November Meeting And Food Safety

From Ann-Michelle Van Eepoel of the Piedmont Center for Sustainability: 

"Hi folks!
Thanks so much to everyone who came out last Tuesday for the Steering Committee meeting at Bessemer United Methodist Church! At the meeting, we went over our proposal for the sub-committees, including each one's scope and goals.

 Please mark your calendars! Our next meeting will be at 6PM on Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at Bessemer United Methodist Church. Be sure to invite anyone you know who may be interested in working with this project!

Here is our proposal for sub-committees:

*Project Oversight Committee:  This committee will oversee the work of other committees and will contain members from each committee.  They will be responsible for completing a proposal for use of the land to be submitted to the appropriate government offices. This committee will make the final decisions on all aspects of the project.

*Research Committee: This committee will be responsible for researching and compiling information related to the needs of the project.They will research data related to existing aquaponics businesses and organizations, different methods of implementation of aquaponics, costs and income models for aquaponics systems and centers, and the cost and timeline of building the Center.  They will generate reports as requested by the Project Oversight committee, and other committees, as needed. 

*Funding Committee: This committee will be responsible for researching and connecting with funding sources within and outside the Bessemer community.  They will seek out funding sources such as grants, donations, fundraising methods, and other opportunities as they are discovered and apply for funding from relevant sources. They will report to the Project Oversight Committee and other committees as needed and make all funding related decisions.

*Community Engagement Committee: This committee will be responsible for creating exciting about the project within the Bessemer community and beyond.  They will also help make positive connections with city and county governments. This committee will create and implement a plan for publication relations, research the impact of similar programs, connect with community leaders and groups, and develop the volunteer base.

*Timeline: With this proposal, we would carry out the responsibilities outlined above for a period of 3 months, then do a progress check together to determine our next steps as a group.

If you have feedback on these committee descriptions, we want to hear it! Please send your comments to info@piedmontsustainability.org.

If you need let us know whether or not you'll be at a meeting, RSVPs should always go directly to annie@piedmontsustainability.org.

We love getting your feedback, we appreciate your participation and we're so excited about all we're going to accomplish together!"

Google map to Bessemer United Methodist Church 3015 East Bessemer Ave, Greensboro, 27405.

And now, for something really different...

How Safe Is Our Food And How We Can Make It Safer

Perhaps you saw or read reports that human DNA has been found in hot dogs including vegetarian hot dogs. Cornell University professor and expert on food safety, Martin Wiedmann tried to play the study down but admitted:

"This is telling us nothing new about hot dogs," he said"

It other words, some folks have known about this for quite some time but haven't bothered to tell us.

Even if eating other humans is safe I doubt most reading want to make it a habit. And while the articles tell us of some of the companies whose products were considered safe they don't tell us who the bad guys are.


Then there's the removal of country of origin labeling requirements required on meat passed by the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. In other words, the old phrase voting with your pocket book is no longer possible. Especially when even North Carolina companies like Smithfield Foods are now owned by the Chinese:

"One year ago this month, a Chinese company bought America’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods.  The $4.7 billion deal is the biggest Chinese acquisition of a U.S. company to date."

Ever heard of feeding manure to fish?  It's even been the subject of scientific study.

"As excessive use of raw CM may present a risk related to increased supply of nutrients, decay of organic matter and the presence of enteric pathogens."

CM stands for Chicken Manure. How much you want to bet that most of the workers on Chinese fish farms have no idea how much is too much chicken manure?

And it's not just fish. Seems manure is fed to cows, pigs and chickens as well. 

From Feedipedia:

"Coprophagy, or feeding on manure, is not new in animal nutrition. For example, livestock feeding on a farm has frequently involved a system of beef cattle followed by hogs and subsequently chickens. Under such a programme the nutrition of the hogs and chickens is based on manure. The current interest in manure as a feedstuff is mostly due to the problem of waste disposal from intensive livestock and poultry operations. Apart from this problem it has been recognized that large amounts of nutrients are wasted. The re-use of manure is one way of creating edible protein from waste material which is often disposed of uneconomically and also creates a nuisance. The amount of excreta produced is considerable: a 2-kg hen produces 0.8 kg a week, a 650-kg cow 150 kg, an 80 kg pig 40 kg and a 45 kg pig 22 kg.

