CovOps
Location : Ether-Sphere Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator Humor : Über Serious
| Subject: Mission with aquaponics Tue Apr 22, 2014 11:37 pm | |
| Kate Humble: We don't value food because it's not expensive enough
The Springwatch presenter talks about food waste, keeping sheep, not having children and her mission with aquaponics
...UK's first closed-loop aquaponics centre, producing fish and fruit and veg working with aquaponics specialist Charlie Price.
Using the same super-strong plastic that forms the Eden project's biomes, Humble and team are effectively creating an incredibly efficient heat pocket that requires no additional heating. "Obviously aquaponics isn't new," she stresses. "People are doing this in the UK already. But what is clever here is the marriage between hydroponics and aquaculture." In essence the two systems are symbiotic: as Humble explains it, "you've got your fish in your tanks – tilapia – shitting away merrily, and that water full of nitrates is pumped through vegetable beds. The leafy greens love the nitrates and grow like fury, the vegetables clean the water and back it goes to the fish."
The ecological stumbling block for aquaculture is usually the feeding of the fish – using dead fish. But she has an ingenious plan. "It's all about waste management," she says brightly. "As well as a wormery there's a biopod, a sealed unit containing a non-endemic species of black soldier fly. This is where waste goes that can't be composted. The flies lay eggs, grubs hatch, then they pupate and we harvest them. Voilà: fish and poultry food. It's totally self-sustaining and incredibly low-maintenance."
If it works, it could be a real coup. In German trials the system has showed capacity to produce 250kg of fish a year and 32kg of fruit and veg a week. "You would never need food banks again!" she says.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/17/kate-humble-value-food-not-expensive-enough |
|