Fishing For a Sustainable Future: Aquaponics as a Method of Food Production

70 Pages·2015·6.97 MB·English

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Student Theses 2015-Present Environmental Studies
Spring 5-8-2015
Fishing For a Sustainable Future: Aquaponics as a
Method of Food Production
Richard Ramsundar
Fordham University, [email protected]
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2015-Present. 5.
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Fishing For a Sustainable Future: Aquaponics as a
Method of Food Production

Richard Ramsundar
Senior Thesis
Environmental Studies
May 2015
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Abstract
This thesis compares and explains the advantages aquaponics farming has over modern
industrial intensive farming. Through a comparison natural capital usage, conservation, recycling
and cost, the thesis advocates for the expansion of aquaponics usage in urban settings. The thesis
also explains the history of intensive farming and aquaponics in America, the science of how
aquaponics operates, the economic and environmental costs of modern intensive farming versus
aquaponics farming, and the social implications of aquaponics. Lastly, I propose a policy that
reallocates farm subsidies by modifying the Farm Bill. Then I propose policies that support
creating a new standard of farm subsidy eligibility, subsidize renewable forms of energy for
urban and sustainable farms, provide funding for educational facilities, and incorporate modern
aquaponics into school curriculums.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Fishing for Answers at Growing Power............................4
Chapter 1. Our Appetite’s Strain on The Earth ......................................6
i. Nitrate and Phosphorus Pollution........................................................9
ii. Groundwater Over Usage.................................................................11
iii. Food Waste..................................................................................14
iv. Greenhouse Gas Emissions..............................................................15

Chapter 2. How We Farmed Up The Earth............................................18
Chapter 3. Eureka! How Does It Work?................................................26
Chapter 4. How Much Green for Green?...............................................39
Chapter 5. Planting the Seeds of the Future...........................................49
i. Growing Food For Urban Environment...............................................49
ii. Starting in Communities..................................................................49
iii. Educating Those That Need It Most....................................................50
iv. Social Benefits of Community Gardening............................................52
v. Not Just an Idea.............................................................................54
vi. Role of Government and Environmental Politics....................................56
vii. Policy One: Create a New Standard....................................................57
viii. Policy Two: Increase Conservation.....................................................58
ix. Policy Three: Reallocate Subsidies.....................................................59
x. Policy Four: Introduce Full Cost Pricing..............................................60
xi. Policy Five: Change the Roll of Science Education.................................61
xii. Closing Remarks............................................................................63

Bibliography………………………………………………………...….65
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Introduction: Fishing For Answers at Growing Power

