It’s fun! It’s therapeutic! It’s sustainable. It’s environmentally friendly. It’s just a darn good way to grow food! So why aquaponic? Here’s why “we aquaponic!”

Benefits of Aquaponics

Problems with Organic certification:

• Once you are certified, the inspector rarely stops by to check if you are truly practicing organic methods.
• There is currently more organic produce being sold, than actually is being grown. Which means some produce labeled as organic is not. The only way to combat this is to know the farm you are buying from.

Why Aquaponics is Better than Organic

1. Bottom Line: There is no cheating on this with aquaponics, because we can’t use chemical pesticides of any kind or our fish would die, period.
2. Even most approved organic pesticides would kill our fish. The fish act as the “canary in the coal mine”, and force the aquaponics farmer to be honest. Even our tap water in Bend contains chloramine, which is an additive much like chlorine that would kill our fish.
3. Aquaponics mimics the natural symbiotic relationship between fish & plants.
4. Even traditional organic farms need to supplement their soil with fertilizers. These fertilizers can be bad for the over health of the soil and watershed.
5. We are located right next to downtown Bend. You can come visit us and see how we grow
   and treat our plants and fish, to be sure that what your eating is 100% chemical free!
6. No G.M.O. We do not grow any G.M.O. plants.
7. Another advantage of growing indoors is that we don’t have to worry about sprays from farms next door blowing in the wind over on to our crops. Or mysterious G.M.O. plants appearing in our crops like what happened in Eastern Oregon.

OTHER BENEFITS OF AQUAPONICS

Farming Technique

1. Our proprietary system grows six times more per square foot than traditional farming.
2. Aquaponics uses 90% less water than traditional farming.
3. With our system, we can grow any time of year, in any weather, anywhere on the planet.
4. Because aquaponics recycles the water in the system, we can grow in droughts and areas with little water.
5. Less pests to deal with since we are growing indoors.
6. There’s no weeding!
7. Plants Grows Twice As Fast! Due to the naturally fortified water from the fish.
8. For the commercial farmer, aquaponics produces two streams of income, fish and veggies, rather than just one.
9. Our aquaponics farm does NOT require farmland with fertile soil, or even land with soil; aquaponics can be done just as successfully on sand, gravel, or rocky surfaces, which could never be used as conventional farmland.
10. Because we hang our grow lights vertically, and use both sides of the light (no reflector), our lights are twice as efficient, as they are growing two areas of plants versus the standard one area.

Environmental

1. Water Conservation: Aquaponics uses 90% less water than traditional farming. Water and nutrients are recycled in a closed-loop fashion which conserves water.
2. Aquaponics Protects Our Rivers & Lakes:  No harmful fertilizer run off into the water shed. In efforts to maintain nutrient rich soil, farms have to use a lot of fertilizers, those excess fertilizers eventually make it the rivers, where there are countless harmful side effects.
3. Gas Conservation:  “Food Miles” are greatly reduced. Our produce only travels less than five miles from farm to consumer. Only serving the local community reduces harmful gas emissions.
4. Energy Conservation: Even with grow lights, we use  less energy than conventional commercial farming! All energy used in aquaponics is electrical, so alternate energy systems such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric can be used to power our farm.
5. Land Conservation: Our system grows six times more per square foot than traditional farming.
6. Also, by growing in abandoned warehouses, we are using structures that already exist, saving money, energy and other valuable resources.

Health & Nutrition

1. Our fertilizer is from cold blooded fish which do not carry the E. coli or Salmonella, unlike fertilizers from warm blooded animals. Read More Here.
2. Fish are the fastest converter of plant protein to animal protein.
3. Fish have no growth hormones, no mercury, no antibiotics, No P.C.B.s (What are PCBS?)
4. Our Plants have no antibiotics.
5. Produce tastes better than that purchased at the grocery store (because it is not shipped and stored for extended periods of time).

 Compared to Hydroponics

1. With Hydro you have to continuously change out your water supply, because the nutrient solution builds up salts and chemicals in the water. Not only is this wasting more water than aquaponics, it is also polluting the watershed.
2. Nutrient solutions for hydro are super expensive, where the fish in aquaponics can be fed worms, bugs and scraps from the plants.
3. Hydro revolves around a sterile environment, where Aquaponics embraces all micro-organism as they each play an important part in the growing process. As such aquaponics tends to have less diseases and pest problems.
4. In hydroponics, you don’t get to raise and harvest fish.
5. Hydroponic growers can use toxic chemicals to control pests.

SOURCE: http://www.volcanoveggies.com/benefits-of-aquaponics/