permaculture

[Daniel Jager <dfjager@yahoo.com>]

I don't see any arguments crumble actually. I see misunderstanding and 
misinterpretation of natural processes.

I remember that they tried to grow this famous wild berry, Cloudberry, in 
Finland artificially, on peat sods in a hydroponics system. They couldn't do 
it. It died no matter what they tried. It apparently only grows wild. And 
this is just one example.

True, the products of *natural* hydroponics, seafood and sea vegetables, give 
the best nutrition to man. Why not stick with that instead of trying all 
these artificial things. No matter how hard you try, the whole of the ocean 
is infinitely more complex than the best aquaponics design you can ever 
create. So why bother.

Another example: Using semi-wild species and direct seeding those in even 
fairly poor soil will still give you a healthy plant. I observed this many 
times here in Thailand. My direct seeded semi-wild guavas grew healthy and 
strong in even relatively poor sandy soil, whereas my grafted, superior guava 
cultivars planted in excellent soils continued to attract pests and fungus no 
matter what I did. Same with my custardapples, my pomegranates, my lime-trees.
After the floods in Thailand, I saw many plants (more than half of which were 
wild edibles) sprout up naturally from seed... absolutely healthy. But most 
grafted and transplanted trees died, and many planted vegetables after the 
flood suffered from pests and diseases.

How would one explain that? Or is the story of plant nutrition and health not 
fully known yet. And is creating even more artificial systems then really an 
answer?

