Arduino-based, urban aquaponics in Oakland | Hacker News Reader

Arduino-based, urban aquaponics in Oakland

faircompanies.com

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If I understand correctly, this 'aquaponics' solution:

* does not require arable land, because the plants grow on containers filled with stones through which water constantly circulates;

* uses an order of magnitude less water than traditional agriculture, because the water is constantly recycled back from a nearby fish tank, and because the rock layer prevents water from evaporating;

* allows plant density (i.e., number of plants per unit of area) an order of magnitude greater than traditional agriculture, because plant roots don't have to work as hard to find nutrients, so they grow straight down;

* does not attract traditional bug pests or weeds, because there is no wet soil to attract them;

* makes plants grow much faster, because they're getting a constant supply of nutrients fed through the water recycling system; and

* is also an inexpensive fish-farming solution!

Unless I'm missing something big, this solution looks BRILLIANT to me. All it needs now is for a talented entrepreneur to come in, find an early-adopter market for it, and turn the technology into a standardized product that can be sold at scale.

Indeed, the economics of hydroponics would suggest that it should already dominate commercial vegetable production. The main reason they're not, is because municipalities greatly undervalue water, and because agriculture is so highly subsidized and so it's hard for hydroponics to compete.

1. Underselling water

Municipal water prices set by local government greatly undervalue the actual rarity of water. With so many aquifers running out, and rivers stretched to the max, especially in the west, I'm surprised there could be this much myopia on an issue that is clearly far more serious and immediate issue than energy. Right now the only pressure to reduce water use seems to be on consumers (watering policies, low-water use appliances), but they only use 11% of it.

2. Subsidized agriculture.

This is a more well known issue so I don't think I need to repeat it here.

Those are also the two reasons that meat is so cheap. The real costs of meat are 1-2 orders of magnitude greater than what people pay now.

> Right now the only pressure to reduce water use seems to be on consumers (watering policies, low-water use appliances), but they only use 11% of it.

Where does the other 89% go?

Agriculture & Industrial

The real question is whether aquaponics can create higher quality food than organic produce, which is not subsidized. Subsidies are also unsustainable in the long run. The major costs in aquaponics are in the technology, which will inevitably get cheaper. If aquaponic agriculture truly represents an order of magnitude improvement in water use and space use, and can produce better food, it's only a matter of time before not even subsidies can keep traditional agriculture economically sustainable.

This is just what I needed to see after the front page of HN was dominated by bullshit about Surface and iPad mini. Finally, technology used to make something other than toys for bored rich people.

>whether aquaponics can create higher quality food than organic produce

Why single out the organic market?

Yes, hydroponics produces the best possible quality food that can be made. Being a closed system, it also doesn't require pesticides so it's essentially organic anyhow.

You are correct that Organic produce is the obvious immediate competitor. I wonder if hydroponically grown good can be labeled as organic. it could certainly come with no label at all.

As to whether there's a marketing benefit to actually being labeled as hydroponically grown, I've no idea.

As for subsidies, I assume that Organic food takes advantage of all of the same subsidies as non-organically grown food.

I wonder if it would be smart to labeled it "Organic Hydroponically grown" or "Hydroponically Grown Organic" or something similar

Is water used by hydroponics really "used"? As far as I can tell, aside from "loss" to evaporation and water used in part of the mass that makes up the fruit you send out, nothing should really be wasting water.

It seems likely that lost water due to evaporation with this type of setup should be a great deal less than water lost with traditional farming (spraying water with things like center-pivot irrigation machines should cause much more evaporation. I mean, come on... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Irrigatio...), and water lost through fruit mass is irrelevant.

Yes, my point is that Hydroponics use very little water while traditional agriculture uses a large amount. If water were actually as expensive as it's scarcity, Hydroponics would be more competitive.

Ah yes, I see. That is a good point.

All it needs now is for a talented entrepreneur to come in, find an early-adopter market for it, and turn the technology into a standardized product that can be sold at scale.

That's what we're trying to do with our project, AutoMicroFarm (http://automicrofarm.com/).

A very commendable effort, but I'm not sure you will find product-market fit by targeting homeowners as early adopters, because most homeowners are extremely busy and therefore happy to pay for the convenience of a grocery store and last-minute takeout food. (I'm speaking from personal experience: I don't have the time or desire to install and manage something like AutoMicroFarm in my home, but I routinely pay for online grocery delivery and take-out food.)

The two early-adopter markets I would explore first are: (1) restaurants/hotels, who are always interested in "fresh produce at 10% of the cost" and are always looking for ways to differentiate from competitors ("our produce is fresher because it's grown in-house with hydroponics"); and (2) large grocery stores in urban areas, who will have the space and staff to install and manage AutoMicroFram and are also always interested in fresher produce at a lower cost.

