Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Taking a step back, we need to clarify to ourselves why we may want an accreditation setup.

Commercial AP growers will find that some of their customers like to be reassured of the health and safety of plants or fish.

On the other hand, I imagine that all those taking part in this thread will want to be confident of the quality of purchases from THEIR suppliers of materials, seed, plants, fish. feed, etc.

So backyard AP growers who like eating their own plants and fish may not want to bother with accreditation but commercial AP growers and AP suppliers could benefit from having the independently verified status offered by accreditation.

An interesting discussion, yes. On a complex topic.

Cheers
Adrian

clearly there are a lot of things to consider.

perhaps if we first work on getting organic certification for our properties we can then extend this into other components of the system.

this is to say that we live the organic lifestyle as well as only use organic products. i guess it would be organically certified permaculture with ap at the core of the system. ap revolves around the whole system where the whole system revolves around ap. if that makes sense. ideally the aim would be to close the whole loop. record keeping would become simpler and production costs slashed. work shops could be made so people have a chance to see how their food is produced.

you could also have aquaponics as its own body and certification. there would have to be some rules and regulations made up. perhaps there could be polls made up here to determine general consensus. last thing we need is some control freak making all the decisions. i've seen first hand the problems this has caused in the aquacultural industry.

do people agree that decisions be made by the group and for the group?

obviously there will need to be leaders taking charge but they should be held to account.

the last thing we need is for this to get in the gov's hands. they will milk it dry.

Hi all
I've been thinking of all this topic. What I suppose is to start from existing elements:
-fish farming is already certified why not adapt the rules to aquaponics
-plant culture is the same
-to garantee food safety we would need an HACCP system running, it would put a value on the paperwork
-to garantee the sustainable aspect of production we already have a few certification required as ISO or OHSAS and they put value on record keeping aswell
We could easely do a mix and put what we want in it, it is what is done by all the certifiing groups.
The other point is to create a complete organic food chain separated in all the different specialised companies, certified by an independant organism. Like that we can put the responsabilities on the suppliers and each garantees his own product and transmits a part of his paper work to his clients. Makes much less paperwork and analysis costs for a single company. As long as it is done and presented to the gouvernements with calm and peolpe backup, it should be right.

The best is to have all the aquaponic people in one organised body, from the backyard to the big company, so that we have a real pressure by the number. The backyard peolpe can calm down the companies that could cause disaster for profit and support them in front of the gouvernement. In return the companies could have the funds to do research and diffuse the infos and to create the gear and equipement for the backyard ones.

All that organised in a participative democracy would make things long to decide but short to realise and wouldn't need as much adjusting as the existing gouvernement rules. So at the end it takes as much time and has everybody happy since all have expressed their point of vue.

For the no power of people on gouvernement, here is a short story:
Two greenpeace guys got caught while abording a ship transporting illegaly cut wood to the US. The guys went straight to jail and were charged for piracy. Greenpeace started a mail chain and Bush received around a million emails in 2 weeks, and even him had to backup and liberated the two guys and got the ship company charged for transport of illegal wood.

People have the power it is just that they haven't been shown how to use it, the gouvernement people have an image of the world that is modified by all the lobbying bodies so that they see what they want them to see. If you go to the European Parlement you have 5 lobby people for each parlmentary. And the media is owned by the same groups so the infos that come out are filtered and presented the way they want the people to understand it and then pressurize the gouvernments. This system works most of the time but we still have the hazardous problems coming up to make things clear up from time to time.

Internet is the most powerfull tool existing for people and it is very difficult to control by the countries and there is no international organisation to control it yet so lets use it.

Hope you'll like this

I like it, Amacafish,
I like it VERY much.
Exactly my line of thought

Now for organics certification:
I am very surprised that nobody took the time to carefully read the document posted by John:

"... Ok, the final report of the National Organic Standards Board is in the file area, where do you wish to start?..."

Obviuously, reading it is the best way to start.
I did so carefully and have almost finished.

I know you didn't, because the contents are illuminating:

Not only will aquaponics be certifiable, it is in many articles promoted as the way to go !

So read it and relax.

Frank

I am a lazy bugger as my dad always told me, I didn't take the time to go and get it. Done now...

As you say I'll get it read and as I'm in the certification thingies (I do the paper work for ISO systems) it could even become a job for me. I think it will have to be synthetised for the forum so that we don't need to all read the 86 pages if we don't need to.
And another is that I think we are all here because we all like the way the peolpe here think: out of the box.
Cheers

Amacafish

So is it the concensus that an AP certification will be more stringent then and Organic Certification? Should we just take item by item from the work already done and adapt then?
Good ideas all.

Why not an organic and AP certification?
Anyway AP is all about knowing what is in the food so more or less the same as the basic principle of organic, plus we use bacteria for substrate as the soil is.
I think having an AP cert should automatically give an organic cert, the thing is to adapt it to our situation.
AP is using different technologies, it is a mix of aquaria, fish farming, horticulture, gardening, food production and leasure production.
So take the best from it and leave the bad: environemental and food safety disasters!!
As biofarmer says in a way: securing the life of future generations!

you should all really read first and then react
I won't go into details unless you have read
There is no value in speculating

Frank

I'll do it tonight, promise.
Tomorrow you can prepare yourself to react!!!

Frank, I believe 'lastenboek' translates into 'specifications'. (By the way, as Drongen is in The Netherlands, how come you display a german flag?)

Kind regards
Adriaan Doesburg

Thanks for the translation, Adriaan

And that is a Belgian flag
you are Dutch?

Frank

I disagree with this notion that if I am not certified organic then calling my produce organic is dishonest.



If I grow food organically but have not completed a certification then I still have organic food. If I were to label that food as certified organic then that would be dishonest but there is nothing wrong with calling it organic or organically grown.

have it your way, Stuart
you are no doubt an honest person
but you do realize that there are others out there that wish to take advantage of your efforts?
For this reason I agree with the certification organisms that these words should be reserved for the truly certified.
Frank

I view the efforts of such organistations as an unnecessary power grab. We have been running our farm organically since before there were any organisations with which to certify our practices. Consequently the thought of one or more bodies convincing the government to legislate and take away our right to call our produce organic does not sit well with me.

Consumers do need protection but certifying bodies should succeed based on their reputations not their lobbyists ability to get favourable legislation.

If an individual or company where to market their food as organic when it wasn't then they would have to face the government, specifically the ACCC (In Australia, they deal with consumer and competition stuff)

Stuart,
You must know that all governments are led by the nose by the well established lobbies of traditional aquaculture, who only think short term and swear by big scale, pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and other chemicals, pushed by the gigantic backup of the companies that produce these.

Only the good example of people who care and the slowly increasing awareness that organic growing is a better way is slowly turning the tide.

And certification is an initiative of the growers, not of the government.

Governments only change under massive pressure.

Sometimes organic growers are helped by unexpected events:
Here in Belgium one government (supported by traditional agriculture) was sent home after dioxin was found in chicken meat: A grease recycling company had mingled some vegetable grease with motor oil and sold this mix to a food factory. Hundreds of thousands of chickens had to be destroyed. Farmers lost fortunes.
There is no way I would call this a "lucky" break, but it did give organic farming a boost.
Another such event is global warming.

The legal procedure on the dioxin crisis was due to start last week, nine years after the facts.
On the opening session, the attorney defending the suspected company stepped forward and stated that his agenda was full till September, that he is also busy on the Lernaut & Hauspie (speech products) fraud case.
To everybody's consternation the judge simply accepted this and postponed everything for nine months.

Just to show you the power of traditional agriculture.

You need an organization and an exact definition of the concept "organic" to stand up against this. And you need legal protection of the word "organic".

I appreciate the "rebel" attitude that probably made you an organic grower in the first place: That is how most of you started.
But now that, slowly, your success is increasing and awareness is growing amongst the public, I think you must protect your interest from the hordes of traditional farmers who stand ready to smother you and take over the name if no laws protect you.

Just my thoughts,

Frank