kate humble_ aquaponics is the answer to our growing food crisis _ life and style _ theguardian

7/7/2014 Kate Humble: aquaponics is the answer to our growing food crisis | Life and style | theguardian.com

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Kate Humble: aquaponics is the answerto our growing food crisisThe Springwatch presenter explains the anger

that motivated her to build the UK's first

aquaponic greenhouse on her farm – a closed-

loop system producing food in a small space

Lucy Siegletheguardian.com, Thursday 3 July 201 4 1 1 .23 BST

Kate Humble, Charlie Price and Becky Bainbridge in the UK's first aquaponic solar greenhouse.Photograph: Humble by Nature

A collective "ooh" went up as the condensation cleared from a new 12 x 7 metre

structure to reveal the UK's first aquaponic solar greenhouse, in the perhaps unlikely

environs of Kate Humble's 117-acre ex-council farm in Monmouthshire, Wales.

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This is a greenhouse with a surprising wow factor. Inside, you can make out the blue of

the fish tanks containing male tilapia (a species chosen as they grow rapidly to harvest

size and as one of yesterday's visitors put it "taste lovely on a barbecue") and the raised

beds full of fledgling vegetable crops. Of course, there is also much that you can't see –

which is rather the point with a closed-loop food production system that needs little

interference; the vegetable beds fill and drain, twice an hour, sustained by nutrient-rich

water from the fish tanks.

That this breakthrough technology with implications for the nation's diet is all going on

on a little farm in Monmouthshire rather than in an agricultural science institution might

seem incongruous, but that has everything to do with the tenacity of the farm's owner,

TV presenter Kate Humble. When the Guardian visited her back in April it was clear she

believes wholeheartedly in the regeneration of small-scale farming, and the company,

Humble by Nature, she runs from this working farm, hosts courses that range from dry

stone walling to keeping pigs designed for people to "leave filthy, exhausted and with

their clothing completely ruined".

Three years ago this farm was about to be broken up and sold on because 117 acres was

considered too small to be useful or profitable. Humble was determined that a farm of

this size should and could work, and became convinced that the science of aquaponics

was key. Determination seems to have been turned into a type of rocket fuel when she

got angry – always a powerful motivating force. "I was listening one morning to the BBC

Radio 4 Today programme and I heard an interview with someone from a food bank

scheme in Moreton-in-the-Marsh. He said something to the effect of: 'It's all very well

being surrounded by pretty green fields, but that doesn't produce food.' I thought 'What

the hell is going on?'"

http://http//www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/17/kate-humble-value-food-not-expensive-enough



Kate Humble was driven to set up the aquaponics system by a frustration over food production.Photograph: Humble by Nature

She is not alone in asking herself that question and nor in her disgust that we

increasingly view rural populations as unable or unwilling to grow food. Fortunately she

discovered across scientists Charlie Price and Becky Bainbridge of social enterprise,

Aquaponics UK, who are devoted to growing more food in less space. "We wanted to

create a model to produce food in a low input way," explains Price, who is also an expert

in biomass energy, "but to do so in a building that required very little energy. Ultimately

it's nothing new, it's a combination of existing technologies put together in a structure."

In many ways it's about taking the heat out of the energy, water and oil requirements

that dog conventional agriculture and even aquaculture and hydroponics. As Humble

explains it: "You’ve got your fish in your tanks, tilapia – which do well in aquaculture -

shitting away merrily, and that water full of nitrates is pumped through vegetable beds.

The leafy greens love the nitrates and grow like fury, the vegetables clean the water and

back it goes to the fish."

In terms of energy, the passive thermal structure, with a thermal mass wall, captures

and stores as much solar energy as possible, and then releases it into the greenhouse at

night. It requires very little supplementary heating (it also wears a special thermal quilt

at night). In essence this mimics the airflow of a termite mound, in a nod to biomimicry.

http://aquaponics.org.uk/



The passive solar structure mimics the airflow of a termite mound. Photograph: Humble by Nature

Feeding is also self-sustaining: the fish are fed primarily on worms from the wormeries

at the back of the structure (which also supply worm tea, used as a pest preventative as

a spray on the plants in the beds) but also from black soldier flies. Whereas conventional

aquaculture often falls down on sustainability by the consumption of fish food from wild

caught fish, the black soldier flies here eat until they pupate, then self-harvest with the

aid of a cleverly positioned ramp and become fish food. And this is a completely organic

system (there are no petroleum-based pesticides). In a naturally balanced system, pest

control is left to species who do it naturally, and techniques such as companion planting.

'We even tried chameleons to eat pests,' says Becky Bainbridge, 'but in fact they just ate

everything, even the good pests.' Now they leave it to ladybirds to deal with aphids.

In terms of yield, even this 'smallholder scale' trial hub promises much. Based on

German trials, it could soon be producing between 30 and 35 kgs of fruit and vegetables

a week and 200 kgs of fish a year, more than enough to supply the restaurant and cafe

on site, redefining local food. The massive boon for aquaponics is of course the extended

growing season it offers; despite lecturing that we must eat in season, there seems little

appetite to adjust our diet accordingly. Aquaponics, in theory offers us a chance to have

our bananas and eat them (all year around).

Could aquaponics, the marriage of hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) and

aquaculture (the farming of aquatic organisms) be key to boosting our food self-

sufficiency and our resilience to overseas price hikes? We do need some answers. A

recent University of Cambridge report tells us at the moment we're running a food, feed

and drink deficit of £18.6bn. By 2030 there will be 70 million of us on these shores and

the researchers tell us we'll face a 2m hectare shortfall in productive land needed to

produce food.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28003435



© 2 01 4 Gu a r dia n New s a n d Media Lim ited or its a ffilia ted com pa n ies. A ll r ig h ts r eser v ed.

What's amazing given its potential is that aquaponics has been given so little air time.

You are more likely to find United Nations FAO reports and symposiums on raising

insects for the table (an interesting idea but with huge societal cultural barriers in

western Europe) than a food system like this which addresses the challenges of energy in

food production head on in closed-loop system. "The reality is agriculture since the green

revolution has been focused on monocrops," explains Price, "and putting a lot of energy

into the individual crop and tailoring chemicals to make that crop as productive as

possible. By contrast this is an integrated, multi-trophic ecosystem. It requires a shift in

thinking. There's value in that but also it's complicated. For example if you're doing all

sorts of things – raising insects for food, and different crops and species all under one

system, who do you go to for funding?"

In this case to the Welsh government who have funded the project to the tune of

£200,000 through the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens, an

organisation trained on "reinventing common sense agriculture" and through their

flagship Welsh project Tyfu Pobl (Growing People). As well as training up some of their

communities in aquaponics at Humble by Nature they'll be looking to harvest a lot of

data. Essentially what they and everybody wants to know is whether this is replicable

for communities up and down the land. As we speak a proposal for a solar aquaponic

greenhouse 20 times as large as this one is being considered for planning in West Sussex.

Is it time for aquaponics to have its moment in the sun?

Interested in finding out more about how you can live better? Take a look at this

month's Live Better challenge here.

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kate humble_ aquaponics is the answer to our growing food crisis _ life and style _ theguardian

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