I suspect that if AutoMicroFarm is packaged as a standard product (e.g., the same modular box for everyone) that truly delivers value from day one (e.g., the box is delivered with grown plants of the buyer's choosing) to these two market segments, you would get much faster adoption.

PS. Obviously this would require a meaningful amount of venture capital.

Thanks for suggestions. We're targeting gardeners as early and mid-term adopters, of whom there are quite a lot in the US. However, we certainly are keeping an eye on the commercial markets you mention. The biggest problem that I see is that for those markets, you need quite a lot of produce to start replacing a large percentage of their fresh plant offerings.

Hydroponics (similar) has been around for a long time and is used professionally for most flower grows, as well as in Brooklyn for lettuce, also in space and in countless indoor marijuana grows! Still automating the sensors is a big step forward... next step is to auto-balance pH and nutrient counts in response to sensor measurements.

I've attended a class with Eric Mandu as part of Workshop Weekend a year ago. He's awesome.

For the semi-amateur, aquaponics is actually pretty tough to start up. Of course you need your initial equipment investment, but mostly getting a stable system is finicky and takes time. The longest part is getting your "live rock" fully active, i.e. nitriting and nitrating bacteria in the stones that convert the fish waste into stuff the plants can use. You essentially have a metastable system that takes a lot of supervision and some chemicals to setup, kinda like keeping a swimming pool clean, except you want just the right ratio of bacteria.

Furthermore, at his scales you can't monetize the fish. A possible choice of fish would be Tilapia, but at those scales it isn't worth it, but more importantly you can't cultivate those without a special license: IIRC they're considered invasive species in California. Maintaining such a license requires way more investment than what's possible at his level.

Anyhow, aquaponics are pretty awesome, but aren't yet economically viable compared to standard agriculture in most places* and there are legislative and economic issues that make it tough to kickstart. I hope Eric's work increases awareness and carves a path.

*I wonder about McMurdo and the ISS... :)

AceJohnny2: thank you. Figuring out how to build standardized aquaponics systems that are self-stabilizing (e.g. by using inexpensive sensors and Raspberry-like computers to monitor and regulate all elements), and finding cost-effective ways to deal with the regulatory issues you mention, are the kinds of challenges that ambitious entrepreneurs must overcome to be successful.

The question I would ask at this early stage is really about the odds of finding product-market fit: if a startup can figure out how to make a standard, modular, legal, self-stabilizing aquaponics unit that is easy to install and maintain, is there a sizeable market for it? I suspect the answer is yes.

You can find more info about Aquaponics here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYR9s6chrI0

http://www.aquaponics.net.au/forum/

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/

Murray Halams DVD's are a great resource for beginners, though his systems can be improved. http://www.aquaponics.net.au/product/prod105.htm

This DVD tracks an Aquaponics system that was installed over a period of 1 year http://www.aquaponics.net.au/product/prod158.htm

Unlike hydroponics this being an almost closed system makes it more efficient. You can use solar panels to run the motors.

But this system requires one to check the ph and ammonia levels of the water daily and maintain the balance of the system.

Well, it's a closed system expect for the sunlight, which is arguably the most important component of any agricultural system.

Something I found from youtubing the subject is some of the commercial farms seem to go astray from the closed-system concept which makes it most awesome...

You still have to feed the fish, so it's not really closed. But it is reasonably self-contained in combination with using vegetable waste to breed fly larvae which go on to feed the fish.

The difficult thing about aquaponics is the cyclomatic complexity (to use a software term). Basically everything feeds into everything else. At first you might think that the system is in balance, but in fact it rarely is. Plants and fish will be added and removed regularly, each agent having different nutritional needs at different stages in their lifecycle. Disease or infestation of plants or animals can be difficult to deal with, as any pesticide or herbicide will cycle through the complete system. There simply aren't any cheap off-the-shelf sensors to monitor things you care about, so you need to do regular physical checks with chemical kits.

Aquaponics is a fun, but very hard, problem to solve correctly. You can learn a lot from it, and it is a great system for people who like to learn a bit about everything.

Allow me to nitpick about physical checks with chemical kits-- I'm sure we can build a sensor for that. The potential problem I see, however, is that by the time you detect a dangerous chemical change, it's too late. Visual inspection is still important (to see that Nemo's gimpy fin is caused by an infection rather than a birth defect) until we figure out AI enough to detect certain kinds of things.

I've heard that you can add another tank between the plants and the fish where you can grow algae that feeds the fish.

There is a swiss startup doing this on a larger scale: http://urbanfarmers.ch/

They have a container farm in a box (http://urbanfarmersbox.ch/flyer/UFB_EN.pdf).