Daniel


> From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] pc aquaponics
> 
> Thanks, again, Kathryn, for being so nicely rational. I
> think you're spot on about the "gadgety" nature of
> aquaponics being a turn-off for a lot of us natural types.
> I'd like to add that plants spent a few hundred million
> years evolving in the sea before crawling onto land, so they
> have a long genetic legacy within them of living without
> soil and soil-penetrating roots.
> 
> There is little that is "natural" about agriculture,
> either--we've just gotten used to it over 10,000 years. I
> can imagine the first response: "Wheat that doesn't lodge or
> shatter? Using a plow? That's not natural!" (we could segue
> here to the whole argument about domestic species having
> lower nutrition, but that's a condemnation of agriculture,
> not aquaponics).
> 
> We grow thousands of varieties of plants never seen in
> nature, in light fluffy, heavily manured soil that is also
> unnatural. All the plants we are talking about in aquaponics
> are domestic varieties with highly plastic genomes that have
> been messed with for millennia. Many of them cannot survive
> without our intervention, and quite a few are only found
> near people.
> 
> It's very helpful for me, as a skeptic, to see the arguments
> against aquaponics crumble when you look at them more
> closely.
> 
> Toby
> http://patternliteracy.com
> 
> 
> On Oct 10, 2012, at 12:31 AM, KAKerby@aol.com
> wrote:
> 
> > These questions are part genetics, part philosophy and
> part  practicality.  
> > I'll try to answer in similar veins:
> > 
> > What would happen to root strength if one were to grow
> aquaponics  
> > vegetables over a few plant generations? 
> Aquaponics has been around now  for 50 
> > years in its modern form, more or less.  And some
> claim that the  concept has 
> > been used by multiple generations for thousands of
> years, with the  first 
> > well-documented system possibly being the water gardens
> of Babylon.   But let's 
> > skip that historical precedent and stick with modern
> aquaponics.   Even 
> > with that limitation, hundreds if not thousands of
> plant generations have  come 
> > and gone never seeing anything but an aquaponics
> system.  Their seeds,  cut
> > tings, divisions or other reproductive methods can be
> put right back into 
> > the  garden or field and grown alongside plants
> whose forebears never grew in 
> > an  aquaponics system.  The plants grown in
> an aquaponics system would  
> > undoubtedly change over time, just as any plant's genes
> would change over time  
> > when grown in a fabulously fertile, deep, soft, crumbly
> perfectly irrigated  
> > garden soil.  Take either of those plants and put
> them in the desert and  
> > they'd both die.  Does that mean we don't want to
> work towards  fabulously 
> > fertile, deep, soft, crumbly, perfectly irrigated
> garden soil, lest  that 
> > weaken our plants as well?  Aquaponics can provide
> rich, diversified  root zone 
> > communities, via the methods I've already
> described.  That rich  web can and 
> > does rival soil-based communities from the best
> gardens.  So  any genetic 
> > abormalities that come from aquaponics growth would
> come from rich  garden 
> > growth as well.  
> > 
> > "What would happen to the strength of a
> vegetable/fruit  strain........."   
> > The same thing that happens to that vegetable or 
> fruit strain when it's 
> > grown in rich garden soil.  It grows
> stronger,  it grows faster, it grows 
> > larger, it puts forth more leaves and/or more
> seed  and/or more propagation 
> > vines and/or whatever genetic cues it has when 
> presented with everything it 
> > needs.  It has fewer pests, fewer diseases
> and  lives longer with less stress.  
> > Again, let's compare apples to apples, no  pun
> intended.  A well balanced 
> > aquaponics system gives the plant everything  it
> needs.  So does a 
> > well-balanced garden soil.  If you find
> fault  with using the former, you'll have to 
> > logically find fault with  using the latter.
> > 
> > "What would happen when human ingenuity stops and
> Nature takes charge  
> > again?"  Once again, if two plants of the same
> variety, one grown in a  
> > well-balanced aquaponics system and one grown in rich
> garden soil, were suddenly  
> > uprooted and moved to a different climate, both of them
> would be limited in  
> > response to whatever their genetic code plus their
> current condition allowed  
> > them to have.  If you took an aquaponic tomato
> vine and a garden-grown  
> > tomato vine, and transplanted them both to the North
> Slope of Alaska, neither 
> > of  them would do well.  If you took those
> two plants and transplanted them  
> > both to some tropical location with adequate solar and
> water and drainage 
> > and  nutrients, they'd probably do quite
> well.  If something happened to  
> > dramatically impact the growing conditions for the
> aquaponics system, those  
> > plants would probably die.  Just like if something
> happened to dramatically  
> > impact the growing conditions in a garden, those plants
> would also probably  
> > die.
> > 
> > And as we've also discussed, a mature aquaponics system
> starts to very  
> > closely resemble a mature fertile garden soil, in the
> richness of the  
> > microorganisms that live there, in the diversity and
> ratios of nutrients present  in 
> > the root zone, and in the diversity and health and
> branching of the roots  
> > growing through the root zone.  I suspect that
> after 10 years, most folks  
> > would have a hard time differentiating between the
> two.
> > 
> > If folks find the concept of aquaponics distasteful or
> alienating or  
> > whatever, that's fine.  But admire it, or fault
> it, for the characteristics  it 
> > truly has, which are much the same as the
> characteristics of the very best  
> > gardening soil we fantasize about creating and working
> with.  If our plants  
> > are turning into wimps in aquaponic systems, then
> they'll become wimps in  
> > our very best gardens as well.  One of the true
> strengths of  aquaponics is 
> > that we can fine-tune the nutritional balance in a
> matter of  weeks.  Yet 
> > most gardeners and farmers will spend years, if not
> decades,  trying to achieve 
> > that same balance.  If your dinner could only come
> from  the quality of the 
> > growing medium you used, would you be so willing to
> wait ten  years for a 
> > good meal?  
> > 
> > I think a lot of folks have philosophical problems with
> the "gadgety"  
> > nature of aquaponics, and that it could never be "as
> good as" our more familiar  
> > gardens and fields.  But honestly, that's the
> opinion of a well fed  
> > stomach.  For folks who live where flood, famine,
> political upheaval,  economic 
> > hardship and other challenges don't allow them the
> pleasantries of  
> > well-tended soil and regular meals, aquaponics can keep
> them fed and fed pretty  darn 
> > well.  Fed so that they have the energy and health
> to go out and heal  
> > whatever is going wrong with their region. 
> Perhaps then they'll have the  time, 
> > money and resources to pour into their soils what we've
> poured into ours,  
> > and finally bring those soils back into healthy
> production.  Then they'll  
> > have the chance to sit back and mull which system is
> better.  But insisting  
> > on the use of nice fertile soils is to exclude a lot of
> humanity from the 
> > dinner  table, if not now then in the very near
> future.
> > Kathryn Kerby
> > frogchorusfarm.com
> > Snohomish, WA
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > In a message dated 10/9/2012 11:36:03 P.M. Pacific
> Daylight Time,  
> > dfjager@yahoo.com
> writes:
> > 
> > Plant  evolution created root systems for land
> plants to penetrate the 
> > soil. To grow  in soil that is not nutritionally
> balanced, and can *never be* 
> > totally  balanced in Nature. And to adapt plant
> species to specific soils and 
> > climate  conditions.
> > 
> > * What would happen to the root strength if one were
> to  grow aquaponics 
> > vegetables over a few plant generations?
> > 
> > * What would  happen to the strength of a
> vegetable/fruit strain, if you 
> > provide all  nutrients in easily accessible form?
> By analogy: what happens to 
> > humans when  they have to do no effort, and get
> everything they need 
> > whenever they  want...???
> > 
> > * What happens when human 'ingenuity' stops, and
> Nature  takes charge 
> > again? Would we have natural aquaponics ecosystems, or
> just murky  wetlands, 
> > nutrient poor bogs, estuaries, tidal flats, and the
> like. With the  natural 
> > plant and animals species adapted to the specific
> constraints of that  
> > ecosystem: both climatologically, soil physiologically
> and  nutritionally.
> > 
> > Daniel