Hello.
I am here to learn, and hopefully someday teach, about how to use aquaponics in an integrated, durable, and self-reliant family agriculture system. I have lurked here for a while, observing what has been done with this method of raising foodstuffs, and think when combined with other self reliance efforts it has the great potential to solve many of the economic and ecological challenges we face.
Given my chosen climate, one of the greatest challenges in establishing a system is energy. While much can be accomplished out of doors, and even in soil during good weather, there are many things that we would use continuously that are less practical to store. For that, a year round, indoor system is called for. This is a mixed blessing, as it can be insulated, but it also requires at least some artificial lighting.
Another challenge is protein. Aquaponics is an excellent means of providing vegetation with the nutrients it needs, and offers surplus fish, but man can not live by fish and vegetation alone. A further advancement on aquaponics, known as
microponics, adds a variety of small livestock to the mix, ranging from poultry, rabbits, goats, sheep, swine, and even small cattle, fleshing out dietary options, opening up productive crafting with the additional byproducts and bringing additional nutrients into the system, while still only occupying a small amount of land. Like in aquaponics, the waste products of one species directly support another feedstock, that eventually works its way up the food chain. By gathering resources directly from the renewable natural sources, a pasture, we eliminate the need for commercial feeds. Technological advances based upon the basic aquaponics mechanics also allows us to support our livestock over the winter without a great deal of land dedicated to feed. Further applications of these methods can be applied to just about any agriculturally tied product, ranging from the industrial, fuel, or fiber.
Overcoming these challenges brings a great deal of blessings. Imagine building up a self sustainable ecosystem providing for all of our biologically met needs. With command of the means of production, there is no such thing as unemployment, and as long as our health holds, we don't have to beg, borrow, or steal to get what we need. Such a system would fundamentally change the way we approach economics, and even life in general. Instead of the daily rat race chasing piles of a fiat currency in exchange for labors of questionable worth, we can know exactly what we are working towards, an attainable goal, with benchmarks biologically established and unchanging, not re-tilling the same ground over and over, freeing us to more fulfilling labors. From this prospective, we are less combatants, scratching and clawing for an existence on a dog-eat-dog world, but pioneers on a Mission to Planet Earth.
There are other components to this of course, ranging from communications issues, energy production, transportation, housing, even defense. But I think if we take hunger off the table of vulnerabilities we face on a day to day basis, we can fundamentally change the equation of values. We can begin addressing other issues. The expense of housing I think can be greatly alleviated through
shipping container architecture. Though most current examples are obnoxious displays of snobbery, there is no reason they can not be made to appear from the exterior like any other home, that just happens to be far more functional, productive, and resistant to the outbursts of nature, and provide climate control for aquaponically grown crops that are either out of season or region. Industrial production, thought for a century to require massive amounts of machinery, energy, and labor can be
systematically miniaturized in size and operating requirements, just like the computers we are using, and be used to build and maintain our aquaponics systems. Feed stocks such as plastics for such production, as well as transportation fuel in the form of straight vegetable oil, can be grown in
photobioreactors, using the very same mechanical equipment employed for aquaponic systems. Further energy independence can be achieved by employing
solar thermal collectors and good old fashion steam engines to heat water for our fish and then create power for our homes, while being much more affordable and durable than photovoltaics, and access power can be stored as natural gas via the
Sabatier reaction, and burned on cloudy days, sinking CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it for use on our plants.
All these systems add another layer of self sustaining, and eventually self replicating infrastructure that bridges the gap between merely growing food yourself, and being independent of unstable and self destructive societies.
Backyard Aquaponics
