Food Production: The Case for Aquaponics
Modern and ancient techniques are becoming readily accessible. How can we utilize these as a foundation for rapid advancement?
Since the invention of the transistor, we have seen an incredibly rapid progression of technology in general, but lets talk about how it applies to a critical aspect of infrastructure: Food.
It’s a topic that has a lot more facets than many seem to realize. We have issues of Right to Repair, patentable crops, land ownership, food prices, grocery stores, and even large scale emergency readiness. And, as most of us should know, food is rather important to the functioning of a society. Controlling food production can yield immense amounts of power, regardless of what part of the chain we are speaking about.
First though, lets take a quick look at history.
As our civilization progressed beyond the initial adoption of more agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution, we began to see a move from small farms to more centralized systems. This makes a lot of sense, and while there were exceptions and while this took generations to occur, the end result was the creation of the large-scale farmer. In many ways, this was a necessity for the advancement of our civilization. It enabled some individuals and families to focus on tasks and endeavors beyond spending the days addressing their own basic needs. It enabled specialization.
Throughout this period of many generations. We saw the rise of some very interesting approaches to farming. The one I want to focus on is called “Aquaponics.” Many conflate this term with “Hydroponics,” but not only is it distinct, it is also significantly older knowledge than what many people think about when they are pondering “Hydroponics.”
Let’s briefly define these terms though, so we are all on the same page. “Hydroponics” is generally growing crops in water rather than a typical growth medium like soil. “Aquaponics” is typically defined as aquaculture (raising animals in water) and hydroponics (growing crops in water) in symbiosis. It is a form of Polyculture, but the processes utilized are specific enough to give it its own category. However, I would like to generalize that definition further since it lacks both context and imagination.
Aquaponics: A man-made, self-sustaining ecosystem used to produce both crops and livestock that mimics a naturally occurring biome
It will become clear why this is important later in the article.
The ancient Aztecs used a form of aquaponics that we call Chinampa. They were unlikely to be the first to develop it, but as far as we know, they were the first to integrate it into large scale production. They used rafts to grow their crops, and irrigated them using nutrient rich water from nearby water sources, like the Chinampa Canal.
We also had similar things happening in Asia, where paddy fields used to grow rice were flooded with fish-filled water.
Anyone who has looked into aquaponics is probably familiar with this, and I won’t go too in-depth. It’s interesting reading though, should you decide to research the history here.
Jumping forward to more modern times, we see the advent of what most conjure in their minds when they imagine a hydroponics system. Basically, water tubs and pumps! The most basic explanation for aquaponics is that we plop some fish into the water of a hydroponics system to provide nutrients instead of building artificial systems to provide them.
This is all fairly brief and reductive, but it’s not really what this article is about.
In modern times, most food is produced in large, centralized farms. The independence of these farms is continually threatened, as control over the food supply is one of the most effective paths towards power. In many ways, the equipment used to produce food has turned into a subscription service as well. Repairs and updates are used to control the farm equipment market. Seeds and plant strains that overtake more traditional crop genetics have proliferated greatly, and we have been seeing more and more farmers lose autonomy over their own fields through land purchases. They are also vulnerable to disaster; if a disease runs rampant in a farm belt, it can massively impact everything from food prices throughout a nation to outright starvation.
Alongside this, we have seen many individuals and families move back towards a more traditional approach in their own homes. Pragmatically, this can help offset rising food prices and establish a bit of food security. For most this will be seasonal though, and there typically isn’t enough land area to truly replace the need for large scale agriculture.
We have also seen plenty of companies attempt to invent and create systems that integrate modern technology into in-home farming and gardening. While this is laudable, very few attempt to build an actual ecosystem. They are almost all hydroponics systems which require the addition of nutrients. Sometimes employing relatively complex systems to deliver those nutrients in real time.
Automation, and so-called “AI,” has become much more popular as well. However, these tend to focus on automating existing processes instead of truly creating new approaches. As far as I know, there is only one person attempting to create automation that enables everyone to feed themselves, regardless of knowledge or disability. Me.
Okay, we have set the stage.
Now enters Aquaponics, using the definition we made earlier. First, let’s just re-establish the basic concept. We are building a food system that attempts to mimic a natural environment. We want the water to contain some kind of animals/livestock that also provides nutrients for the crops, and we want the crops to be able to provide nutrients and food for the animals that live in the water. It takes about 100ft² (~9.5m²) to yield about 1 lb (0.5kg) of protein per day.