As the sun rises over the city of Wisconsin, Will Allen starts his day welcoming visitors
to the three-acre Growing Power Community Food Center. He walks each individual through the
greenhouse, showing them how the facility grows soil, maintains plants, cares for livestock, and
supports aquaponics systems. Visitors walk single file through the narrow aisles of the facility
and look in awe at how almost every inch of space has some purpose that benefits the produce.
Potted plants hang from the ceiling and fans circulate air across rows of plants. The sound of
running water and splashes echo through the greenhouse as workers tend to stacked shelves of
water filled grow beds. The water runs downward through the grow beds from pipes near the
ceiling and returns to a tank where the process begins again. Fish swim and splash as workers
cast fish weed throughout the tank. As the tour members look around, they notice how young the
employees are. Young adults and teenagers educate high school students about how the farm
processes such as composting, aquaponics, and nutrient cycling operate. Younger children dig
their hands in the dirt outside as adults teach them basic concepts of farming. Lastly, Allen takes
the tour members outside where workers load the trucks with fresh produce that travel no more
than 30 miles to deliver food. Near the entrance of facility, lines of people buy produce directly
from the farm and Allen greets each of them individually.
How has Growing Power managed to thrive and compete in a community that relied on
produce sold in grocery stores? Similar to earth’s natural processes, Growing Power operates on
the three principles of sustainability: reliance on solar energy, promotion of biodiversity, and
nutrient cycling. As one of the most notable urban farms in America, Growing Power’s influence
in Milwaukee continues to expand and challenge the notion of conventional agriculture through
sustainable farming methods and community development. The urban farm’s existence and
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current status has several implications. First, Growing Power exemplifies that urban farming
methods such as greenhouses and aquaponics do have the ability to produce more than enough
food for a community. Second, the farms operation revolves around the growing demand for
fresh organic food free of pesticides produced in a way that respects the environment rather than
degrades it. Third, Growing Power demonstrates the concepts of sustainability, such as reusing
inputs, producing little to no waste, and using renewable forms of energy, have the ability to
bolster a successful business in the current economy. In other words, Growing Power’s nonprofit
business model produces revenue that expands the business in ways that help community, which
gains the trust of consumers. Fourth, Growing Power exists as a food production system that
maximizes and conserves the use of natural capital. For example, Growing Power reuses all of its
freshwater instead of constantly using water from nonrenewable sources. The farm uses solar
panels to power the facility, which offsets green house gas emissions and reduces their carbon
footprint. Fifth, Growing Power empowers individuals in their community through workshops
and employment, which allow individuals to learn about aquaponics and other sustainable
farming methods and inspire them to continue these methods in the future. Lastly, Growing
Power operates on the principal vision that agriculture exists as an ecosystem that humans have
to care for instead of a machine that generates resources for profit. In doing so, Growing Power
encapsulates a new way of operating agricultural processes that feed people in urban
environments.
While Growing Power thrives in the small area of Silver Spring, Milwaukee, other parts
of America still suffer from environmental degradation due to a different farming system.
Today, modern industrial intensive farming (MIIF) practices consume the majority of America’s
energy and causes the highest amount of environmental destruction out of any other industrial
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sector. The destruction of forests, massive usages of freshwater, utilization of GMO crop
farming, high amount of nutrient pollution, fossil fuel usage and large scale use of pesticides
have created a synergistic problem that endangers the very resources humans need to survive.
The negative aspects of MIIFs have elicited concerns for whether the MIIFs have the possibility
of continuing. In short, MIIFs use too much of the earth’s resources rendering them
unsustainable and too costly. The continuation of MIIFs risks the wellbeing of earth’s natural
capital for the future, the planet’s biodiversity, and human wellbeing.
Chapter 1 relies on quantitative data that demonstrates the amount of resources MIIFs use
as well as the environmental problems that result from resource usage. Chapter 2 delves into the
America’s agricultural history as a means of understanding how the Green Revolution began and
led to the origins of aquaponics. Chapter 3 utilizes natural science to explain how aquaponics
operates as a circular system, how plants and fish cooperate in an enclosed ecosystem, the types
of fish aquaponics supports, the types of plants the system supports, the different models of the
system, as well as the system’s ability to operate in an urban environment. Chapter 4 highlights
the economic feasibility of commercial aquaponics systems over conventional MIIFs and
outlines the monetary and external costs of both methods. Chapter 5 demonstrates how
aquaponics has a high chance of succeeding on a large scale through grassroots movements,
community development. Chapter 5 also explains potential policies that will jumpstart
aquaponics on a large scale.
Chapter 1: Our Appetite’s Strain on The Earth

Modern industrial intensive farming (MIIF) has become the cornerstone of American life
supplying a population of 313 million U.S citizens with produce and meat. Having the largest
surplus of food ever recorded in history, America’s agricultural sector has provided citizens with
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a continuous amount of food. However, most people do not see the external costs of buying
produce from sources that utilize modern methods of intensive agriculture. Though all methods
of farming impact the environment, MIIFs deplete the nutrients within soil, overuse freshwater,
and emit the most greenhouse gasses. MIIFs also produce pollution in the form of phosphates,
nitrates and other nutrients that damage marine ecosystems. Soil erosion decreases the amount of
usable soil and leads to the destruction of more forests and the increase of greenhouse gases.
Basic scientific principles, such as the laws of thermodynamics and system types provide
a better understanding of the damage and environmental inefficiency behind MIIFs. The first law
of thermodynamics states energy cannot be created nor destroyed. In other words, it is
impossible to extract more than the initial amount of energy first put into a system. Humans only
have the ability to convert energy from one form to another. According to the second law of
thermodynamics, when energy is converted, it becomes less usable and the quality degrades. The
lower quality form of energy usually enters the environment as heat. Energy manifests in
systems, which is a “set of components that function an interact in some regular way.”1 A system
needs an input to begin, usually in the form of energy. The energy enters the system and through
a series of processes, degrades and becomes an output that leaves the system.2 The rate of that
transformation is known as the throughput of a system.
In linear systems, outputs never become inputs whereas in cyclical or circular systems,
outputs always become inputs. MIIFs utilize high throughout linear systems to grow crops. In
these systems, inputs, such as sunlight, water, and nutrients, produce the crops as an output.
Plants convert chemicals and minerals in the soil into a source of food or change the energy from
one form to another. The converted energy degrades in quality. Therefore, in MIIF, corporations

