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  • From: KAKerby@aol.com
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] pc aquaponics
  • Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:05:50 -0400 (EDT)

And in all your examples, not once did you mention that any of it was
aquaponics as we've been discussing here. Hydroponics with peat moss as a
growing medium is most definitely not aquaponics. Even if we were to expand
our conversation to include hydroponics, peat moss is considered one of the
flimsier media, not a good candidate for long-term plantings because it's so
short lived. It also has serious acidity issues, so plants which cannot do
well in acidic conditions need to stay well clear of it. On the other
hand, it is inexpensive, and does exceedingly well for short-lived plants
which don't mind the acidity, or where the water is naturally alkaline.
Which
is the blend of pro's and con's which I mentioned in one of my first
posts.

And in all of your examples, not once did you give an example of how a
family with access to NO soil, or soil which has already been demonstrated to
be barren of sufficient nutrients to grow even light-feeding veggies, could
possibly magically summon food from somewhere else, where the water is
clean and the soils are fertile and the sun shines on schedule, at a price
they
can afford. I also wonder how "true" hydroponic products would be shipped
to all the inland cities and communities that don't have access to the
coast. Most folks would call that extractive, non-renewable fishing or
farming, and petroleum-intensive long-distance commodities marketing. Which
is
what I thought we were trying to move away from.

Like I have said in every post so far, if you don't like it, don't use it.
Very simple. What I saw in those first posts which upset me most, was
that folks didn't know much about it but had already decided it wasn't going
to work, never had worked, never could work, and if it ever did work, would
never be as good as natural soil. I have been working diligently to lay
all those claims to rest, at least all the claims but that last. And that
last claim is merely an opinion. There was a time when all of humanity had
access to rich soil. By a variety of practices and accidents and
socio/political/economic policies, only a minority of us do now. So what of
the
rest of the world? Do we leave them out in the cold, or tell them to go
improve their soils slowly and steadily over time, and darn if they starve
in
the process? If we were scrapping for our meals, I don't think we'd insist
quite so hard on "natural".

I'm trying to raise a voice for all those who don't have good soil, don't
have access to the coast, don't have access to all the wonderful natural
planting alternatives that some of us enjoy, yet inconveniently still want to

eat. There are quite a few folks like that out in the world; some
estimates now are that 3/5 of humanity doesn't enjoy a regular, well-balanced

diet. Can the 2/5 of us who are more fortunate, deny them the chance to
grow
their own? Aquaponics offers a well-tested way to bring food reliably to
communities around the world, who don't have access to sufficient volumes of
locally grown food now. And it can do so without all the GMOs and
herbicides and pesticides that so much of conventional ag is trying to
insist is
necessary to feed the world. Most folks look to conventional ag to solve
the
problems of world hunger. Are we comfortable with that? Some very few
look to places like permaculture instead, to answer those questions. Will
the permaculture community insist on what only a few of us have, and
everyone
else can just muddle along without permaculture's help? To turn away from
such a promising approach for feeding so many, and in such a self-reliant
way, because it's not 'natural', seemed amazingly elitist to me. Natural
in this context is hardly appropriate, since none of us are
hunters/gatherers anymore. Everything we eat has been cultured away from
what was once
found in the wild.

That's why I keep hammering on this topic. Who is permaculture really
serving, if it's just a club for those who own rich soil, and can use it as
they see fit? If that's the population you're serving, you're destined to
only reach roughly 1% of the entire human population. In which case I guess
you can shout your objections about aquaponics as loudly as you want,
because no one will be listening. The other 99% of humanity will be trying
to
figure out how to feed themselves. Without your guidance, because you've
already voluntarily excluded yourself from their conversations. The choice
is
yours.
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA


In a message dated 10/10/2012 11:15:14 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
dfjager@yahoo.com writes:

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

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