May 3 2011

 

Utah to have new farming technique for rearing fish

 

 

Brandan Coleman, founder of the Utah nonprofit Americana, intends to bring in a new farming technique to Utah's most populous county this year that makes use of fish such as koi, tilapia and perch to have more effective productions.

 

Known as aquaponics, the agricultural innovation combines fish ponds and growing beds in the same greenhouse. The fishes' job is to fertilise the plants whereas the plants' job is to clean the water.

 

"It's a natural ecosystem," Coleman said.

 

The concept comes amid a rural resurgence in Salt Lake County that has appeared in the form of more community gardens, new laws allowing backyard hens and a first-ever initiative to transform fallow government lands into commercial farms.

 

It also has appeared in the basement of Coleman's Salt Lake City home. There, lettuce, broccoli and wheat grass have sprouted from a series of pipes that feed into, and out of, a 50-gallon drum swimming with goldfish. Although the system is tiny, Coleman has used it to prove that fish and the nutrient-rich water they produce by eating and defecating can be valuable in farming.

 

"How can we grow more efficiently, sustainably and productively?" Coleman asked. "How do we get faster yields? How to get larger yields? I think aquaponics is a solution to all of that."

 

Coleman's nonprofit is raising money to build its first backyard greenhouse, a project that will cost an estimated US$1,000.

 

Although aquaponics is relatively young in Utah, it has been incorporated into commercial farms elsewhere. Growing Power, a Milwaukee-based instructional farm, has incorporated multiple aquaponics systems into its farms that use tilapia, yellow perch and bluegill. The largest system holds more than 20,000 gallons of water.

 

Will Allen, who leads Growing Power, described aquaponics as an agricultural technique that is exploding in popularity but only a few systems exist in Utah.
 

Highland resident Neal Westwood developed his own aquaponics greenhouse using bluegill, rainbow trout and bass. If it were not for Utah's cold climate, he said, the technique would be a sure sale. However, heating the water costs money.

 

"It is commercially viable and economical if you are not spending oodles on winter heating," he said. "It works, but is not necessarily economical."

 

Even so, Julie Peck-Dabling, Salt Lake County's urban-farming coordinator, sees potential in the idea.

 

"It definitely has a future here," she said. "If they can do it in Milwaukee, they can do it here."

 

Growing Power's chief insists that it will work in cold communities. Heating a greenhouse with water, Allen said, is cheaper than heating it with air.