Find Out How A Nonprofit Group Wants To Spread Aquaponic Farming In schools

The Youth Will Easily Embrace Newer Technologies In Farming!

Many are of the view that though aquaponics is a more efficient way of growing vegetables, the entry barrier is too high. The cost to get a system going is just too much for some, but a pooling of funds can make it much easier since it will in the long run recover its cost. This is the idea, Schoolgrown a nonprofit organization, wants to inject into as many schools as possible, among other vital lessons about science and technology aquaponics teaches.

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Nonprofit hopes to spread aquaponic farming to schools around the country

I grew up in Iowa, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time around farms. I’m well acquainted with tractors, silos, red barns and fields as far as the eye can see. So when I walked into a greenhouse recently for a story I was shooting about a very different type of agricultural production — aquaponics — I had to pause a bit and just take in the scene.

As you walk into Ouroboros Farms, you’re greeted by six big, round bubbling tanks filled with thousands of fish, which are mostly catfish and a few koi. Beyond the tanks are a series of long troughs covered by hundreds of “rafts” with all sorts of dark leafy greens sprouting out. Tanks and troughs, fish and plants, are all connected by a complex pipe system. The fish feed the plants, and the plants clean the water for the fish. It was a quite a place: I swear you could hear the plants growing.

Ouroboros is one of a few large-scale commercial aquaponics operations in the country. That makes the place fairly unique, but there’s another interesting story unfolding under the same roof. A new nonprofit called SchoolGrown is operating an aquaponics “classroom” right next to the commercial operation.

SchoolGrown was started last year by a group of like-minded aquaponics enthusiasts who felt that students weren’t getting enough hands-on experiences growing food and learning about their connection to the world around them.

The organization now hosts monthly workshops for adults and field trips for kids.

They have a group of committed volunteers who help maintain their aquaponics system and harvest the produce. They even treated me to a delicious lunch during my visit: a freshly picked salad and catfish from their tanks.

But their big focus now is on spreading aquaponics systems to schools around the country and teaching sustainable agricultural practices.

Co-founder Sundown Hazen, who worked for 10 years at an Apple store in the Bay Area before starting the organization, says he was motivated in part because he wanted his own four daughters to be more aware of where their food comes from. And he felt that was something they might not get as part of their education.

“We’ve seen that school gardens are often a burden for the schools,” said Hazen. “Few schools have resources to allocate to gardens on campus. Often parents and teachers are volunteering their time to keep them running, even on summer vacation. We looked at that and thought what could make a school garden sustain itself.”

Hazen and co-founder Jon Parr, an engineer and aquaponics “guru,” decided that school gardens needed to be, in a sense, financially independent…….

Read the rest of this article at pbs.org

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