Ecocity Farm: Yet Another Take on Local Food
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 11. 2.06
Wanna feed 300 families? The developers of the Ecocity Farm reckon all you need is a standard urban house block. They’ve come up with a commercial aquaponic system that effectively recycles its own water and waste, while being space efficient due to it’s vertical stackable design. Barramundi fish are harvested alongside vegetables. Waste from the fish is reduced, via a biodigester, to water soluble feedstock for the hydroponically grown plants. Plans are even afoot to prototype a process that converts human food scraps into fish meal. According to the designers the concept can produce 12 times the quantity of food from conventional farming. And the idea is develop the system to a complete all-in-one, out-of-the-box unit that can be franchised worldwide. Traditional farmland is preserved as the package can be used in urban blocks or even on building rooftops. Farmers will then be able to service their customers with minimal transport and energy costs. (The water for the Barramundi is warmed by a roof mounted solar water heater and power for the pumps, etc, comes from grid-connected photovoltaic panels.) And it seems people love the idea. After winning their episode of The New Inventors program the developers have been inundated with enquiries. Much more info at ::Ecocity Farm.
PS. We were taken with their site's stats that American food travels about 2000 km (1200 miles) from farm gate to plate. And how the contents of a European breaky have travelled the equivalent of once around the globe.
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This is the type of technology that could help out marginal areas of Africa that have little water resources.
Seeing all that spinach fertilized with fish waste makes me hope that their "bio-digester" does a good job getting rid of E. coli.
Otherwise there will be a whole bunch of sick/dead people if there is an outbreak.
Although the article neglects to mention it, all these New Inventer (Austrailian tv)episodes can be viewed online. Gives a better idea what they are trying to do.
Ummm, fish are cold blooded, and only warm blooded animals have e. coli bacteria in thier guts
Is there any e coli in fish poop?
Some strands (varities if you like)of E Coli, can make you sick, but usally not. E Coli is what we use as an indicator species to determine if a sample is contaminated with faceal waste from humans. That is why it is most commonly reported in the media, and talked about by scientists. More often than not, the presence of E Coli in water will mean that the water has the potential to make you sick - but most often from other forms of human bacteria/viruses that are also usually present when E coli is detected.
Other animals may have small amounts of E coli, you are much less likely to get sick from bugs from other animals...
Am interested in functional schematics of the operational systems of this aquaponic system. Does anyone know where I can get them or where I can go to get more comprehensive and technical information on this system?
Here's something similar that been around for awhile. You have to look in the "package info/related links" to find some magazine articles about them.
http://www.townsqr.com/snsaqua/page2.htm
Houston, you may want to look at Living Machines, a very similar concept, developed by the inspirational John Todd, whom we interviewed here.
The Chinese have long used fish ponds to break down human waste and produce fertiliser.
And I remember that WorldWatch once ran a piece on an industrial ecology system in the pacific somewhere, that used fish to convert waste yeast from a local brewery into a feedstock for agriculture, or something along those lines.
New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod pioneered this stuff back in the 1970s. Nancy Jack Todd's account of their work is called _A Safe and Sustainable World_ and will be available in paperback soon.
It might be good to give her and John Todd and Bill McLarney and all the other New Alchies their props as we expand on the ideas they first proved practical.
I checked out Living Machines about eight years ago when designing my wastewater purification system and incorporated some of their ideas into my designs. However, unless the Living Machines ideas have changed significantly, the primary purpose of it back when I read into it was large scale secondary and tertiary treatment of wastewater for towns and industries. My reason for asking for more information on this Ecocity Farm idea is to see how they take waste and water treatment processes and tie them into hydroponic food production. As far as I remember, Living Machines did not do anything with vegetable food production. Am I mistaken or have they incorporated something since last I read of them? Any info greatly appreciated.