Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My boss forwarded this article to me. He said to me "Aren't you doing something like this...this looks like it could become a big deal. Maybe you actually know what your talking about!"

I'm not in the article, but it's a good glimpse of how a commercial operation can work......

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1 ... DgyWj.html

Great article web4deb! its no longer a secret hobby of the informed few, BUT a way of life.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote a similar story a few weeks ago. Sweet Water's business model depends on selling perch in the round for $15/pound (if the WSJ article is correct, they went up a dollar a pound since the jsonline article.) You can buy frozen scaled fillets for $13/pound at my supermarket (when they have them.) According to the literature I've read, when machine scaled and hand filleted the yield is 45-47%. Commercial processors will take perch starting at 150 grams but prefer 227 grams and pay 2-4 dollars in the round (closer to 2). So Sweet Water wants $32/pound for perch fillets. No doubt there is a market for perch at $15/pound in the round, but I doubt it is a large market, even in Milwaukee. They are using old industrial buildings and grow lamps. So their electric bill, not to mention replacement bulb bill, has to be sky high. I'm in Wisconsin and have my setup inside too and I know what happened to my electric bill. I don't know what they are getting for their produce, but best of luck to them. I also think they have to buy their fingerlings, and at three fingerlings to a pound, and a year to reach market size if you keep the water temp over 70F...

I really do wish them the best of luck, but the economics are so hard to overcome. There is a reason Will Allen has to rely on contributions.

I was at the Bell Aquaculture website about a week ago and they claim to be currently producing less than a 100,000 pounds of perch with a capacity of nine million pounds (they have 47 acres of land they could build out.) Perch are grown to about 150 grams so 2 million a year means either they are puffing up sales to the Wall St Journal or their website is out of date.

Bell Aquaculture invested over $50million.. and has just turned a profit after three years...

I just don't think the figures for Sweet Water add up... at least not in terms of proven market return...

And I'm not sure that their grandiose expansion plans, with over twenty staff... have been fully thought through...

Or that they can actually justify the lettuce production figures... especially under lights...

Best of luck to them....

I do like the concept, but as others have already mentioned growing lettuce under lights just isn't going to be profitable in the long run. 150lb of greens a week, here in Australia I think the going rate at the farm gate is around $10/kg or $5/lb, even if you sell direct to the public at $10/lb $1500 a week isn;t going to come close to covering costs for a set up that size.

Power is still too damn cheap if people can conceive that it's viable as a business to grow lettuce that has extremely little energy content, for such a large energy use. I would shudder to think of the "energy in Vs energy out" figures for the set up...

Still, good to see people giving it a go.

Good to see the exposure. That can't hurt!!

Like other comments, I'm not sure that business model is viable... yet..., but I do see a dramatic increase in fish products coming. Between oil spills, overfishing and regulations, the cost of "fresh" fish is going up and the consumer STILL has no idea what is in the fish gleaned from their "pristine" ocean or river environ.

We, as well as Sweet Water and others, CAN guarantee our fish quality and therefore charge a premium as the consumer becomes more educated. The same goes for the veges. It really is about educating the consumer about the value of what we have and produce.

My 2¢.

CB

i've been watching the prices of yellow perch for quite a while.. at local larger grocery stores, it normally sells for 14.99/lb.. the lowest price i've seen in at least 18 months was 12.99 (at the regular grocery stores)
Fishmonger prices are pretty close, every now and then a bit lower than the 12.99

quite a bit of research has gone into yp, production from the great lakes has dropped dramatically, and i think prices are only going to go up..

and i live 2 minutes from lake erie!

i gotta say though, i'm not in this for the money, although it would be nice to be my own boss