Buying The Farm

Aquaponics meets utilitarian Scandinavian design. I like this, though I wonder if the fish it can hold would be enough for good eatin’.

http://www.conceptualdevices.com/2011/06/malthus-a-meal-a-day-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-about-the-food-and-love-the-population-bomb/

Spotted in a comment on that NYTimes article, here’s a link to an aquaponics program instituted in a Louisiana penitentiary.

Not only are these inmates providing fresh fish and produce for the prison tables, they’re learning valuable and transferable skills that will serve them well upon their release. A win-win-win situation.

http://www.gaalliance.org/newsroom/aquasolutions-detail.php?Prison-Aquaculture-Program-11

The world is starting to chatter about aquaponics, which is a relief to those of us who have been singing its praises for the past few years.

I first came across this gardening system a few years ago, long after I’d established a mental image of my future farm. Within five minutes of reading of it, I had not only wiped away that imaginary layout, I’d started telling my coworkers about its revolutionary nature. (As you’d expect from tech company employees, none of them seemed to grasp the excitement of it.)

With different food crises erupting globally, and an economy that has created a sinkhole in middle America, it’s no wonder those who might once have been nonplussed are sitting up to take notice. One aquaponics evangelist suggests that this system could help not only to reduce America’s “food miles” footprint, but also make the Great Plains the largest area of fish production in the country. Can you picture those factories in the Rust Belt, shuttered by the industries that have died, bursting from the inside with fish, fruit and vegetables? Brings new imagery to the terms “factory farming” and “industrial plants”, doesn’t it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html?pagewanted=all