Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

"Fantastic discussion guys thank you for all your input." - Neil
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Firstly Neil you sounded as though you thought this discussion was complete... you're new so you OBVIOIOUSLY don't know how this Forum thing works... once we start a discussion on any given topic we continue until we are arguing on the smallest point- OR -we're discussing something totally unrelated to the orginal topic and usually at this point there is a lot of discussion that includes alcohol. So keep checking back on occasion to see where we are in the "discussion."

Secondly I think, from what I'm reading, a strategy towards getting acceptance of AP as 'organic' is probably in vain. What we need to do is begin marketing as "AP Grown" or some such thing. Not sure who said it in this thread but most people don't KNOW what "organic" means, they just want it to be 'pesticide and chemically free' so that where our marketing strategy begins- or at least a portion of it.

I've learned alot in this thread, thanks everyone!

Second that - we've only just started Page 2!

Rick

I suppose nothing stops you selling it as organic, but you won't get the certification, if someone suggested you were falsely advertising produce as organic, then you could be in the shit without a certificate.
Why rupe is the fish food classed as non organic? guys up north grow organic wheat and use dynamic lifter as a fertilizer (pelletized chook poo) yet the chooks that the poo came from could be from chooks that have been fed hormones etc
Wow I have a hangover this morning, bourbon fueled with a six pack beer chaser
Ok Anthony I may have have most of you covered now the topic change is sure to follow

Just saw this come accross facebook:

Our friends and allies in aquaponic farming, located right here on the Hamakua Coast on the Big Island, are the first farm on the planet to get their aquaponics produce organically certified. Feel free to stop by for a Saturday farm tour or support them by buying their produce at Costco.

From Aloha Mahi'ai Aquaponics with a link to Friendly Aquaponics.

any more details on how they got the certification deja?

Nope - hoping someone else would have details.

The Friendly's organic certification has been discussed on this board somewhere before, I'm pretty sure. But I've been through their training and know their system pretty well, so I'll try to answer any questions.

The basics - they're using a low density of fish (tilapia), and have out-gassing chambers and a solids filter tank. However, they no longer empty the solids, because the gammaras eat all the solids.

They use materials that have been certified for organics - they don't use standard pond liner, but durascrim or an LPDE from Inland Plastics. These have specifically been certified.

They use dow blue board foam for their rafts.

They don't use any caustic chemicals for pH adjustment, they just buffer with calcium carbonate (coral sand, in their case)

They only use organically certified pesticides, and I don't think they use anything not commonly used here (dipel, etc).

Fish food - as has been pointed out, there isn't any commercially available organic fish food. But the stuff they use (I've forgotten the brand, I'm sorry, but it's from Idaho, US) is natural, much like zeigler is.

Ummm... that's all I got off the top of my head. But I'm quite sure their production is as organic as anything else I've ever seen, organic in the original meaning of the word, not the (TM) meaning.

cool thatnks
interesting stuff, i thought dipel was certified organic, but im probably wrong. would be interested to know what fish food they are using, and if it is available here

They use Rangen. http://www.mresourcegroup.com/rangen/index.html

Thanks, Tai-Tai!
Hm, the Rangen website doesn't have ingredient lists.

"interesting stuff, i thought dipel was certified organic, but im probably wrong"

DIPEL MSDS http://www.greenharvest.com.au/pestcont ... /Dipel.pdf

3. COMPOSITION/INFORMATION ON INGREDIENTS
Product Description: Bio-insecticide for the control of leaf-eating caterpillars on fruit trees, grape vines, cabbages,
cauliflowers and broccoli. Pale tan powder.
Components / CAS Number Proportion Risk Phrases
Inerts
-
to 100% -
Bacillus thuringiensis
68038-71-1
76 g/kg -

It is only bacteria and 24% of an inert substance ie the powder

they cover their arse by stating not to let it get into ponds mmmmm

BUT the best way is to have a TRAPPING CROP in ie Nastursiums as the catapillers LLLLOOOOOVVVVEEEEEEEEEeeeeeee...... these and leave most of you other plants alone if you plant these right on the edge and have them overhanging the side of the GBs then you can spray with Dipel just in case in case that way the dipel is only going onto the nastursiums....

The "Friendlies" organic certification... is for the vegetable production... not the fish....

And they were granted the certification on the basis that the fish feed was not an organically certifiable input...

The "organic" standard is now essentially meaningless IMO.... and a plethora of certification bodies means it's almost certain to obtain "certification"... if you shop around...

Friendlies is certified organic for the veggie produce, NOT the fish. I don't believe the USA has an organic certification for fish anyway so even if their fish feed was certified organic it still wouldn't allow them to sell the fish as certified organic.

There are other commercial aquaponics operations out there but most of them are still in their first year or two of business so it is hard to know how they are doing. Also, most of them are too busy to be very active online though Green Acres here in Florida which is the mainland Friendlies affiliate that has now done a mainland Friendlies training is up and running and selling produce though they have not finished the process of getting certified organic status.

There is one guy I met this past spring during the Central Florida Aquaponics tour that is running an operation in North East Florida and he has chefs walking in and saying "so how much for a bag of the nasturtiums?" "Ok I'll take all you have." and things like that but he suffered from the cold this past winter and I have no idea how he is doing now since he doesn't seem active online on either of the sites I frequent.

I think perhaps as more and more people start growing on backyard scales, we may see more "small scale" marketing of produce. Now some cities have bent their zoning rules to allow people to grow veggies in their back yards and sell them at farmers markets without needing to get zoning/conditional use variances for their properties.

I think Locally grown will be far more important and there is now a home grown coop in my area where there are some backyard producers selling produce. The Coop doesn't allow any "chemical farming" but they don't require organic certification to sell.

God we have it good over hear We dont have people/ councils telling us we cant have a vege garden.... number of chooks yes pigs yes but only in larger cities...
One day maybe....... maybe its up to the people to say bugger off I bought the land I can do what i bloody like heheheh

Just as an aside, and in defense of the heart foundation, as they do a lot of good work in research into, and raising awareness of, heart disease.

Yes, the tick does have to be paid for. But that fee covers testing and analysis of the food, as well as certification and licencing, and McDonalds have *a lot* of stores australia-wide that needed to be licenced. The heart foundation are *very* strict in their guidelines on nutritional value.

If you look at the 9 meals that McDonalds was offering as tick approved, they do meet those guidelines... my favouite example being the afforementioned nugget meal... which consisted of 3 nuggets, a metric butt-load of un-dressed salad, and a bottle of water. I don't know about you, but i wouldn't call that a meal. Also if you read the fine print on their advertisments of their tick-approved meals, it did say that if any modification was made to the meals (e.g. leaving off the tomato or changing the drink), they would no longer be tick-approved.

McDonalds would have worked very hard to obtain that certification. I used to work for another fast-food chain who most people to believe to be much healthier than McDonalds, and was told that company also worked very hard to obtain that tick but were never able to meet the guidelines.