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This is obviously nothing less than astounding. I can’t start to describe how incredibly knowledgeable and skilled this person is. Because the topic of hydro a

This is obviously nothing less than astounding. I can’t start to describe how incredibly knowledgeable and skilled this person is. Because the topic of hydro and growing food and all that is on HN here, I wanted to leave the following comment on a higher level. Ten years ago I was super dedicated to problems surrounding water, which of course include food and all the issues we have with our food systems. At the pinnacle, I was working with a half acre aquaponics greenhouse in Watsonville, CA. We had 8000 striped bass and produced and incredible amount of fresh produce. It was pesticide free because of you put chemicals on the plants it would get into the water and hurt the fish. It was more “natural” than hydroponics. You weren’t using fertilizer imported from all over, everything in the system could be produced on-site. The more biologically diverse the system was, the more resilient and productive. Both hydro and aqua phonics - the latter of which has been practiced for thousands of years, definitely save a ton of water. But I think aquaponics has a massive chance of being mainstream, especially as automation and all the advanced tech and robots get better. It’s about ecological engineering on a local scale - you are maxing out the ecology to human and nature’s benefit, and there are so many relationships to learn and exploit. It’s strange how impactful this could be on a grand scale - see some Dan barber Ted talks [1] Just really need to get some investment on this on a big scale, like the hydro houses in Canada. No one has, from all that I know, really built aquaponic systems on a grand scale that are economically viable. But I see it coming and after I wrap up my current company, I’m jumping right back in to working on this. We are just going to be doing what nature did best before we murdered all of it…but maybe Mac it out super hard and super quick compared to what it could do. Lastly, with all the climate stuff: Don’t forget, you can’t put a price on the systems that produce the food, water and clean air we breath, cuz you know, we’d be dead. Well maybe we can, but we sure aren’t trying. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with...

dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
I saw a segment 15 years ago about "biodynamic" hydroponics. Not sure if that's a real term or whether I'm even remembering it right, but as I recall the concept was that your grow is more or less a completely closed system that involved fish circulating nutrients through the system. As you say, you don't add nutrients from far off places. The fish feed the plants and the plants feed the fish. In that segment, the fish were tilapia. It seemed perfect and has captured my imagination this whole time.
- matbatt38 5y ago
  Just for the reference, "Biodynamic" refers to Rudolf Steiner's method for growing food. It's a quite common ritual in Europe, mostly for wine but also for other type of plants. It j's related to Anthroposophy, an new-age/esoteric movement from the 1930s' which somehow lived and grow until now and is still quite active. IMHO they're a bit frightening as they are now quite powerful (they have a bank (La Nef) many schools in western Europe and their own pharmatical lab (Weleda), all of them making a LOT of money) and clearly have highly conservative political views (one of their leader ran for president in France a while ago with an homophobe and racist project). Most documentation is in French or Deutch so if you wanna dig it's probably gonna take some translation. https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/07/MALET/58830 https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/07/MALET/58830 https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/07/MALET/58797 https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/07/MALET/58797
  - gspr 5y ago
    They really are a scary bunch. Moreover, it's terribly annoying how most people in Europe seem to have labelled them as harmless. They're very much considered "ah, those weirdos, I don't agree with them but surely we should just let them do their thing". It's frightening – the Steiner guys are dangerous.
    - EllipticCurve 5y ago
      What do you mean by dangerous exactly? I was briefly involved with some people from the Steiner philosophy (the school) and while some people could definitely be labeled as a weird bunch with esoteric tendencies, none of them seemed dangerous at all. Everything seemed very open and accepting to people different than themself. In a positive way, not in a "join my cult" way.
      - gspr 5y ago
        They spread bullshit in a seemingly innocuous way. That's dangerous stuff that undermines society.
      - 5y ago
dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
> It was pesticide free because of you put chemicals on the plants it would get into the water and hurt the fish. Funny how on a smaller human scale ("our bass will die and our food production will be in danger"), the problem and solution seem obvious. Once you scale it up to world terms, where you're only lightly polluting a very large amount of animals, humans no longer instinctively comprehend it. Much like empathy and compassion only hold a group together up to a certain size.
phrotoma 5y ago
I live in Canada but haven't heard of the hydro houses you mentioned ("hydro" here is confusingly a synonym for electricity so google isn't helping either), can you provide specifics?
- mediaman 5y ago
  Canada has enormous hydroponic vegetable growing operations. They're quite impressive. I don't know really why they have built so much more than the US, but my theory is that there may be regulatory issues with importing fresh food from the Salinas valley, where much of the American vegetable crop is grown, and hydro is the best way to grow in the Canadian climate. One company you can check out is Windset Farms.
  - wussboy 5y ago
    Have you seen the weather up here?!? For most of this country, growing things indoors in completely artificial environments is the only option. There may be regulatory issues at play, but mainly I would think it’s a climatic necessity.
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      Indoors is more about solar insolation than climate. Southern Ontario is same latitude as northernmost california. Check out Leamington Ontario and there are some big greenhouses. But there’s a part of Spain where the whole city is a greenhouse: check out el ejido.