1 Miller, G. Tyler. Living in the Environment. Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1975.
2 Miller, G11
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must constantly add new inputs to keep the linear system going. Many of the inputs include
nitrates, phosphates, pesticides, herbicides, and water. Other inputs include land, which requires
clearing forests to create space, expensive genetically modified seeds (GMO), and fossil fuel
based fertilizers. The outputs of MIIFs include high yielding crops, excess nutrients, and non-
harvestable crops, all of which degrade the environment. On the other hand, aquaponics
functions as a circular system, in which the outputs become inputs. The system relies on
mimicking processes of nature, otherwise known as biomimicry, to solve the problem of
pollution, overuse, and food insecurity.3 In an aquaponics system, fish produce waste that
beneficial bacteria act upon to create the proper nutrients plants need to grow. A pump transports
the wastewater to plants, which absorb the nutrients and filter the water for the fish to use. As
opposed to MIIFs, aquaponics functions efficiently as a high throughput circular system or
closed loop ecological cycle. Though aquaponics requires the same inputs that MIIFs need such
as light, heat, and electricity, renewable sources of energy such as solar panels and turbines have
the ability to provide power for the inputs. Moreover, with a renewable source of energy,
aquaponics has the ability to function on the three principles of sustainability: reliance on solar
energy, promotion of biodiversity, and nutrient cycling. On the other hand MIIFs, produce crops
in a highly unsustainable manner, which has various ramifications for the environment.
Nitrate and Phosphorus Pollution
Farmers utilizing MIIF methods plant monocrops, which saps the soil of nutrients. In
order to replenish these lost nutrients and rejuvenate the less-productive soil, farmers often use
nitrogen-based fertilizers to consistently grow crops.4 Farming corporations, such as Monsanto,
sell certain GMO crops that need large amounts of expensive fertilizers containing nitrates,

3 Miller, (581)
4 Haller, Lee, Patrick McCarthy, Terrence O'Brien, Joe Riehle, and Thomas Stulhldreher. "NITRATE POLLUTION OF GROUNDWATER." NITRATE
POLLUTION OF GROUNDWATER. Accessed February 23, 2015.
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phosphates and ammonium to survive. In most occasions, farmers purchase the GMO seeds and
have to buy the associating fertilizers. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) of the United Nations, between 2006 and 2009, the United States consumed an average of
6.2 million tonnes of nutrients specifically for agricultural usage.5 While fertilizers flood the soil
with nutrients and allow more crops to grow in the same area of land over periods of time, the
nitrates and phosphates in fertilizers have detrimental effects on marine environments when not
handled correctly. These marine environments include coastal waters, underground aquifers,
lakes and streams. Other environments include ponds and reservoirs for drinking water. While
some farms, such as Growing
Power and Nelson and Pade,
practice safe methods of
handling excess nutrients
through reuse, many MIIFS do
not. These excess nutrients in
fertilizers enter marine
environments through runoff
Taken
 from
 Food
 and
 Agriculture
 Organization
 of
 the
 United
 Nations

and decomposition. Algae within
marine environments begin to feed on the nitrates and phosphates leading to an increase of their
population. Once this occurs, the algae float on the surface of the water absorbing nearly all the
sunlight causing plants below to die off, a phenomena known as eutrophication. When the algae
die, bacteria begin to feed on the algae causing an increase in the bacteria’s population. The
bacteria need oxygen to survive and begin consuming the oxygen in the water. Once the

5 "FAO's Role in Urban Agriculture." Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Accessed April 20, 2015. http://www.fao.org/urban-agriculture/en/.