Well it's Sunday but I took a few days off from blogging so here's today's idea. Aquaponics.
There's been a lot of uproar about the open pen salmon farms that the NS govt has subsidized, and the potential environmental consequences, as well as the problem that people aren't so game on eating sick fish. Personally having grown up on the west coast where wild pacific salmon was easy to get, I'm not a big fan of farmed Atlantic salmon. My guess is the feed the fish get don't mimic their wild diet well enough. Plus there's the issue of environmental impact.
Here's a site I found that lists off some of the hazards of open pen fish farms. I was actually an at-sea fish observer on trawl boats on BC's west coast, from 1996 - 97, and have seen for myself that penned salmon do escape. The fact in my short career as a fish observer I've seen escaped Atlantic salmon appear in trawl nets leads me to suspect that the potential for escapees is large.
http://www.farmedanddangerous.org/salmon-farming-problems/
Closed containment systems have been mentioned as an option, but my understanding is that these are much more expensive than open pen farms, as the fish are raised in pens on land. What if, however, the money that went to open pen farms was used to develop aquaponics systems for Nova Scotia, to maximize profit off of moving tanks up on land?
Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics, using plants to filter the fish water. Thus a crop of vegetables, usually lettuce in current systems, can be harvested along with fish. Here is a link I found to a commercial operation in Quebec that grows trout and lettuce:
http://www.cultures-aquaponiques.com/index.htm
With respect to the feed the fish get, there is so much potential here to produce 'wild feed' by attempting to cultivate the fish's natural food rather than feeding them GMO soy or corn. I won't eat GMO soy or corn myself, so why would I eat fish that was raised eating it. I think there's a good opportunity here to pair aquaponics with vermiculture (the rearing of worms). The worm castings make an excellent compost for vegetable production and could be sold as such, and the worms could be incorporated into fish feed.
Setting up a worm bin is easy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QFCW2X9OZ8
here's a link to a video about a large scale vermicomposting operation, you could have something like this beside an aquaponics set up for fish feed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U27Aizi64Wg I think the trick would be to make sure the worms are getting organic healthy food and bedding. I think with all the aquaculture happening, and the growing concern over GMO corn and soy and even over fish-based feed that depletes ocean stocks, the person who invents a cost effective worm-based-fish-feed will be on to something big.
According to this article cold water species like trout and salmon do better on a high protein diet than on plant (corn) based feed. We have a worm bin in our kitchen for scraps and its excellent, the worms seem happy and are reproducing regularly, and we have this handy source of high quality compost. I'd love to try scaling up our worm bin in order to have extra worms to feed fish.
Currently Tilapia is a favourite fish for aquaponics, but unfortunately the ratio of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids in this fish mean it isn't as healthy as people would assume. According to this article tilapia may actually be more inflammatory than hamburger, pork and doughnuts. The other issue with raising a warm water fish is how to keep the water temperature sufficiently high. That's why I think development of aquaponics in NS should focus on our native, cold water species, coupled with some plants that are relatively easy to grow.
I was very inspired by this video, although the fish in the system aren't being grown to eat:
We're planning on experiment with our own small scale aquaponics system in the next year or two. We're going to 'borrow' a few trout from the river, and I'd like to grow these fish some delicious worms to eat. I feel excited about developing our land into a permaculture system. It seems timely, given the need for safe food. In googling around about aquaponics I found this article about a very unsustainable aquaculture fishery in Vietnam that has been affected Europe. It is from 2008, so I'm not sure how widespread this fish currently is
http://www.dietmindspirit.org/2008/01/30/why-you-shouldnt-eat-this-fish-pangas-pangasius-vietnamese-river-cobbler-white-catfish-gray-sole/
Speaking of Safe Food, back to the fracking epidemic, there is now evidence that animals grazed in fracked area may be contaminated:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1784382/livestock_falling_ill_in_fracking_regions_raising_concerns_about_food.html
If I were the premier of Nova Scotia I think instead of giving a bag of money to Cooke Aquaculture, to produce a pile of fish that people are hesitant to eat, I might have instead invested it in NS universities and govt to develop sustainable aquaponics infrastructure for the province. Imagine. Instead of giving dough for some uncreative, environmentally insensitive jobs which in the end create more profit for a single corporation, to invest money in the creativity and ingenuity of some Nova Scotians with a long term vision of creating sustainable food and employment. As the rest of the planet fracks up their fresh water thus contaminating their food supply, by rejecting fracking Nova Scotia would be poised to become an exporter of "safe organic food". In doing so the province could become a haven of healthy, wealthy, sustainable living for all involved. But that's just my opinion.
In googling about this topic, I found I'm not the first person to wonder if vegetables + worms + fish might be a solution.
Check out Food Abundance International
and the selection of videos they posted on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/FoodAbundance?feature=watch
Come on, Premier Dexter, in the words of young Iyanla Vanzant, "We can do this":
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