dmitryminkovsky 5y ago

I saw a segment 15 years ago about "biodynamic" hydroponics. Not sure if that's a real term or whether I'm even remembering it right, but as I recall the concept was that your grow is more or less a completely closed system that involved fish circulating nutrients through the system. As you say, you don't add nutrients from far off places. The fish feed the plants and the plants feed the fish. In that segment, the fish were tilapia. It seemed perfect and has captured my imagination this whole time.

matbatt38 5y ago
Just for the reference, "Biodynamic" refers to Rudolf Steiner's method for growing food. It's a quite common ritual in Europe, mostly for wine but also for other type of plants. It j's related to Anthroposophy, an new-age/esoteric movement from the 1930s' which somehow lived and grow until now and is still quite active. IMHO they're a bit frightening as they are now quite powerful (they have a bank (La Nef) many schools in western Europe and their own pharmatical lab (Weleda), all of them making a LOT of money) and clearly have highly conservative political views (one of their leader ran for president in France a while ago with an homophobe and racist project). Most documentation is in French or Deutch so if you wanna dig it's probably gonna take some translation. https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/07/MALET/58830 https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/07/MALET/58830 https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/07/MALET/58797 https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/07/MALET/58797
- gspr 5y ago
  They really are a scary bunch. Moreover, it's terribly annoying how most people in Europe seem to have labelled them as harmless. They're very much considered "ah, those weirdos, I don't agree with them but surely we should just let them do their thing". It's frightening – the Steiner guys are dangerous.
  - EllipticCurve 5y ago
    What do you mean by dangerous exactly? I was briefly involved with some people from the Steiner philosophy (the school) and while some people could definitely be labeled as a weird bunch with esoteric tendencies, none of them seemed dangerous at all. Everything seemed very open and accepting to people different than themself. In a positive way, not in a "join my cult" way.
    - gspr 5y ago
      They spread bullshit in a seemingly innocuous way. That's dangerous stuff that undermines society.
    - 5y ago

dj_mc_merlin 5y ago

> It was pesticide free because of you put chemicals on the plants it would get into the water and hurt the fish. Funny how on a smaller human scale ("our bass will die and our food production will be in danger"), the problem and solution seem obvious. Once you scale it up to world terms, where you're only lightly polluting a very large amount of animals, humans no longer instinctively comprehend it. Much like empathy and compassion only hold a group together up to a certain size.

phrotoma 5y ago

I live in Canada but haven't heard of the hydro houses you mentioned ("hydro" here is confusingly a synonym for electricity so google isn't helping either), can you provide specifics?

mediaman 5y ago
Canada has enormous hydroponic vegetable growing operations. They're quite impressive. I don't know really why they have built so much more than the US, but my theory is that there may be regulatory issues with importing fresh food from the Salinas valley, where much of the American vegetable crop is grown, and hydro is the best way to grow in the Canadian climate. One company you can check out is Windset Farms.
- wussboy 5y ago
  Have you seen the weather up here?!? For most of this country, growing things indoors in completely artificial environments is the only option. There may be regulatory issues at play, but mainly I would think it’s a climatic necessity.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Indoors is more about solar insolation than climate. Southern Ontario is same latitude as northernmost california. Check out Leamington Ontario and there are some big greenhouses. But there’s a part of Spain where the whole city is a greenhouse: check out el ejido.