Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

i've thrown this one around a few other forums just to see where it goes... Oz-man will notice this one right off the rip.

for the past few years that i've been heavily involved with aquaponics i've noticed a few less the moral judgement calls when it comes to the business aspect of aquaponics... most of it revolves around the fact that this science is so new in the eyes of agriculture... but as the popularity of aquaponics grows, the number of people out to make a quick buck seems to be doubling at every turn...

since this science is so new i feel that it's extremely important to maintain a certain level of integrity... people already don't trust most professionals like lawyers, car salesmen, and any one of the large business corporations... so i think that it's extremely important to keep aquaponics as proverbially clean as possible...

here are some examples of what im talking about...

if you cruise the internet looking for aquaponics im sure you'll find a whole heap of people looking to sell you an aquaponic "kit" with all of the pipes and fitting with a nice sales pitch that goes a little something like "grow food anywhere." well... anywhere implies that these things will work in the arctic or in the navada desert... what they fail to mention is the fact that yes, you'll have everything you need to grow food as par the realm of aquaponics, but you'll also need temperate weather (at best) sunlight, and loads of fish food... i know that it is part of the consumers responsibility to know what they're buying, but again i remind you of how new aquaponics is... it's like why electric cars came out and the car salesman say "it's just like a normal car just with no emissions... and then 150 miles down the road and the car starts to grinding to a halt because the battery died...

another problem i see, and this is more aimed towards the commercial realm, is the fact that people are selling their "projections" as actual figures... it's one thing to break down a growth rate over a square foot and give an average yield rate per acre... but all this is, is a projection... what they arent telling you is that out of that acre only 65%-70% of that space will actually contain a growing area due to the necessity for the fish tank, seeding tables, and walkways... so what ever the "projection" is, most times you can cut 25% of that number right off of the top. and then plug in other variables like climate changes, sunlight changes, and the products grown... and your actual yield rate will be much much smaller than the projection.... which leads me to my next topic...

most projections that people are selling are projections for growth... not sellable product, but growth... just because the projections say that it'll have 1 million lbs of growth per acre, that doesnt necessarily means you'll have 1 million lbs of sellable product...i think on my best weeks running a commercial aquaponics farm the best we got was 80% of total weight being sellable product... and those weeks were few and far between... the grim reality is people only want to buy pretty food, so if you're planning on selling a lettuce mix, only leaves without spots, necrosis, or leaf driller trails will be able to be sold... on average we ran a 35% waste rate... meaning for every 4 lbs of growth, just under 3lbs was sellable product... if you have an open air farm, you can expect bug damage cutting into the sellable product margins, as well as those unusually hot days causing your lettuce to wilt on harvest day, making just about everything you harvest trash unless you consistently spray cold water into on the to lettuce to help the leaves rebound... which wont work for every leaf.... bottom line, not all of the weight grown can be counted as weight sold... it just doesnt work that way, and anyone that tells you it does... obviously knows very little about sales... yes you can turn the waste product into some sort of sellable product like compost, but that's a secondary product requiring more input, so it doesnt count as the initial product... i've already fielded that statement many times...

this next one im very familiar with because i fell for it hook, line, and sinker... the use of "internships" to provide a cheap labor force... the number of large systems is growing more rapidly these days, and with that the sale of knowledge. what happened to me was i signed a contract that stated that i would be an intern on an aquaponics farm. i would receive $50 a week and my room and board would be taken care of. after the initial 3 months if i was a "good fit for the farm" i would be asked to stay and be given a proper salary... well 2 months into my internship i had proven myself to not be a dummy and increased the farm productivity by 200%. i was put in charge of all of the lettuce production and was given reign over the other interns... i was even publicly named the farm manager... well, before the first 3 months were up the $50 a week payments wernt regularly paid out... sometime we'd go 2-3 weeks without being paid... then, before the 3 months was up the owners of the farm fell into some serious legal troubles, and payment became more irregular... i was asked to stay, and since they didn't have the cash to pay e they gave me a small percentage of the farm in return if i'd just "hang in there through the tough times." well time passed, and money was dolled out here and there, but they were always indebted to me... so when the second round of legal issues came through and they basically handed me the farm on a sheet of paper, i was put in complete control of the farm... things were going well and i knew the amount of money flowing into the farm because of production, so i continued to "hang in there" because the amount of money owed to me grew and grew... finally the day came where my personal bank account had dwindled down to $12.53... i asked the owners about getting a chunk of the money that they owed me and they flew off the handle... the end result was a very small sum of money, just enough to cover my cell phone bill for 2 months, and they added an increase of the percentage of the profit...