Manure has served as a substrate for both yeast and algae used as feedstuffs, and it has been tried as a substrate for maggots used as a poultry feed; however, the simplest way to use it is as a direct feed. With the intensification of poultry keeping, not every poultry farm has enough land on which to spread manure. The results of many experiments indicate that dried poultry manure can be successfully included in the feeds of both ruminants and nonruminants."

Now how do you reckon that human DNA got into those hot dogs? Could it be from human manure being fed to animals? Is human manure being spread on vegetable crops causing them to take on traces of human DNA as well? And what about all the antibiotics and other drug residues that are found in human manure?

"For thousands of years, China's farmers have used human manure, or "nightsoil", as fertilizer (King, 1911). In this example from the Tai Lake Region, nightsoil is collected and stored in large ceramic tanks or water-tight slate-lined or concrete pits. Manure and urine are collected in buckets within the household, or deposited directly in the storage tanks, which are usually located in the animal stall and toilet area of the household."

Sure, it worked fine for centuries but China now has a population of  1,404.722,428 and counting. 
That's a lot of crap. "China's population is equivalent to 19.24% of the total world population." The population density in China is 145 people per Km².

For comparison: The population density in the U.S.A. is 34 people per Km².

With that many people in China they might need to get rid of a few and like they say, "Parts is parts."


Could it be we're eating the Chinese people too? But really I'm just speculating... Or am I?

Anyway, there is something you folks in Greensboro and Guilford County can do to help protect our food safety. For months now myself and others have been working on a project called Bessemer Aquaponics-- the first accredited aquaponics school and production facility in the United States.

For those who might not know, Aquaponics is a recently modernized 5,000 year old agricultural technology that produces 6 times as much food per acre using as little as 2% of the water of traditional agriculture. It's a speeded up natural process that combines fish and plants into one growing system to produce 100% safe, organic fruits, vegetables, herbs, fish and seafood anywhere you want to grow it. It's really as simple as this just on a much larger scale:


 Eventually most farming will convert to aquaponics-- the question is how long will it take?

We are working in conjunction with residents of my own East Greensboro community, the Piedmont Center for Sustainability, the USDA, NC State University and NC A&T University as well as the Guilford County Agricultural Extension Service. And we need your help.

Soon we are going to ask the Guiford County Commissioners not for money but for a piece of land that has been owned by the county since 1859 at a cost of less that $25.00 and has been abandoned for over 40 years-- land that is sitting right in the middle of one of Greensboro's poorest neighborhoods, most in need of jobs and education, right in the middle of a food desert. And we want you to tell the Guilford County Commissioners to give us that land so that East Greensboro can become the central hub of the emerging Aquaponics industry and all the safe food and jobs that will come with it.

Please contact the Guilford County Commissioners and ask them to support Bessemer Aquaponics. And please share as they need to see thousands of e-mails and phone calls to make this happen. Better yet, e-mail them the link to this post and let them get a taste.

Give Me Aquaponics Or Give Me Death!

"September 12, 1954: Greensboro is suffering from its first drought in modern history. Since water rationing hasn’t helped, the City Council hires a professional rainmaker who promises to produce rain in 60 days by seeding clouds with iodide crystals."
 
"October 15, 1954: Hurricane Hazel exacts a death toll in an eight-state area, but brings an end to an extreme drought in North Carolina and Greensboro."

California is now in its 4th year of drought. 12 million trees have died in California's national forests. The price of water and fines for wasting water are going up in California as water becomes more scarse.

The Colorado River no longer runs to the ocean as so much water is pumped off of it the river runs dry before it reaches the coast. Farmers in the California Delta are fighting with farmers to the south over who gets to use the water in the Delta-- who stays in business and who goes broke. The 100 square mile lake in Owens Valley has been pumped dry and is now a dust bowl.

Not only farmers but ordinary citizens and other businesses are at odds with one another over
"riparian rights." Some predict actual water wars as all the best laid plans of central planners crumble under Mother Nature's wrath.

But it's even worse than that. From Think Progress:

"In 2014, some 500,000 acres of farmland lay fallow in California, costing the state’s agriculture industry $1.5 billion in revenue and 17,000 seasonal and part time jobs. Experts believe the total acreage of fallowed farmland could double in 2015 — and that news has people across the country thinking about food security.

