges the public to take the opportunity and send out their point of view to the CARTV, currently holding a questioning on the matter. "The CARTV claim that only “aquatic” plants can be allowed to be organic, and that “terrestrial” plants must use the soil organic rules that, ironically do not allow cultivation in water. Looking at the definition of Organic, and knowing all terrestrial plants arose from water, we can only wonder if the organic farmers using soil, are trying to prevent other new organic aquaponic farmers from entering their niche markets?"
He's pleading for a more united industry and calls out to the industry to use the opportunity and fill in the Quebec questioning.
"We all believe in organic food the same way the soil people do, we share so many values and yet like siblings continue this fight", Marc says. "Have we forgotten what the essence of life is and that nothing will grow without it? Do the organic farmers using soil have a right to exclude aquaponic farmers from this label? Has the word Organic evolved into another meaning over time? If so, what definition should we use? What does Organic mean to you?"
BIGH, The Biggest Aquaponic Urban Farm in Europe!
BIGH, the biggest aquaponic urban farm in Europe!BIGH won the prize of the year for the people of Brussels in the “economy” category.
27.02.2019
In the heart of Brussels, 4 00m2 is to be used for urban agriculture divided between glasshouses, pisciculture and outside gardens under the roofs of Foodmet.
The universe of aquaponics according to the BIGH (Building Integrated GreenHouses) is quite a programme which links vegetal culture to fish farming and collecting the energy lost from the building.
2.000m2 of horticultural and fish farming greenhouses, 2.000m2 of productive vegetable gardens make up the largest urban farm under the roofs of Europe. An urban aquaponic farm which provides fish farming and the production of fruit, vegetables and herbs, 100% natural and without any chemical product added under one and the same roof !
For some years now, consumers have demanded more healthy food, local and traceable.
BIGH’s aim is to create a network of farms in the heart of the main European cities, making the places in town accessible, inspirational and innovative, so that the consumer will want to find tasty and local products of quality, while improving the environmental performances of their neighbourhood.
Different tours are designed for group, companies, professionals.
An incredible 1 hour tour of Ferme Abattoir including the outdoor garden, the greenhouse, and the fish farm, all with a fantastic view of Brussels is available in English, French, German and Dutch.
BIGH Website