side note: while all of this is happening 5 interns had come and gone and none received their $50 a week payment so they left because they didnt have much to lose...

when i finally got tired of the run around i figured the owners of the farm owed me over $30,000 for just my houly rate if i were to only charge them $9/ hr, let alone what ever 10% of $9000 a month for 6 months adds up to.... and that $30k is after i subtract all of the things like rent, food, and the space i was taking up (rent)... 6 months of 12-14 hour work days...no payment... come to find out after i started speaking out against these people, i wasnt the only one they'd owe this type of money too...

and here's the real kicker... now they're charging for an internship... they are actually charging people to go to their farm and harvest their product, with very little, if any at all, actual training... all of my knowledge gained about aquaponics was by teaching myself by tinkering with a large scale system and forums like this one...

some how i find it morally wrong, if not illegal in some way, so charge your labor force to work for you... seems kind of backwards... but in their sales pitch for the internships nothing is mentioned about doing their harvest being mandatory... you go there thinking you'll be learning... but really your just paying to be part of their work force.

the list of these types of things goes on and on, and really i just put these type of threads up so people know what to look out for... the more of these types of things that are floating around the internet the better the chances are that someone will find them while googling aquaponics.

if anyone else has more questionable practices they'd like to share, or simply want to contest the points above please feel free... i want these types of list to be a compilation of things to look out for when seeks professional help with aquaponics...

Generally those in aquaponics who have the best ethics, are the ones making the least noise, the ones just getting on with it, and there aren't many people in the industry I really want to work with, Travis, Rakocy and Rebecca are probably the most outstanding people with the best ethics I've found in the industry.

I really don't understand the internship thing you guys have in the US. I had Sweetwater write to me asking if we had any interns we could send their way or recommend to them... Everyone who works at BYAP gets pretty much the same money, from highest to lowest wage it's about $1.50 difference and we sure can't find anyone that will work for free...

As far as the commercial side of things? No comment.... I'm still yet to hear of a commercial AP system turning a profit and paying off it's capex as well as wages... It's all either grant funded, relying on other sources of income like training, or using free labour, that's not a viable replicable primary production business in the long term.

Do you know anything about the portable farms people Damon?

cheers

who makes the most noise in australia?

i have yet to come across the portable farm people, but i'll look into them, and god help 'em if i find holes in their logic.

extra sources of income is what AP is all about... now the selling on knowledge is on its one pedestal, with problems of its own, but the selling of the waste in the form of compost is a big benefactor... also i've found when it comes to aquaponics you have to choose a side, it's either fish or plants... the produce both equally just wont happen... you're either using you fish as a nutrient base with the minimal amount of fish for produce production, or you're growing some super plant / algae bloom, that can handle large amounts of fish waste, but isn't quite as popular to be eaten, such as water cress, or can be eaten at all in the case of the algae... so if you're growing let's say lettuce as your main product of sales... then any fish sold would be a side product... hence multiple streams of income... even doing s hybrid system of a raft system for primary growth and a microponics cross over for plants that dont take too well to the rat system, it's still multiple streams of income from the same nutrient source... and this will follow all the way down to the compost being a part of the initial inputs, but still being classified as a byproduct of the system...

the internships in america come with peoples willingness to pay for knowledge coupled with their ignorance of swindlers... in some cases internships work, but in any case, free labor is illegal... no matter what a contract states, all interns must be paid some sort of monetary wage... that's just the law... and no, room and board does not count as part of a wage.

the problem lies in the lack of payment ( or in most cases refusal of payment) under the guise of promised retribution in the future... in my case, each time i asked for money and did not receive the full amount, they just kept adding to the percentage of the profits that i "owned." it's just a shame that the only whiteness to the verbal contract were the husband and wife duo... so the chances of me ever seeing my money are slim to none... well... unless you count the archived news letter on friendly aquaponic's website labeled news letter # 12 where it states that i own a percentage of the farm a viable source of verbal ownership under the realm of what's written in public shall be held the same as spoken in public... but at this point over a year later im not after my money, i just want to save people from falling for the same trap.