“When you look at the California drought maps, it’s a scary thing,” Craig Chase, who leads the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture’s Marketing and Food Systems Initiative at Iowa State University, told ThinkProgress. “We’re all wondering where the food that we want to eat is going to come from. Is it going to come from another state inside the U.S.? Is it going to come from abroad? Or are we going to grow it ourselves? That’s the question that we need to start asking ourselves.”

The California Central Valley, which stretches 450 miles between the Sierra Nevadas and the California Coast Range, might be the single most productive tract of land in the world. From its soil springs 230 varieties of crops so diverse that their places of botanical origin range from Southeast Asia to Mexico. It produces two thirds of the nation’s produce, and, like Atlas with an almond on his back, 80 percent of the world’s almonds. If you’ve eaten anything made with canned tomatoes, there’s a 94 percent chance that they were planted and picked in the Central Valley."

But there is hope. Maybe not for California but for the rest of us.

"But a lot of the things that California produces in such stunning numbers — tomatoes, lettuce, celery, carrots — can be grown elsewhere. Before the 20th century, the majority of produce consumed in the United States came from small farms that grew a relatively diverse number of crops. Fruit and vegetable production was regional, and varieties were dictated by the climate of those areas.

“There may be reason for the citrus and some of the nuts that are uniquely suited to the Mediterranean climate, but there’s no real reason that you have to produce all the fruits and vegetables. Those were grown other places before California came in,” John Ikerd, professor emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Missouri Columbia, told ThinkProgress."

So why did it happen?

"Ikerd, who taught agricultural economics before becoming an advocate for sustainable farming, grew up in rural Missouri, where he estimates that the majority of the food he ate came from within 50 miles of his home. At that time, the Midwest was still covered with small and mid-sized farms growing a diverse portfolio of crops. Ikerd described a tomato cannery in the town where he grew up, built to process the tomatoes grown in the farms from the surrounding area. Orchards, too, were once plentiful throughout the Midwest, growing apples and fruit for markets both local and national.

But the tomato canneries and the orchards that Ikerd remembers have largely disappeared, replaced by fields upon fields of corn and soybeans, commodity crops that government subsidies help make the quickest, fastest way to profit in the Midwest. From 1996 until the most recent version of the Farm Bill, farmers that grew commodity crops like corn and soil were actually prohibited from also growing specialty crops like fruits and vegetables on their land. Anyone who grew a specialty crop on land meant for subsidized commodity crops would have to forfeit their subsidy and pay a penalty equal to the market value of whatever specialty crop they grew, a policy that did little to discourage farmers in the Midwest from becoming large producers of one or two commodity crops. The U.S. government spent almost $84.5 billion dollars subsidizing corn between 1995 and 2012, and a good portion of corn crops does not make it to a plate, instead used as ethanol or feed for livestock. 

Of the corn that is intended for consumption, much of it ends up as high fructose corn syrup, which is now so ubiquitous it encourages maximizing the yield of corn at the expense of agricultural diversity. From 2002 to 2012, the amount of land dedicated to growing the nation’s top 25 vegetables fell from 1.9 million acres to 1.8 million. In the same amount of time, corn production grew from 79 million acres to 97 million.

“The deeper people look at it, they’ll see it’s a deeper part of the whole,” Ikerd says. “It’s not just a California drought problem, it’s a problem with our whole food system.”

I encourage you to read the entire article.

But there is good news for Greensboro. Last night a reporter from  O.Henry Magazine, there to do a story for their July issue listened in and asked questions as a small group of people met on the grounds of what we hope will someday be the nation's first accredited Aquaponics production and teaching facility where people can actually learn how to build and run Aquaponics systems that produce 6 times as much food per acre while using less than 2% of the water of traditional agriculture.

Guilford County Agricultural Extension Interim Director Karen Neill and Extension Agent John Ivey answered questions about Aquaponics and explained the Ag Service's roll in the project including helping to bring in Aquaponics experts from North Carolina State University.

And we'll not have to worry about the weather as Aquaponics is practiced indoors.

Please, spread the word, get involved, change our city for the better and give your children the world you never had.

Aquaponics For Vegans and Vegetarians

Some Vegans and Vegetarians might be deterred from getting involved with Aquaponics because Aquaponics involves raising fish for food but Vegans and Vegetarians shouldn't let that keep them away. You see, there's no rule that says the fish must be eaten. Some Aquaponics growers raise more expensive exotic fish that are sold for pets. Others who are simply practicing Aquaponics as a hobby or to feed themselves and their families the healthiest fruits and vegetables just keep the same fish until they die from old age.

