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Hydroponic systems are dependent on industrial fertiliser. But you can lower the requirements by at least an order of magnitude by creating circular systems, in

Hydroponic systems are dependent on industrial fertiliser. But you can lower the requirements by at least an order of magnitude by creating circular systems, incorporate food waste into the circularity, and more and create highly effective local and regional nutrient loops. This doesn’t need to stop at the hydroponics system. There are plenty of opportunities to create better nutrient loops in our food production system. We have been working on this for nearly five years. We currently participate in a project which has two dozen companies participating in closing this nutrient loops and create better and more efficient food production.

farmaway 4y ago
Thanks for sharing! Checking out the links from your profile, cool stuff. Relevant to where I live, far inland from fresh seafood and in a similar climate zone. With YouTube's auto-translation I can even understand much of what is said in Swedish in the Johannas farm videos. Impressive operation. One question about this video— at 1:46 the speaker says, "fish provide all the nutrients [for] our vegetables, which means we don't have to add anything artificial." Is this accurate? My impression was that aquaponics mitigates, but does not completely eliminate, the need for industrial fertilizers/nutrient solution additives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGmJETrqzN4&t=1m46s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGmJETrqzN4&t=1m46s Another question— with aquaponics, how do you incorporate food waste into the circularity? Do you feed it to the fish, extract nutrients via an external physical/chemical process, or just dump it in the water and let it decompose? I've heard the latter approach described as "fermented plant juice", and its apparent simplicity is certainly appealing: https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/sa-7.pdf https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/sa-7.pdf
- bjelkeman-again 4y ago
  With a nutrient recovery system, bioreactors, for the fish sludge, we think that we can get close to not having any supplemental nutrients for the plants. It depends on the content of the fish feed, the groundwater used etc. Exactly how close to zero time will tell, we are seeing great potential. The key is that the nutrients need to exist in the system in the first place and when you harvest something, you take things out. How do you put what is needed back? We see that a very large portion can be done with circular biological systems. We have been working to incorporate food waste via insects. We take allowed food waste and feed insect larvae. There are several teams in Sweden working on this together, with some government support. I haven't seen the "fermented plant juice" before, but the principle is the same, let bacteria work on it.

farmaway 4y ago

Thanks for sharing! Checking out the links from your profile, cool stuff. Relevant to where I live, far inland from fresh seafood and in a similar climate zone. With YouTube's auto-translation I can even understand much of what is said in Swedish in the Johannas farm videos. Impressive operation. One question about this video— at 1:46 the speaker says, "fish provide all the nutrients [for] our vegetables, which means we don't have to add anything artificial." Is this accurate? My impression was that aquaponics mitigates, but does not completely eliminate, the need for industrial fertilizers/nutrient solution additives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGmJETrqzN4&t=1m46s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGmJETrqzN4&t=1m46s Another question— with aquaponics, how do you incorporate food waste into the circularity? Do you feed it to the fish, extract nutrients via an external physical/chemical process, or just dump it in the water and let it decompose? I've heard the latter approach described as "fermented plant juice", and its apparent simplicity is certainly appealing: https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/sa-7.pdf https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/sa-7.pdf

bjelkeman-again 4y ago
With a nutrient recovery system, bioreactors, for the fish sludge, we think that we can get close to not having any supplemental nutrients for the plants. It depends on the content of the fish feed, the groundwater used etc. Exactly how close to zero time will tell, we are seeing great potential. The key is that the nutrients need to exist in the system in the first place and when you harvest something, you take things out. How do you put what is needed back? We see that a very large portion can be done with circular biological systems. We have been working to incorporate food waste via insects. We take allowed food waste and feed insect larvae. There are several teams in Sweden working on this together, with some government support. I haven't seen the "fermented plant juice" before, but the principle is the same, let bacteria work on it.