Sadly their Crowdfunding Initiative – Globe didn't get funded: http://www.indiegogo.com/HEDRON

However they are in the process if building a large roof top version in Basel: https://www.facebook.com/UrbanFarmers

I know this guy. I competed with him at a hackathon two months ago. He built of automated power tracking tools to tell you your power usage and would turn off lights and things. Took home second place. I ended up winning with my solar subsidy ipad calculator (told if you could save money in your local area if you bought an electric car and install solar panels in your home over gasoline and unsubsidized power). Was fun as hell. Pounded out a lot of code over a few beers on a weekend.

That is quite an awesome system ! I wonder how efficient this is. But it tackles the toxicity issue that exists with usual hydroponics systems.

Here is another implementation :

http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/backyard-aquaponics-diy...

What toxicity issues exist with hydroponics? I know nothing about growing plants.

When you grow plants with no soil (only neutral substrate such as clay or gravel), it is necessary to provide extra nutrients (esp. nitrates) that are hard to dispose properly. In the case of vegetables or edible plants, it is also necessary to "rinse" the system by running only water through eat before it's ready for consumption. (Disclaimer : I'm not a hydroponics specialist.)

This might be a controversial thing to say here, but I think that clandestine marijuana farmers are really heavily pushing the limits of urban agriculture.

The things you're working for when growing pot:

1) A minimal energy footprint. A giant power bill is a dead giveaway that you're running grow lamps

2) Maximum plant density -- lots of plants close together is good for both absorbing light and using space. More plants = more money.

Obviously that isn't what this person is growing, but I find pot growers to be an interesting bunch. They're ag-hackers, and they seem to be really good at it, and really good at trading information about it.

I'm interested in hydroponics in aquaponics. All the shops selling hydropics equipment, like grow lamps, have a rasta-hippie vibe to them. I wonder why...

Hydroponics is a great space for hackers, never realized how much I would enjoy growing veggies, legal or otherwise.

It's super cool but spoiler alert: just youtube aquaponics, it's not new (thank's reddit). People have been doing it even commercially for over a decade. That said I think what he says about future generations learning and getting excited about farming techniques is important and it's a really awesome concept.

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think about building one of these after first learning about it! Also thinking how to maximize produce per/sqft/unit etc..

I think the really interesting bit was the suite of sensors with automated alerts that get sent out that he was experimenting with.

In theory it could allow for this to work at very large scales with very little staffing, which seems counter-intuitive given the complexity of the setup.

Extended out a bit, and most of the very common problems could even have automated solutions (increase water, adjust ph, cycle on-off grow lamps, etc.)

I think access to cheap, small and powerful computers would probably improve and it make it turnkey. My guess is it is pretty complicated to get all the factors right. Figuring out things like why are my fish dying, why is there a disease in my lettuce, etc., can get complicated.

To build smart agriculture systems I think more needs to be known about the food chain. If you had a large inventory of the inputs and outputs for each organism then it would be possible to design miniature ecosystems which work cooperatively and minimize waste - like the fish and plants idea - while also producing whatever type of produce you want.

Yeah, that's the basic idea behind both permaculture and aquaponics: Build a tiny ecosystem that can sustain itself with as little input as possible (and like all agriculture, obviously with useful output like food as well).

Very interesting stuff. Got interested in permaculture a couple years ago, and this seems a great complement in many ways.

Obviously much more sustainable than how most people get their food. I wonder what the energy & water requirements for this sort of system are.

The land in West Oakland where Eric Maundu is trying to farm is covered with freeways, roads, light rail and parking lots so there’s not much arable land and the soil is contaminated.

There is no light rail in Oakland. BART is heavy rail.

I also assumed systems like BART were considered "light rail". Below is a definition for others who may also not know the difference.

The American Public Transit Association defines light rail and heavy rail respectively as follows:

Light Rail is a mode of transit service (also called streetcar, tramway, or trolley) operating passenger rail cars singly (or in short, usually two-car or three-car, trains) on fixed rails in right-of-way that is often separated from other traffic for part or much of the way. Light rail vehicles are typically driven electrically with power being drawn from an overhead electric line via a trolley or a pantograph; driven by an operator on board the vehicle; and may have either high platform loading or low level boarding using steps.

Heavy Rail is a mode of transit service (also called metro, subway, rapid transit, or rapid rail) operating on an electric railway with the capacity for a heavy volume of traffic. It is characterized by high speed and rapid acceleration passenger rail cars operating singly or in multi-car trains on fixed rails; separate rights-of-way from which all other vehicular and foot traffic are excluded; sophisticated signaling, and high platform loading.

Reference: http://metro-cincinnati.org/?p=1566

I really enjoy seeing how the simplicity and power of Arduino empower people. Also how objects become an active medium instead of becoming a consumed things.

On the other hand it would seem that this guy would have been empowered even without arduino. In the video he mentioned he has a background in robotics.

True but in general the Arduino community is very lowering the bar for these kind of things.

I'm very curious to see how this kind of thing scales. I've yet to see what I think are truly sustainable plans for vertical farming but I'm hoping they come soon.

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