You could be raising Goldfisk, Koi, Oscars, Betta, Tetra, Molly, Guppies or no telling what other kinds of fish. Even giant catfish and turtles if you build it right.

You see, the fish convert fish food into organic fertilizer for the fruits and vegetables and in turn the plants filter the toxins out of the water to keep it safe for the fish. The way Mother Nature intended just more intense through the use of technology.

That brings us to another possibility for Bessemer Aquaponics. If the members and board of directors wanted to go this route we could open the world's first Aquaponic Aquarium open to the public.

The water from the aquarium could be piped to a greenhouse where the plants are grown separately. This would allow filling the greenhouse with CO2 at night to speed up plant growth without adversely affecting the health of fish or people.

And an Aquarium in the neighborhood, even a relatively small Aquarium, would go a long ways toward making East Greensboro a better place to live. Maybe children could get in free so they've always a safe place to go and learn.

Isn't it time Greensboro had a few firsts?

Our second meeting of Bessemer Aquaponics will be on Wednesday, May 6, 2015, 7:00 PM in the 20 acre empty field due west of the Guilford County Agricultural Extension Office 3309 Burlington Rd (Link to Google map: https://goo.gl/maps/P9cFn ) Long time residents will recognize it as the former location of the Polio Hospital and a nursing home both torn down about 40 years ago and left vacant ever sense.

What To Bring: a folding chair unless you prefer to stand. Friends.

Who is invited? Everyone who is interested in creating jobs and bringing quality food to Greensboro.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Modern Aquaponics was developed at North Carolina State University at taxpayers' expense 30 plus years ago. The world's foremost experts in Aquaponics still work for NC State. Experts are teaching Aquaponics in Eastford, Connecticut via the UConn Extension Master Gardener program.

Kentucky State University is pitching the idea that Aquaponics can create jobs and grow more food.

Folks in London, England are practicing Aquaponics on a commercial scale inside old commercial buildings.

In Chattanooga, Tennessee they are using Aquaponics to  "engage individuals with significant cognitive disabilities and provide training support in activities of daily living," and calling it the food of the future.

In Oklahoma the Indian Nations of the Seminole, Choctaw, Cheyenne and Arapahoe are all going Aquaponic.

In Berlin, Germany:

 "Berlin has opened its first commercial aquaponic farm combining aquaculture and hydroponics. The farm is still only small - delivering up to 300 boxes of organic produce per week - in a city of 3.5 million people. But as food security becomes a bigger global concern, aquaponics has the potential to revolutionize food production in cities"

I'm even trying Aquaponics in a small home built system in my back yard.

But here in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the Metropolitan Statistical Area ranked #1 in the United States for the highest level of food insecurity, in the very state where our tax dollars helped to develop modern aquaponics-- if we want Aquaponic fish and vegetables we have to import them.


If we want to be educated in Aquaponics we have to leave Greensboro. There's no place to take a class, no place to see Aquaponics in action or get hands-on experience. This is what Bessemer Aquaponics seeks to become.


Please tell our elected leaders to support this effort and share this article with everyone you know as one solution to Greensboro's food crisis and economic woes. It's time we became a leader instead of the last in line getting nothing but the scraps left behind.

How Does Aquaponics Work?

A simplified explanation...

Take a pot of clean fresh water.

Put a fish in it.

Feed the fish.

When the water gets dirty then pour that water on a potted plant that is potted in such a way so that the excess water can be captured as it slowly drains out of the plant pot. A lot of sand in the pot might do the trick.

Replace the dirty fish water with clean fresh water.

Repeat that process as often as necessary to keep both fish and plant growing healthy and strong.

That approach would probably work with just 1 fish and perhaps 1 plant. And maybe as your fish got bigger you could add more plants. The fish excrement would provide the necessary nutrients to feed the plant and the plant would filter the water so that it remained safe for the fish just as plants and fish coexist in nature.

Problem is: when you add a second fish and a third, a forth, a fifth and eventually you've got thousands of fish... Wait, that will never happen. There's no way you can pour water from pot to pot that fast doing it by hand, you'll end up having a fish kill long before you get to thousands of fish. At least, you'd better hope your fish kill comes early.

