But have you actually LOOKED at any of the research being done? As I
pointed out, lots and lots of university research being conducted right now
in a
lot of different aspects of this approach, and yes nutrient density of the
resulting plant tissue is right up there.
Brix measurements can be as
high or higher than the finest organic stands of soil-based agriculture for
leaf tissue. Complex nutrient density is present if it's present in the
system, and missing if it's missing from the system
where crops forcibly grown on tired out soils are going to be missing a lot
of nutrients). It's assumptions like this that are so very limiting. The
same assumptions were made about organic ag not 10 years ago - "it's no
more nutritious so what's the point"? If the nutrients are in the system,
the plants will pick them up. If the nutrients aren't there, they won't.
That's not a function of whether the plants are growing in a soil or
soilless media. That's a question of whether the nutrients are in the
system as a
whole. I've seen a lot of dead soils on working farms.
food for my table from a system I know is balanced and working with healthy
plants and fish, rather than produce from those over-mined soils with a
history of herbicide and pesticide reliance. And a lot of folks have no way
to measure how tired out the soils were, which produced the food they eat.
Presuming that soil-based is better, is ignoring all the problems in
soil-based farming.
And before folks start talking about "yea, but you have to introduce those
nutrients, so it's artificial", I would point out that's true for many of
the world's soils as well. We have to supply a variety of trace minerals
such as selenium to our soils, to bring them into balance and keep them
there. Does that make our soil-based farming unnatural? Does that make
farming in whole regions with depleted soils, such as Australia, simply
unnatural? Or is that simply a reflection that no soil, anywhere, is perfectly
balanced? And even if our soils are perfectly balanced for that particular
crop
at that particular time, they won't stay that way. We'll have to
introduce some method of bringing those withdrawn trace nutrients back to our
soils, as they are removed by the crops and the crops removed from the system
(ie, eaten or sold). So from that standpoint, soil-based and soilless ag are
the same. The methods used to introduce those trace nutrients are the
same as well. Both systems have the choice to use natural or artificial
supplementation. With aquaponics however, you have immediate negative
feedback
if the supplementation is too harsh, because the health of the fish will
suffer. In soil-based ag, many times the farmer has no indication of
long-term issues at all. The folks downstream might not know it for years or
decades to come.
Another objection to aquaponics is that folks believe it's missing the rich
web of microscopic life that is found in healthy soils. Again, have you
actually LOOKED for information on that? One of the most exciting
developments for both hydroponics and aquaponics is that proactive
innoculation
with beneficial bacterial and/or fungal colonies works just as well in
soilless
ag as it does in soil-based ag.
That discovery was made over a decade
ago, and has become a fundamental part of disease prevention and nutrient
update for those growers who are interested in really giving their plants all
the tools available. Much like it's been a tool for soil-based growers for
millenia, but not everyone takes advantage of that option. If that sounds
artificial, does that mean soil-based ag should stop innoculating the soil
for things like peas and lentils, alfalfa and beans? It's more familiar
to us because it's been a part of soil-based ag for generations. But don't
assume hydroponics/aquaponics doesn't have that option too. It does, and
it's being used just as beneficially.
To make blanket statements about what aquaponics can and cannot do, or
produce, or solve, without actually working with this approach or reading the
research materials and day-to-day working results for those using this
system, is head-in-the-sand behavior. If you doubt something about it (or
any
topic), GO LOOK for information on it. You might be surprised at what you
find.
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
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