Aquaponics is about to become an important new part of urban food production in Australia – especially on roofs, on walls and within buildings.

It is becoming a new form of urban organic farming – with a touch of magic in the provision of more health-promoting Omega-3 oil – an essential oil that most human diets sorely need. 

In modern aquaponics fish, molluscs and crustaceans are fed recycled food nutrients.  Micro-organisms then convert fish wastes to plant food. Plants grow on these extremely well with minimal water use.  Fish, crustaceans, molluscs, herbs, vegetables and fruit then become superior fresh foods with little or no transport or energy costs.

The water cleaned by plants is used again in the fish tanks. Costs are reduced considerably.  Fresh food transport costs are virtually eliminated.

It is ingenious human mimicry of Mother Nature.

“Aquaponics” is a word adopted in the United States about 35 years ago to describe the combination of farming aquatic animals (fish, crustaceans and molluscs) with the growing of vegetables and fruits in organic-hydroponics. I first observed it there in the early 1980s.

But it can also be observed in primitive form in ages-old Asian rice paddies that produce fish and grain in wholesome balance – with roaming ducks and energy-and-fodder trees on the sidelines.

In Australia aquaponics is about to become a modern, organic form of sensible urban agriculture using LED-lit technology driven by solar power, and incorporatring the recycling of clean urban organic matter with sound provision of Omerga-3 oils in fresh foods.

The technology has its roots in China and Central America more than 1,000 years ago. Chinese rice growers grew fish in their flooded paddies. Until Spanish conquistadores ruined their simple systems the Aztecs and Incas has “chinampas” where channelled city sewage pondings grew fish in the water and fruit and vegetables on rafts. 

It is now a most sensible food system integration largely overlooked in humankind’s blind adoption of unsustainable, industrialised exploitation of soil and water.

The major inputs for aquaponics are fish feed and expert labour to tend and harvest the double-cropping system. 

At its best the aquaponics fish are herbivores and omnivores that can use locally-produced feed containing Omega-3 oils. This reduces dependency on feeding carnivorous fish the sea-catch fish feeds likely to both rise steadily in price and reduce greatly in volume.

Fresh produce from aquaponics is healthier local food for humans that has less harmful fats, sugars and carbohydrates and more Omega-3 oil -- for sounder human diets.

In urban agriculture now advancing in Australia, aquaponics with added technology is also promising cheaper fresh food in “protected agriculture” systems next to home kitchens, restaurants and food service facilities.

One Brisbane-based company plan is to develop a modular system for aquaponics. enclosed in a protected, climate-controlled environment to minimize pests or diseases.  New technologies in water, food nutrient recycling and power supply will minimise development costs, and maximise speed to local markets only very short distances away (not 1,000 or more kilometers). 

The new Australian aquaponics technology is aimed at world markets for efficient urban agriculture that costs less for city supplies of healthy, fresh food of high nutritional quality.
Of particular importance is the production of fresh fish able to well use “organic” vegetable feeds produced from recycled urban organic matter

Modules of aquaponics are being merged into more efficient local food production units.
The plan is to put these systems together in a new way, offering them within a portable, low-cost building which can be re-packaged and transported to another site, if necessary. 

Such buildings and equipment will be offered as either urban and rural franchisees, and for sale as second-step aid packages when disasters adversely affect local food supplies.

However, the biggest short-term opportunity for this new kind of urban agriculture lies in a city’s retrofit rooftop gardens and green roofs and green walls.
Growing food in your own backyard is not a new concept. Neither is using any open space available if you live in the city. But turning your rooftop or inner building areas into highly productive “protected agriculture” gardens free of pests and diseases, with maximum recycling and minimum water use, is definitely new to Australians.
However, the idea has already caught on in cities throughout the world,
According to author John Chappell, writing for a United States magazine: “Rooftop gardens are by no means new. Forward-thinking, environmentally-conscious, or penurious city dwellers have been doing it for as long as there have been city dwellers.  But recently the rooftop garden movement has started to gain some traction, inspired by the environmental benefit of more green space in a city (it reduces the “heat island” effect), and the appeal of home grown organic veggies just steps away have given the movement some serious traction.
He said: “Large metropolises across North America - including New York City, Washington DC, and Chicago have also sweetened the deal by offering tax incentives and subsidies to encourage green rooftops, and Toronto, Canada also has a new law requiring buildings of a certain size to have a green roof. 
“Though the Green Roof Bylaw in Toronto has garnered some criticism (mostly from developers) it has been well received by residents in the city as a means to increase the amount of green space, offset their carbon emissions, and generally to be a greener city.”
“Some other benefits of green roofs (whether or not they include home grown produce) include the reduction of storm water run off, reduction of energy consumption, increase of some habitat area for local and migratory birds, and ability to draw beneficial insects back into cities,” he said.
Extensive adoption of built-environment greenery in a million to two million or so person city, could capture at least 100,000 tonnes of air-borne carbon dioxide a year from rooftops – with as much more from other urban greenery on walls and building surrounds..
This is a calculation derived from a two-year study from Michigan State University, reported in October, 2009.  Prior to this study, there was no major analysis of the true carbon saving impact of urban green roofs or green walls.
One of the Green Infrastructure Network Australia Inc founding members, is architecture Professor Janis Birkeland (pictured) of Queensland University of Technology’s Brisbane campus.. She said the Michigan State University study was a significant wake-up call for key architecture people in Australia.
It is also a wake-up call for Australian food producers and for Australian governments.
Her words follow her significant 2008 authorship of the 432-page book titled “Positive Development -- From vicious circles to virtuous cycles through built environment design”     


Professor Janis Birkeland.                                               
“We can have our carbon sequestration actually designed into greenery on buildings – and well-paid for by a raft of other benefits”, Professor Birkeland said.  She also said the significant Michigan study should alert urban home and office architects.
Improved home and office architecture design was the key link.
“Poor architecture and urban design kills more people every year than terrorism” she said.  “Apart from exacerbating the effects of floods, droughts, storms, earthquakes and waterborne diseases, urban development often causes city temperatures to rise by two degrees Celsius or more.                                                             
“This urban heat island effect has killed thousands of people during heat waves in many cities around the world, the most recent of which was 3,000 one hot day in Paris in 2003,” she said.                                              
Yet, one of the easiest urban cooling solutions was green roofs and walls designed into buildings, which could pay for themselves in a few years through energy savings plus cheaper food production exactly where it is needed, Professor Birkeland said.                                                                            
To be ‘sustainable’, a built environment would need to leave a city ecology, as well as its people, better off after construction than before.  “Restoration or remediation is not enough because we have already exceeded the Earth’s ecological carrying capacity,” Professor Birkeland said.                                        
“The only way we can support even existing bio-regions and populations sustainably is to retrofit urban areas to increase net ecological carrying capacity in cities,” she said. 
This includes healthy fresh food production.  
It is the aim of a number of new aquaponics companies now starting up in Australia.  They expect to greatly transform Australian fresh food production as climate change factors dictate action.
They will add considerably to the increasing production of “backyard” or “community gardens” fresh food in cities.

* The author, Geoff Wilson, is a former Australian journalist in agribusiness and aquaponics. He has now “retired” into the presidency of Green Infrastructure Network Australia Inc  (GINA).  He is also one of six directors of the World Green Infrastructure Network based in Toronto. Canada, and director of an Australian start-up company named Qponics Pty Ltd.   Email address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it