Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've got half a mind to agree with you, but then again, I've been in two minds about it for most of the time! and I have been meaning to write a book about procrastination for years now.
We are a bit off track, aren't we! but it's all mind over matter . . . you don't mind and I don't matter.

Cheers IanK.

as soon as i saw there were more then 6 different groups competing to sell you a certification, i knew the organic labels were bullshit.

Well actually I think there's about 9 in Australia now, but you won't need to worry about it Timmy, because you will never be interested in buying any organic products....

This is an interesting thread. I never stopped to think that there might be an overproduction of food. But I guess that makes sense and its more an issue of uneven distribution.

Here in Hawaii we have a unique situation. There are 2 issues currently circulating around

1. 80-90% of Hawaii's food is imported. A really scary thought should something happen to the supply lines of food. Its estimated Hawaii would be able to support itself for 3-5 days before we run out of food. Scary right?

2. Local farmers are trying to find ways of surviving in Hawaii. A head of locally produces lettuce goes for 1-3 dollars. Imported lettuce .50-1 dollar a head. So local farmers struggle to survive. Farmers are trying to find ways to add value to their product and are looking at going organic. That way people will buy local.

some very interesting stuff going on.

HERE is something to go into the fray.... what we call organic ..... Sheep can eat TNT, yes dynamite... The bacteria in their stomachs then break it all down into a normal single cell component...IE something that is organic that has come from the earth... and there is no pollutent in either the sheep or the poop... So it really makes me wonder what other animals can do ...The other thing in question is the human perception of organic...Would you eat a TNT fed lamb cutlet or would your mind think it will BLOW UP on the BBQ


http://mdsheepgoat.blogspot.com/2011/02 ... -land.html

sorry just a few other things ..What constitutes the substance of SOIL....I know our BEACHES here are sand but some beachesare made of Stone pebbles(ie england)... My expanded clay balls have thousands of worms wiggling through the whole lot eating and putting their castings through the system just like SOIL and all the other micro bacterias like in soils so really the clay balls in my system are only a bigger version of the rocks in the soil breakdown...so when using media like clay balls is just like going to the beach in the UK its different but its still the beach... So it comes down to the fact that they call things Grow media when SOIL is also just a Grow media...

Your situation is symptomatic of the food system in the first world. Similar here in Australia.
-In Australia two businesses control almost 3 out of 4 food sales.
-Every city in Australia is highly dependent on long chain food distribution systems. So the 20 most common weekly grocery items in a shopping trolley have travelled 70,803 kilometres (yes 70,000+) before being consumed.
-And these same towns and cities have 2 days of staples and 5 days of all food in reserve.
-In 1940 it took 1 calorie of oil to produce and deliver 2.3 calories of food. Today it takes 7-8 calories of oil to produce and deliver 1 calorie of food.
-Peak oil has occurred, sometime between 2005 and 2008 according to OPEC (yes the debate is over
-The green revolution was a con job. If all you compared were commodity production figures e.g.. rice, then it was a success. However when total food production per acre/hectare was used as the basis of measurement, then the older systems were more productive and equitable. The green revolutions figures were those of a monoculture dependent of cheap oil, but in the old system the rice paddy produced leafy greens, fish, ducks and eggs, and so on that the farmer's family and neighbours could eat.

Basically industrial long chain food production and distribution systems days are numbered, governments and people just don't know it yet. What comes next is re-localisation i.e. local production and consumption and short chain production and distribution systems.

This will take about a decade to become apparent. There are no miracle replacement fuels for oil. And oil is the basis of most herbicides, pesticide and fertilizers used in industrial agriculture.

Almost forgot, in 2008 the world produced enough food for 12.1 billion people according to the FAO /UN. So there is no food shortage, just the usual political, social justice/equity, post production waste and distribution problems. 2008 was the year food riots went global (they had them in Chicago went food stamps didn't 'buy' enough food). Oh yes, the richest nation on earth had food riots, and 15% of the population of the USA are food stamp recipients!

As for TNT as a food for sheep? An energy audit will prove it foolish if nothing else does.

Here endth the rant!

Rant extension

Why on earth would they want to give real food to hungry people when they can make more money selling "food products" to people who don't need the calories?

Yes there is plenty of food, or there could be, but the industrial machine would rather make more money making people fat than feeding people.

Let try our best to get back to more of the farming methods from before the "green revolution" and we can throw in Aquaponics as well.

Or in the words of Michael Pollan "Eat Food, Not too much, Mostly plants."

I wrote my bachelors dissertaion on Agrifood systems. I will sometime give you some details on socalled organic and sustainable farming.

To be honest I do not want to label any of my products "organic". Because it is a lie, at least in Germany. (I was not able to get to know much other organic farming in other parts of the world, but be brutally honest would you buy "organic" from China, India, Russia or anywhere South American, even Africa?

Even for a "more" in profit never ever certified organic!
Organic is not sustainable (as well as hardcore chemical farming).

Farming is only about the button line.
But it should be about inprove fertility and hereby securing that nobody needs to go hungry to bed.
And it should be possible with reasonable prices.

The problem is not organic vs conventional, the problem is linear reductionist industrial farming systems (organic or otherwise) versus holistic circular closed loop systems. The former concentrates on on profitability, whereas the later revolves around profitability/prosperity in perpetuity.

After a decade of studying this at post graduate level I have bad news; the current economic paradigm (single bottom line profit maximisation) and system resilience (sustainability) are mutually exclusive. Basically unless we can get ecosystem services and social outcomes onto balance sheets, the global systems (finance, social and environmental) will eventually collapse - guaranteed.

Whilst AP is an interesting technical solution to waste conversion/reuse and system efficiency issues, at the end of the day AP is dealing with symptoms and not root causes of the resilience/sustainability problem.

TCLynx, my son gave me an MP3 player which was loaded up with, amongst other things, the audio book version of "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants." I swear I have listened to it all the way through at least a dozen times over the last couple of years and I just keep loving it and learning from it. It is brilliant. Thank you for raising it in this forum.

Erratum! I just remembered that Michael Pollan's book is titled 'In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto', and it his seven word synopsis of his own book that is "eat food, not too much, mostly plants." My apologies are extended to Mr Pollan, who could well be a member of this forum.

here here...

and from the first page



First time i seen this forum and only today I heard a podcast interview with Joel Salatin by Lew Rockwell (Libertarian/Austrian Economist) http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/?s=Joel+Salatin

Really interesting stuff on what "organic" really means.

Usually when the govt focuses something like this you can be pretty sure the legislation will benefit Big-Ag (or Big-Anything) and restrict competition from smaller market entrants via expensive regulations and law suits for violations.

this was a interesting post to your all change topic to many people in the world and not enough food
i live on a farm with normal food production and we plough back in 30% to 50% of our product back in to the ground for they are 2nds (being too big too small or just because theres a small mark on them) and we are not the only ones i know a lot of farmers not just in my state and they all do the same thing. so saying there is a food shortage is a hole lot of bull!!! our farm and most others could produces 40% more food then what we are all ready doing with next to no more labour or cost as we already pick it up before throwing it out.