one of my biggest problems with the sales of knowledge is the misrepresentation of what's being taught... all over the internet you'll see sales pitches for "commercial aquaponics trainings." when in all actuality all you're learning is how to build a system... the name of the class should be changed to "how to build a very large system with little to no teachings on how to sell your product." none of the classes that i've heard about or been to actually teach these people about how to establish a benchmark in an already flooded market. none of these classes even talk about how to properly go about preparing for a food safety inspection or organic certification (if it's even possible). all these commercial classes teach people is how to build and maintain a very large system... well hell, you can learn that for free just by reading intot he forums... in the case of 1 7 day course that i attended, it was filled with a whole bunch of "feel good" talk about how the possibilites of business are endless if only you have a dream. for god sakes we spent 3 hours of the first day just introducing all of the 40 people in the class... if i'm paying $2,500 USD i couldn't care less who else was in the class with me, nor do i feel the need to hear about other peoples intentions about what they are going to do with their large systems... basically you'll end up paying not only for the over priced class, but for the airfare, hotel room, 7 days of meals, and lost work time... just to find out that "you have the power to control your own destiny," and that "good will makes the world go round." i know that these people just want to spread the word of aquaponics... but the least they could do is properly represent what they're going to teach in their "class" (which was more of an open forum discussion).

Which could have all been done... and acheived... at no cost.... here on the forums...

there is alot that can be gained by hands on learning, but what most people are expecting vs what they're getting are usually at the opposite ends of the spectrum...

Hi Polta,
You just post 11 post. Most of your post is interesting to me, but too long for me.

Cheer

sorry about that. i dont have much time during the day so i try to get it all down in black and white while i can.

just looked into the portable farms people... found some issues...

the first thing i noticed was in their headers... "no need for pesticides." blatantly wrong. there is always a need for pesticides for as long as bugs will exist... the problem lies in the fact that you cant use barely any pesticides when dealing with aquaponics... it'll kill the fish... so unless each one of your "portable" farms is encased in a green house... expect some bugs to show up...

bringing me to my next point... portability?... i dont know about you but when i think of portable i think of things like laptops and cell phones... not 8ftX8ft structures with a few hundred lbs of fish and plants inside... i mean unless you have a crane truck readily available... once you build the structure... it's prety much stationary unless you tear it down... and if thats the definition of "portable" (tearing it down to move it) then by that definition all buildings are portable if you have to tear them down and build them back up... technically a false claim and can be sued in court for making it... just saying...

their claim that duckweed has a high percentage of protein by volume... not entirely correct... in order to reach the 25% protein or higher range the duckweed needs to be dried... so since it's dried it loses close to 90% of it's total weight, making the percentage of protein by weight ration larger... it's a bit misleading...

i couldnt help but notice their crown jewel was in botswana... where the minimum wage base is very low, but countries where you could charge a premium for produce were close by... granted it's a good idea to exploit the low cost of labor in a 2nd world country and sell your produce to a country stuck in between 1st and 2nd world, it sure does increase the profit margins for maintaining commercial viability. this is something im noticing more and more is necessary to make aquaponic commercialization viable... well, unless automation of the feeding, planting, pH balancing, and harvesting arrives very quickly... maybe those guys at MIT in boston can build a machine out of legos that can take care of all of this labor... hell, they've already built a machine out of legos and an iphone that can solve the rubic's cube.

im sure there's more in there i could find, but i had 15 minutes of down time at work to look them up on my phone... lol also jotted down my issues with some of the things they were saying on their site on my phone on little post-it notes... it's funny how far phones have come in the last 10 years and how static all of main stream agriculture has stayed in the last 30... well, with the exception of patented seeds and large scale mono-cropping... imagine if the people of the world put as much effort into their own survival as they do in their own entertainment... orwell had it wrong, it's not fear that'll control the future, it's entertainment... huxley hit the nail right on the head.

That would be Dean at growfresh, he never stops... Hey Dean...

http://www.aquaponicshq.com/forums/show ... #post39845

follow the link for a cross examination of this thread by another forums administrator... sounds like someone's got a beef they need to squash...

Fwiw my opinion is a lot of the almost desperate longing for commercial AP businesses might have to do with the bad economy combined with a fever pitch of bad political climate, end times prophecy left over from y2k maybe, climate change pro and con debate, etc. We live in interesting times right now, I wish times were much more boring. I wonder how much of the AP hustler mentality and practices will go away when the economy improves. The hydroponics and aquaculture veterans of the world have probably experienced the same shysterism in their chosen fields too.

I plan to start a new drinking game, where you take a drink every time someone says they are new to AP and have commercial interests. I understand it and I wish everyone who tries it great success, but it is the pool that the crocodiles swim in, right?