At some point you're going to need an electric powered pumping system to pump the excrement and nutrient rich water up to the plants where gravity can let it fall back down to the fish tank. At some point you're probably going to need filters to improve water quality to keep your fish healthy. And you're almost certain to need to add oxygen to the water to support the large numbers of fish you'll be stocking in your tanks.

Aquaponics simply mimics the natural cycle of water contaminated with animal waste to compost to plant food to clean water returned to the pond. The difference is: in Aquaponics we use technology to push the boundaries and increase production of fish and plants. What we're really doing is concentrating and speeding up the process.

From Wikipedia:

"Aquaponics /ˈækwəˈpɒnɨks/, is a food production system that combines conventional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as snails, fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. In normal aquaculture, excretions from the animals being raised can accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity. In an aquaponic system, water from an aquaculture system is fed to a hydroponic system where the by-products are broken down by nitrification bacteria into nitrates and nitrites, which are utilized by the plants as nutrients. The water is then recirculated back to the aquaculture system."

Also from Wikipedia:

"The development of modern aquaponics is often attributed to the various works of the New Alchemy Institute and the works of Dr. Mark McMurtry et al. at the North Carolina State University." 

That's right, modern Aquaponics was pioneered here in North Carolina over 30 years ago at taxpayer expense. I think it's time we capitalized on it.

So How Much Food Can We Grow?

The answer varies but the following video from Growing Power, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin non profit founded by retired ABA basketball professional Will Allen shows how they grow 1 million pounds of food per year on 3 acres.



Will Allen only has 3 acres to work with. The track of land we are looking at is over 20 acres-- 33 actually, but part of it is in use.

And remember: the intention of Bessemer Aquaponics is to teach others how to do Aquaponics so that Greensboro, the Piedmont Triad and North Carolina Aquaponics businesses, farms and suppliers can start up with qualified and experienced managers and employees be they urban or rural.

Are you a Facebook user? If yes then check out our Bessemer Aquaponics Facebook page.

Interesting And Enlightening Facts About Aquaponics

*Aquaponics uses only 2% of the water as is required by conventional agriculture to grow the same vegetable harvest. Plus you get fish.

*A well designed Aquaponics system uses far less energy than conventional farming.

*Properly designed and managed Aquaponics systems have zero waste, discharge and environmental impact as all wastes are converted to useable products.

*Aquaponics can be done indoors in abandoned industrial and commercial buildings.

*Aquaponics can be done in small spaces.

*Root crops like carrots and beets have been successfully raised using Aquaponics.

*While first used thousands of years ago by the ancient Aztecs and 5,000 years ago in Asia, modern Aquaponics is  attributed to the New Alchemy Institute and Dr. Mark McMurtry et al. at North Carolina State University.

*What kind of plants can you grow? From Wikipedia:

"Most green leaf vegetables grow well in the hydroponic subsystem, although most profitable are varieties of chinese cabbage, lettuce, basil, roses, tomatoes, okra, cantaloupe and bell peppers.[23] Other species of vegetables that grow well in an aquaponic system include beans, peas, kohlrabi, watercress, taro, radishes, strawberries, melons, onions, turnips, parsnips, sweet potato and herbs.[citation needed] Since plants at different growth stages require different amounts of minerals and nutrients, plant harvesting is staggered with seedings growing at the same time as mature plants. This ensures stable nutrient content in the water because of continuous symbiotic cleansing of toxins from the water.[25]"

*What kinds of fish can you raise? Again, from Wikipedia:

"Freshwater fish are the most common aquatic animal raised using aquaponics, although freshwater crayfish and prawns are also sometimes used.[26] In practice, tilapia are the most popular fish for home and commercial projects that are intended to raise edible fish, although barramundi, silver perch, eel-tailed catfish or tandanus catfish, jade perch and Murray cod are also used.[23] For temperate climates when there isn't ability or desire to maintain water temperature, bluegill and catfish are suitable fish species for home systems. Koi and goldfish may also be used, if the fish in the system need not be edible."

*Some experiments with raising salt water fish and seafood with Kelp are also being done in some Aquaponics operations.

*Aquaponics facilities can be placed closer to actual markets than conventional farms and can actually be placed right in the neighborhoods they serve reducing the need for transportation, storage and refrigeration.

*Aquaponics is always organic.

*The use of Aquaponics gives us better control over our food supply.

*85% of the fish and seafood sold in the USA is imported. Some countries that export fish to the United States raise their fish on a diet of manure or in sewers. While our government may consider such practices safe we at Bessemer Aquaponics believe we can and will do better.

