Water Conservation is one of the most important topics being discussed among sustainability advocates. Right now millions of homes across the globe are on strict water-rationing protocols. In some arid and troubled regions like Sudan, other parts of Africa, Haiti, Egypt and many more including the central California farm belt, water shortages are taking their toll on thousands of human lives. Conventional food growing isn’t even a possibility because of limited water resources in these challenged environments. Aquaponics can change this unnecessary and unacceptable situation.

The 3 F’s of Sustainability is a phrase we’ve coined here at Aquaponics Earth.

“The 3 F’s of Sustainability” include Food, Feed and Fuel. In an aquaponics system, you can grow food for humans, feed for your fish and high-yield fuel-convertible plants. Our brave new world needs to become sustainable in all three of these areas in order to remain productive and viable for the long run.

So what exactly does it mean to be sustainable? Being sustainable means to be able to continually produce that important “something we need” like food indefinitely without it depleting or causing harm to our planet. Mother nature knows all about sustainability. That’s how she designed the entire natural system; and Aquaponics takes it’s sustainable food-growing technology from her. In an aquaponic system, the fish breed, the plants seed and the system goes on and on and on using one tenth the water needed to grow vegetables, fish, feed for the fish and fuel. 

The Aquaponics Earth Demo/Training BIO Station will be located in the high desert of Southern California near Palm Springs. We are presently seeking funding to build this Demo/Training BIO Station. We chose this location because it is ideal for demonstrating the viability of aquaponics even in what’s considered to be a severe climate like the Mojave Desert where daytime temperatures can reach 120 F (49 C) in the summer and 28 F (-2 C) in the winter. Day to night temperature swings can be as much as 40 degrees F (22 C). Surprisingly so, with the proper environmental controls in place, these arid desert weather conditions, low humidity coupled with lots of heat, can combine to create ideal growing conditions for an Aquaponics crop.

Training: This Demo/Training BIO Station will be dedicated to teaching our farmer-partners everything they need to know to become successful in this lucrative food-growing business. Tours and Classes will be on-going offerings at this Demo/Training location.

Aquaponics is one of the answers; and it’s growing popularity among Agricultural Scientists has come just in the nick of time. The word “Aquaponics” is a conjunction of two more familiar words which both describe food growing technologies. The “Aqua” comes from “Aquaculture,” which is fish farming; and the “Ponics” comes from “Hydroponics,” which is growing vegetables and plants in water without soil. Put them together and you get “Aquaponics”. Aquaponics is a hybrid food-growing technology that utilized both of these food-growing methods in a cross-linked ecosystem that recirculates the water. The fish fertilize the plants and the plants clean the water for the fish. This symbiotic relationship is as old as nature itself and explains the prolific growth of plant-mass around streams and lakes.

Aquaculture, one piece of the puzzle is also one of the world’s most ancient forms of food production. Egyptian hieroglyphs dated to be over 4,000 years old show tilapia, one of the most popular farmed fish, being corralled into confined growing areas along the Nile. Tilapia farming was so important to the Egyptians that they even have a hieroglyph just for Tilapia.

As for Hydroponics, don’t let the modern, technical-sounding name fool you. Hydroponics has been around since the 1600’s. The earliest published book about growing plants without soil was called “Sylva Sylvarum” by Sir Francis Bacon. The word “Hydroponics” is also a conjunction of two other words. The “Hydro” comes from Greek meaning “water” and the “Ponics” refers to the Greek word “ponos” meaning “labor”. By the 19th Century, researchers officially discovered what Sir Francis Bacon wrote about back in 1627, that plants absorb essential mineral nutrients as inorganic ions in water. In natural conditions, soil acts as a mineral nutrient reservoir but the soil itself is not essential to plant growth.

Water Conservation is the good news that always comes with Aquaponics. This food-growing technology uses one tenth the amount of water that it takes to grow tillage food, which brings us to the second big question facing planet earth in the 21st Century: