Aquaponic farming takes root in urban food desert
Today, inside a once-forsaken Chicago South Side shoe factory warehouse, the grow lights are giving life to a promising experiment in urban aquatic farming — not only of vegetables and herbs (the legal variety), but also fish.
Hundreds of fish swarm and fight for food in tanks surrounded by beds of basil, rainbow chard, and mint. The scene may hold the key to creating a year-round source of fresh, local food in Chicago.
The warehouse is Chicago State University’s Aquaponics Facility, the first urban aquaponics farm in Chicago. The facility may be the first step in spurring a whole new type of urban farming in the city.
“Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture, which is the raising of fish, and hydroponics, which is the raising of plants using water. The system is a closed system in that the water from the fish which is enriched by their waste is actually used to fertilize the plants,” said Dr. Alison Gise-Johnson, director of outreach for the Aquaponics Facilty.
Aquaponics is being seized by urban agriculture advocates as a way to bring fresh food into inner city neighborhoods and reduce the environmental impact of importing food to cities.
“We forget that everyone can’t go to a big box store to shop for fresh vegetables, or that when we do buy there, our food is probably coming from Chile”, said Marvelle Manga, an aquaponic farm advocate who believes the urban farm could help to build sustainable inner-city communities.
“The power of it is that many parts of the Chicago have abandoned warehouse buildings. The land may have been contaminated, but because aquaponic systems don’t need soil to produce crops, this is a vailbe solution. The urban farm can grow food year-round, and yields can be from 2-10 times higher than traditionally farmed land.
But for now, aquaponics may remain just an experiment in Chicago, since zoning laws prevent fish from being raised to sell commercially within city limits. Currently, CSU’s Aquaponic Facility is technically a research farm. New establishments seeking to run aquaponics systems for profit face significant hurdles.
Will Allen, of Growing Power, a Milwaukee based organization believes that if his facility proves to be profitable, there’s no reason why it can’t be done on a larger scale.
“This will be a key step in growing the good food revolution, as I call it. To be able to have this facility, it becomes more than just talk. We’re taking a step forward instead of just talking about it, because people have been talking about this for a long time,” said Allen.
“I think these buildings have to be multi-use to cash flow them. So we’re going to figure out how to cash flow the building and extrapolate that say into a 50-story structure, then people will have a baseline of what it costs to run one of these facilities,” said Allen.
Growing Power worked with the city of Milwaukee in order to obtain the proper zoning, though city officials willingly approved the proposal. Allen said that the facility will be a great asset to the neighborhood.
“Our city leaders did it, so why not do it. It’s going to enhance the neighborhood and bring a lot of pride to the neighborhood,” said Allen.
“This is a new way of farming, a new industry that we’re creating and it’s exciting because everybody's talking about it all over the country and all over the world,” he said. “We’re losing our rural ag land, so farming in the city closer to where most of the populations are moving around the world makes a lot of sense.
