Why Aquaponics?

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Why Aquaponics?

35 Benefits of AQUAPONICS

18 Aquaponic Farming Technique Benefits

Aquaponics uses approximately 70-92% less water than traditional farming.
Aquaponics uses a fraction of the water that traditional field production does because no water is wasted to evaporation due to overhead irrigation or consumption by weeds.
Since aquaponics recycles the water in the system, produce can still be grown in drought prone areas and those with little water.
Aquaponic produce tends to grow twice as fast due to the naturally fortified water from the fish and not having to compete with other plants for water or nutrients.
Aquaponics provides a truly organic, natural form of nutrients for the plants.
These nutrients in aquaponics keep our plants are healthy, so there tend to be less pests and disease issues to deal with.
Aquaponics utilizes the nutrient rich water from aquaculture that otherwise would have been a waste product or would need to be filtered in a costly manner.
Aquaponics can grow fish and produce any time of year, in any weather, anywhere on the planet - indoors or outdoors (climate permitting).
If your climate permits or if you are growing in a greenhouse, you can grow crops in an aquaponic system year round.
Aquaponics farm does NOT require expensive farmland with fertile soil, or even land with soil, which is a good thing with the sugar sand we have here in Florida. Aquaponics can be done just as successfully on sand, gravel, or rocky surfaces, which could never be used as conventional farmland.
By eliminating soil in produce production, most soil borne diseases and pests are eliminated. No Root-Knot Nematodes!
In aquaponics, there’s no weeding or tilling or big machinery! Just planting and harvesting!
In aquaponics, plant spacing can be very intensive, allowing you to grow more plants in a given space without the risk of depleting the nutrients in the native soil and environment and hindering ecological balances.
Space savings of an aquaponics system allows for profitable production even in backyard or small urban environments, in warehouses and
For the commercial farmer, aquaponics produces two streams of income, fish and veggies, rather than just one. Diversification!
With high stocking densities in the fish tank, plants will quickly grow and develop in an aquaponic system as long as proper filtration or sufficient biofilter is used
Aquaponics eliminates the cost and time involved with mixing traditional hydroponic nutrients.
In aquaponics, there cannot be any pesticides or herbicides used, making the end product healthier and safer!

7 Aquaponic Environmental Benefits

Water Conservation: Aquaponics uses 70-92% less water than traditional farming. Water and nutrients are recycled in a closed-loop fashion which conserves water.
Water Conservation Aquaponics Protects Our Rivers & Lakes: No harmful fertilizer run off into the watershed. In efforts to maintain nutrient rich soil, farmers have to use a lot of fertilizers, those excess fertilizers eventually make it the rivers, where there are countless harmful side effects through the disruption of the delicate ecological balance.
Gas Conservation: No heavy equipment needed and thereby no petrochemical energy to power tractors, compost shredders, spreaders, cultivators, plows and the organic pesticide sprayers. Not to mention those to produce the fertilizers.
Gas Conservation: “Food Miles” are greatly reduced. Our produce only travels less than fifty miles from farm to consumer. Only serving the local community reduces harmful gas emissions.
Energy Conservation: Even with grow lights, aquaponics 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 an aquaponic farm.
Energy Conservation: Less labor needed since there is no need for tilling, cultivating, fertilizer spreading, compost shredding, manure spreading, plowing cover crops in, or irrigating.
Land Conservation: Most aquaponics systems can grow four to six times more per square foot than traditional farming.

5 Aquaponic Health & Nutrition Benefits

Our fertilizer is from our cold-blooded fish and African Nightcrawler worms, which do not carry the E. coli or Salmonella, unlike fertilizers from warm-blooded animals. Read More Here.
Fish convert plant protein to animal protein.
Fish have no contaminants, no growth hormones, no antibiotics, no heavy metals, no radioactive waste, No P.C.B.s (What are PCBs?)
Our Fish and Plants have no contaminants.
Produce tastes better than that purchased at the grocery store because it is not harvested unripe, treated with ripening agents, shipped and then stored for extended periods of time.

5 Benefits of Aquaponics Compared to Hydroponics

With Hydroponics, the water supply must be continuously changed out due to the nutrient solution builds up salts and chemicals in the water. Not only is this wasting more water than aquaponics, it is also potentially polluting the watershed.
Nutrient solutions for hydroponics are expensive, where the inputs for aquaponics are minimal. Fish can be fed worms, larvae, duckweed and scraps from the plants.
Hydroponics 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.
In hydroponics, there are no fish to raise and harvest.

WHY we use AQUAPONICS at GreenView Aquaponics Farm

6 reasons why we are not Certified Organic:

Currently, our farm's production standards exceed the organic standards and guidelines. We have made a conscious decision not to become certified organic ourselves. We use organic and non-GMO heirloom seeds, organic feed, and our farm is absolutely and completely antibiotic-free, hormone-free, pesticide-free (even the organically approved ones), herbicide-free, fungicide-free and any other -cide-free. We strongly believe nourishing food can only be produced without all the chemicals and we have been doing so for over 3 years!
We practice humane and respectful animal husbandry by allowing our livestock to be in as natural a setting as possible, yet still protected from predation.
Organic farms may use pesticides and chemicals that we feel may still be harmful to people even though they may be natural and are certainly less harmful than those used on conventional farms. We have opted to not use any of these items on our farm. There are many fantastic organic farmers that have their hearts in the right place and are trying to do to the right thing. These organic farmers will only use these as a last resort, others may use them to be precautionary since crop losses can be devastating to a small organic farm. Want to know what's allowed to be applied and still be organic, click here.
Currently, there is more organic produce being sold than actually is being grown, which means some produce labeled as organic is not actually organic. The only way to be sure is to know the farm you are buying from.
Often one product on a farm is certified organic, but other products from a farm are not; yet some farms still label everything they produce as organic. We cannot stress how important it is that you know the farm and farmers that you are buying from.
Additionally, there are some historical changes taking place in the NOSB as the USDA is gradually taking over. We do not feel this to be a positive change for small farmers.

6 Reasons Aquaponics is Better than Organic

There is no cheating on this with aquaponics since the fish police the systen and prevent aquaponic farmers from using chemical pesticides of any kind or risk killing the fish that drive the nutrients for the system. Same goes for the plants if aquaponic farmers attempting to treat the fish.
Since most approved organic pesticides would kill our fish, the fish act as the “canary in the coal mine” and forces aquaponic farmers to be honest and diligent. City water in Cape Coral contains chloramine, which is an additive much like chlorine, that will also kill fish. At GreenView Aquaponics, we harvest rainwater from our structures along with well water for our systems.
Aquaponics mimics the natural symbiotic relationship between fish & plants, where beneficial bacteria outcompete the not so good ones.
Traditional and organic farmers need to supplement their soil with fertilizers. These fertilizers can be bad for the over health of the soil and watershed. In an aquaponics system, all the fertilizers produced by the beneficial bacteria stay in the system.
We are located off Old Burnt Store Road in North Cape Coral. SOON you can come visit us or come out on a Volunteer Day to see how we grow and treat our plants and fish to be sure that what your eating is 100% chemical free!
No GMO. We do not grow any Genetically Modified Organisms for plants or use any GMO feeds.