One important addition here is that it is not required to actually eat the fish or animals, for those who might have vegetarian or vegan leanings.
There are actually quite a few ways to accomplish this and not all of them include hydroponics. All that we need to do is be able to transport the water back and forth. This can, of course, be accomplished with the typically understood “aquaponics system,” where we have a large reservoir of water with crops growing on top of it. We pump the water up from the reservoir into the crops and then let it drain back into reservoir.
But, we can do much more creative things with this using natural environments as inspiration. What we need is a place for the fish, a place for the crops, and a way to cycle the water between the two. Before we go any further, I’d like you to take a bit of time and think about how you might accomplish this yourself!
Done? Then let’s proceed!
One way we can do this is to dig a fish pond. Depending on region, we might need to make sure its deep enough so it doesn’t freeze completely during the cold seasons. This enables the fish, and other animals, to survive through winter. Depending on what we are doing, we can even use the earth that is removed to do something like print a structure.
Next, we might mark an area out for what will appear to be a normal, traditional garden. Before we start laying down soil and seeds though, we would dig out an area for drainage. We can use technology like French Drains to enable the water to travel back into the fish pond without the use of any electronics at all.
There are all kinds of ways to accomplish this, but all we really need is for it to be able to drain. In essence, we can dig a hole with a trench leading to the fish pond, fill it with rocks, and then start our garden on top.
It is a bit more complex when it comes to actually creating a system that will drain properly though. And, I would personally suggest building something that more closely resembles a proper French Drain. Covering the actual, physical aquaponics system will be in a different article though!
At this point, we still need to be able to transport the water from the fish pond to irrigate the crops. We can use anything from hand-watering, to siphons, all the way up to some pretty advanced pump systems. We can use gravity as well, if the area allows it or we can build up the pond area so that the surface is above the elevation of the crops.
While I will be putting out an article that serves as a tutorial for building an aquaponics system, I would like to strongly encourage you to imagine all the different ways this can be accomplished. Be creative! Be clever! I can’t wait to see someone come up with an approach I never even thought about.
Another approach, which is the more typical concept when thinking about an aquaponics system, is using something like repurposed IBC Totes in a climate controlled environment in order to achieve year-round production. These can also be used to collect water! If we stack them, we are able to generate surprising amounts of pressure. We will actually explore this all in much more depth in the aquaponics tutorial.
So, we have explored two approaches; one for an indoor environment and another for an outdoor environment. Another option for indoors is much more aesthetic though. We can combine fish tanks and aquariums with potted plants. This does require piping which can present its own challenges, but we can build an entire environment inside our home that takes care of itself.. and us. Not just through food production either, but by cleaning the air around us. Some plant life works better than others, but all create an environment that is more conducive to mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. An ultra basic setup in this vein might even be a 5-10 gallon tank with an herb garden on top.
We can tie all of these systems together too. Like, having an outdoor garden during the summer (because they are wonderful), but being able to shift the nutrient rich water indoors for winter. Or, building a greenhouse around our outdoor garden. Or having indoor aquariums that send their water to our garden area in our sun room. This is an immensely versatile concept. The biggest hurdle is usually transporting the water itself or general cleaning.
We quickly detailed the scalability of this in the Building Technology with Scalability in Mind, but there were two areas I really wanted to expand on further.
The first is the idea of “edible parks.” Neighborhood and city parks present quite a few challenges, from maintenance costs to a very narrow focus of use. Applying the same concepts spoken about earlier in our own yards can be pretty easily scaled up to parks. In this, they wouldn’t necessarily have to be filled only with edible plants, but creating a self-sustaining ecosystem cuts down on things like water use or potential chemical use. These would likely have to be region specific, and there are enormous amounts of room for creative license, but the idea is to make an outdoor space that people can use without jumping right into wildlife areas.
Parks are a wonderful way to incorporate natural environments even in the midst of human development. We can retain some fully natural environments too. But, in areas where this is not feasible, or in areas that already have parks, creating a self-sustaining ecosystem is exceptionally viable. Further, we can use these areas to produce food as well, to create layers of food security for any given area. Many of them can even be designed to be as educational as possible. We will delve into building a truly modern educational system in another article, but imagine a field trip to a park.. that also includes massive educational opportunities with regards to identifying edible plants, the broader topic of ecosystems, biomes, and even how such a park was conceptualized, designed, and built.
