permaculture

[Jason Gerhardt <jasongerhardt@gmail.com>]

Though I think aquaponics has a place, mostly in areas with major soil
pollution or depletion, I too have reservations. And I have looked at the
research extensively, and I have managed a system, and I have eaten out of
them.

Though one COULD feed the fish entirely from within the system, generate
their own electricity, use a soil based medium, etc, I have very rarely
seen this done. Yes there are some stellar examples out there, but MOST are
not good examples, and unfortunately the concept is spreading without a
significant ecological design component. As permaculture designers we have
an obligation to find ways for each input to be generated from the outputs
of some other element in our design (and that applies to fish food, energy
generation, and growing medium). AP has a few more moving parts than a
garden or chicken coop for example, which makes this slightly more
challenging, but certainly can and has been done, but again it is not the
norm in the aquaponics crowd.

My other reservation is about site specific design. If you CAN'T grow food
in soil, then aquaponics can be an appropriate strategy. But if you have
have soil, I have a hard time seeing not using this for food production
first. As an example, nowadays you can crack open a leading aquaponics book
and see an aquaponics system on the deck of the author while in the
background is a manicured backyard of bluegrass lawn in the drylands. WTF?
In this case, the noble claims of water conscious design quickly dissolve
in my mind. I have developed and often teach a new permaculture principle
that applies here: "Each element is appropriate somewhere, not everywhere".
It is up to the designer to read the landscape to see if the strategies
they are proposing are appropriate in specific context. Otherwise, we are
jumping on a bandwagon and imposing solutions just because we think the
idea is cool. To me permaculture is not about what is cool, but about what
makes sense in the context of each site. Unfortunately, I see aquaponics
being imposed all over the place with no thought whatsoever to the above
design criteria. And therefore I have reservations about thinking of it and
recommending it in the context of permaculture.

--
Jason Gerhardt
Designer and Educator