The greatest game changer in ...
Published by Tim Mann, President and Owner at Island CAD Services, Inc
The greatest game changer in the future of human water use is aquaponics. Why?
1. It is a method of agriculture that only uses 2-3% of the water required in conventional field agriculture. This is an "of course": if you're after a major reduction in water use, and you effect even a small change in those water uses that use the MOST water (such as agriculture) it means a huge change in your net availability of water.
And we're not talking about a small change; we're talking about the possibility of doing agriculture with around 20% of the water currently required, and growing exactly the same volume of the same crops. When combined with drip irrigation (great Israeli technology from the '50's, right?), aquaponics also solves the problems of growing orchard and row crops outdoors; these can all be watered with aquaponics nutrient water and grow in about half the time as with either conventional or organic methods (see article here: Permaculture With Aquaponics ).
(Below) A banana grove grown using aquaponics nutrient water and drip irrigation, in about one-quarter the time as usual (it's only a year and a half old), with 400 pounds of bananas in bunches on the stalks. We've already harvested 600 pounds from this one grove when this photo was taken.
2. Aquaponics systems eradicate mosquitoes in the nearby areas. I don't mean "reduce", I don't mean "significantly effect the population", I mean eradicate ; as in dead and gone , as in there just aren't any more , with a big enough aquaponics system. Period. YouTube video detailing our discovery of this phenomenon in 2009 here: Mosquito Eradication . First time in the history of the world that we had a completely non-toxic mosquito eradication system that just incidentally produces food .
Where your group takes this is up to you; we've been doing aquaponics profitably for 9 years now; and teaching it to others. We're concerned, and available for discussions on our water future.
With Warm Aloha, Tim Mann and Susanne Friend, Friendly Aquaponics, Inc, in Hawaii
1 Comment
I gave you a link to a rather symilar company, focusing on modular hydroponic agriltural systems optimised for urban environments / megacities. http://www.biopolus.org/ Their social media sites are probably better than their homepage. They actually win a competetition and received a huge EU research fund in 2014. It is actually a good sign that different regions and companies work on the same ideas, this paralell technolgocal evoltions can led us to remarkable technolgical changes.
Published by Arpad Lorberer, Geoscientist