Instead of attempting to landscape parking lots with islands that have trees that rarely reach maturity, we can design them with some water features or use nearby water systems to deliver nutrient rich water that drains back into the surrounding area. There are quite a few different applications like this in environments that have more concrete or asphalt, and it not only improves flora health that already exists, it also opens up possibilities that are not currently feasible. In a bit larger parking lot, we could reasonably be able to plant a small orchard.
Now lets jump up in scale to more regional areas; the areas we currently see large-scale farms being implemented. While having scalable food production infrastructure would reduce the need for large scale farming to a great degree, the redundancy provided can not be overstated in its value. All that said, we can still examine how we might create large scale farms as ecosystems in their own right. To do that, we have to integrate methods for creating and transporting nutrient rich water into the process of growing crops at more traditional scales.
Some measures may not be particularly feasible, such as creating a French Drain system for a 100 acre plot of land. Its not impossible, but actually pulling it off may very likely mean missing a growing season. Installing it would require construction on the field, in part or in whole, and that would need to be done before or after the growing season. Before the growing season is a time that is used to prepare the land for the crops. After the season is usually shortly followed by temperatures that will cause the ground to freeze. With fully scalable food production already utilized, this isn’t too unreasonable when it comes to food security as a sole factor, but its still quite an undertaking.
This introduces the idea of partial ecosystems. As the term might suggest, this is an area that is designed to use some parts of the aquaponics approach, but not all. When it comes to a large scale farming operation, this would most likely be constructing an irrigation pond that contains fish in order to generate nutrient rich water. Irrigation ponds also have the ability to improve agricultural water security. Though in and of themselves, that factor alone may not be enough for a farming operation to adopt them. Combined with the ability to provide nutrients, some level of ability to produce protein, and increasing soil viability in the long term, it becomes a much more appealing option. It can even be used to create more stable regions for raising livestock. We can design the entire ecosystem in order to support the specific needs of different livestock.
Now that we have gone a bit deeper into how this conceptual approach may actually look at a few different scales, lets take a look at the second to last factor: Stability and security. Using this paradigm, most homes will be able to meet their own food needs in totality, or to a great degree. There may be some specialized crops, or crops that require specific growing conditions that are difficult to tackle at home, like fruit trees. But, we live in a world where disaster and emergencies can strike when we least expect them. Events like fires and floods can lead to extraordinarily difficult circumstances to overcome and build back again.
Our current approach typically revolves around fundraising and then throwing that money at the problem. That, or sending supplies, food, and water from unaffected areas to areas that were affected, frequently over great distances. In general, this actually incentivizes providing just enough to be able to create positive publicity, but not enough to actually solve the problem. That would be bad for business. Then, the fact that an area still needs help is used to gather more funding. Frequently with the implied or explicit demonization of anyone who criticizes the efforts as being at fault for the failure. It is very, very effective and absolutely rampant.
However, the sequence of events in a paradigm of scalable, decentralized food production is quite a bit different. The regions that are right on the edge of the affected areas can immediately begin providing support and rebuilding. This provides for a rapid, nearly instantaneous response to extreme emergencies or even lesser issues like an area getting hit by some kind of pest that takes down some crops.
Not only that, it allows for a staggering amount of customizability at every scale. Each home can pick what they wish to grow for themselves, and at larger scales, can utilize communication tech (or just good old conversations) to figure out what type of food should be grown. Individual households and regions can specialize in whatever they want, and due to the technology in play, we are able to decouple crop types from growing zones (at least to a degree). It completely changes the paradigm, and how we approach food and sustenance as a civilization.
Yet, while taking the aquaponics approach makes it significantly more feasible for most to grow their own food, by no means does it make it possible for everyone. This could be for a plethora of reasons: time, knowledge, space, or physical/mental disability.
I would even go so far as to propose that most people who read this article will avoid integrating these aquaponics systems in their own life for one of the above reasons. Even in the face of continually rising food prices and widespread chemicals in every day food, there are extenuating circumstances that still lead to people avoiding it.
I can’t speak to all of these reasons, however, automation can go a very long way in addressing some of them. A personal agricultural system that is designed to be a closed, self-sustaining ecosystem is largely “automated” by its inherent design, but this doesn’t cover everything. We still want to be able to monitor system health and harvesting can be difficult for plenty of people. Some of this will be covered in a different article, where I speak on scalable manufacturing technology, but I’ll still touch on it here.
As opposed to everything else that is mentioned in this article, this facet means discussing truly modern, novel technology. Let’s wrap this article up with the final aspect, accessibility!