*How does Aquaponics compare to traditional agriculture?

 “It grows six times as much food as a traditional farm would in the same amount the space, but it’s using less than a tenth of the amount of water,” -- Kevin Jones, science instructor at Randolph Community College.

Come Join Us Wednesday Night

When Wednesday: Wednesday April 8, 2014 6:00 PM

Where: Outside in the vacant lot due west of the Guilford County Agricultural Extension Office 3309 Burlington Rd (Link to Google map: https://goo.gl/maps/P9cFn ) Long time residents will recognize it as the former location of the Polio Hospital and a nursing home both torn down about 40 years ago and left vacant ever sense. Parking is available at the Agricultural Extension Center.

What To Bring: a folding chair unless you prefer to stand.

John Ivey of the Agricultural Extension Service and I will be there along with anyone else we can wrangle in support of the project. The 33 acre site we'll be meeting on is where we HOPE to place the first location of Bessemer Aquaponics before expanding to other locations in other food deserts and low income neighborhoods all over Greensboro, the Piedmont Triad and the State of North Carolina.

Our first goal is to create a learning institution where residents from Greensboro and beyond can quickly learn how to build low cost Aquaponics systems of their own while supporting our project with the products grown on site.

Our intermediate goal is to address food deserts and the lack of employment locally.

Our long term goal is to make Greensboro, the Piedmont Triad and North Carolina the world's leader in Aquaponics and a major exporter of healthy foods.

Come join us and let's talk about how we can make that possible.

And please tell all your friends to come too.

What's that, you say you don't like fish? What if I told you this project has the potential to make chicken, beef, pork and vegetables more affordable? Would that get your attention? Come on out and I'll explain how.

Our First Meeting

When Wednesday: Wednesday April 8, 2014 6:00 PM

Where: In the vacant lot due east of the Guilford County Agricultural Extension Office 3309 Burlington Rd (Link to Google map: https://goo.gl/maps/P9cFn ) Long time residents will recognize it as the former location of the Polio Hospital and a nursing home both torn down about 40 years ago and left vacant ever sense.

What To Bring: a folding chair unless you prefer to stand.

John Ivey of the Agricultural Extension Service and I will be there along with anyone else we can wrangle in support of the project. The 33 acre site we'll be meeting on is where we HOPE to place the first location of Bessemer Aquaponics before expanding to other locations in other food deserts and low income neighborhoods all over Greensboro, the Piedmont Triad and the State of North Carolina.
Please come and show your support, find out what aquaponics is all about, share in our vision and consider investing and or volunteering someday.

And please share this post with everyone you know. Let's put Greensboro to work and healthy food in our children in a for profit venture anyone can be a part of.
Thanks
-Billy

What Is Aquaponics?

Aquaponics is one of the oldest and most successful farming systems in the world. It just wasn't always called Aquaponics. Thousands of years ago the ancient Aztecs practiced Aquaponics by growing crops on floating rafts covered with soil called chinampas allowing the roots of their vegetables to always remain in moist soil. Their ability to grow more food than anyone else made the Aztecs the strongest nation in Central America keeping their soldiers' bellies full when those they fought against starved.

In Asia 5000 years of rice paddies have supported the growth of not only rice but fish, Azolla, Chinese Water Chestnuts and other crops all at the same time before being drained at harvest time. Modern Asian farmers have added Ducks, Crayfish and Prawn (fresh water shrimp) to the animals they raise in their rice paddies.

Fish provide all the nutrients necessary for successful plant growth. Plants provide the necessary filtration of nitrogen compounds and ammonia to keep water healthy for fish. This is why natural ponds and lakes are able to support wild populations of fish and other animals.

In modern Aquaponics farmers simply push the limits of nature to grow the most fish and vegetables possible without upsetting the balance of nature.

This is done through careful monitoring of water quality and adjusting as necessary.

Modern technology, lighting, electricity, pumps and chemical testing gives the modern Aquaponic farmer the ability to grow far more organic fish and produce in much less space using much less water and energy than ever before possible. As a matter of fact: Aquaponics uses only 2% to 10% as much water as conventional farming depending on how it's practiced and local conditions.

Considering the world is facing shortages of safe water, fish and vegetables, and Greensboro desperately needs jobs, how can we not afford to bring Aquaponics to Greensboro?