The first thing to understand is that implementing automation in many fields means software and hardware. I will discuss both in much more detail in separate articles! The software essentially takes data collected from sensors, and then directs the hardware to perform tasks. The hardware is actually where a lot of the innovation and cleverness comes into play with specialized designs and applications. That’s vague for a reason, since there are a huge amount of applications, and it also involves software that can learn. This would include some pretty basic tasks like monitoring moisture level in the soil or growth medium, but would also include deploying cameras and robotics in order to harvest food when it is ripe, or en masse at any desired point.
One part of this is creating a comprehensive database for a variety of crops. While I strongly and persistently state that the software and hardware of such a system should NEVER be connected directly to the internet, the database itself could be maintained in a variety of ways that do utilize modern communication technology.
How this might look:
Throughout the growing season, growth medium moisture is monitored by sensors. Crop health is monitored using cameras and automated processes that track the color of leaves and general growth rate. The water is released at certain times of day, in certain amounts, and in certain environmental conditions.
The plants and crops are carefully handled by robotic arms with a variety of attachments; trimmers, trowels, and even some wire ties. It aims to optimize growth, over time, by building up a personalized database using all the monitored factors in a given environment. Branches are delicately shaped to increase light exposure.
As the vegetables, fruit, or general crops mature, their health is still monitored using basic cameras connected to a micro pc (like a Raspberry Pi). Color, in particular, is closely tracked. Each individual fruit or vegetable can be cultivated in order to increase likelihood of making it to harvest, increase yield, or potentially increase nutrient density. Plants that might be lagging behind are marked for focused care.
Light cycles and air flow are adjusted in real time, according to the results that have been achieved previously. Always working towards improvement. If it is the first grow cycle, they can either utilize a general database for a foundation or just learn as it goes.
Using tomatoes as a specific example; as we get closer to harvest, their color is noted, converted into a hex code, and compared to a database. Each and every one can be tended individually, in real-time.
One of them suddenly matches the color code for ripeness over 80% of its surface! The 3D gantry system deploys. A robotic arm with a grabber and shears plucks the tomato and places it in a basket, ready to be used by the family as needed.
Each crop does take a little different harvest procedure, and there are specific circumstances that a household may want to adjust a bit for their own preferences. We can even extend the gantry and robotic arm mechanisms to take it where ever we want them to go. We can process them using vacuum sealing, canning, or whatever we want.
We can go even further and have these systems prepare entire meals. Not everyone will be a fan of completely automating a process like this, but importantly, it would be a choice. And for many, they may not be in a position to be able to grow their own food or prepare their own meals in the first place.
Perhaps the most critical factor to understand about this is that it is modular and represents choice and options. In fact, a wider range of choice and options than has ever existed before. If a family or individual wants to tend the process themselves, but have the harvest taken care of for them.. that’s a design choice. If someone wants it the other way around, where they handle the harvest but have the automated systems take care of the growth cycle.. that’s a choice too. And if someone wants to take care of all of it manually, but have their meals prepared for them.. well, that’s an option too. In the end, it is completely and entirely up to the person(s). At the same time, it enables individuals who may have never dreamed of autonomy to actually achieve a level of self-sufficiency they never imagined possible.
For those that might be unaware, we actually have the technology to do this today. Some of the tools still need some development, particularly when it comes to harvesting or robotic tasks, but the automation and the general concept of aquaponics is here, now. I know because I created it. This type of paradigm really changes the conversation in tangentially related topics as well, like providing food assistance in the form of welfare, etc. In this approach, we can provide assistance in the form of technology instead of continuous money, and end up creating a household that is self-sufficient in perpetuity.
It can also go an exceptionally long way in actually addressing world hunger, instead of constructing entire businesses that are dependent on creating dependency. Some of the technology, like the robotic arms, gantries, and such can take a bit more finances. However, the automation itself does not and can even be pre-loaded onto a Raspberry Pi and sent worldwide with some documentation and sources for further education. This part of things ties into a lot of the other pillars of the R’lyeh Project, but it shouldn’t be difficult to imagine how knowledge plus some basic technology can create circumstances for any region in the world to become capable of providing their own food.
When all is said and done, this details a method for addressing a great many issues that currently plague the food supply chain. On top of that, it goes even further into effectively addressing humanitarian issues that many organizations claim to work towards alleviating. In fact, it is one of the main pillars of building a modern day Renaissance. A time period that instead of using technology to create inescapable dependency, we integrate it in ways that foster self-sufficiency. A time where we are deciding exactly how our civilization and species will take shape, going forward.