The Plan
When your plans don’t work you need to take the time to reassess, develop a new plan and then move forward again.
We are in the process of doing just that. A key tool in that plan is going to be developing support through the Patreon platform. Stay tuned as we update the strategy and layout the plan. For now though check out what has been happening to us by looking at the posts we have made on Patreon.
1. Secure suitable land
There are a number of ways that we can do this.
We are currently:
- talking with a number of potential land owners about the terms of a long term lease;
- talking with an investor about the possibility of them purchasing land for Fish Farmers;
- promoting another project called Hedgerow Farm which could provide us with a long term lease.
All of these options are currently being negotiated. Hedgerow Farm is the most exciting but also the most complicated. That project has secured the investors and capital it needs to proceed. Unfortunately it doesn’t have enough customer support as yet. Further details can be found on the Hedgerow Farm website.
2. Secure investment funds
We have strong interest from a number of significant investors with whom we are currently negotiating.
We also have substantial support from friends and family. If negotiations with the major investors stall we aim to begin with the funds we have already secured.
We are currently seeking $650k to build the first phase of a 1ha system. This system will successively expanded over six years until it reaches 1ha. Further construction will be funded internally.
If we successfully raise $650k in the next few months we may still be open to further investment to bring forward the construction schedule. Getting the system up to a scale of 1ha as soon as possible has many advantages.
What we need
- Secure site on which to build the next system;
- Seed capital totaling $650k;
Extras
- Mushroom grower to co-locate with the greenhouse;
- Expressions of interest from potential employees and collaborators;
- Aspiring farmers to join us on Hedgerow Farm;
- Customers for whom we could produce a specialty product.
Hi have just come across your project – find it very interesting! Like the idea of using ‘same drop of water 3 times’! You’re right about cost of land in the area – wondering where will the water come from? Couple of ideas – would the water from the fish be available to take off the farm to fertilise crops – we have a small apple and perry orchard as well as few other nut trees which would benefit from the fertilised water. Also for the land what conditions are you looking for eg flat/hilly, north facing?
May be able to assist with help in form of technology based, will keep watching for progress. I’m in Scotsburn so not too far away.
Good luck Phil
For the fish and hydroponic areas has to be pretty flat otherwise earthworks get expensive.
Hi, I am very interested in your project and wondered if you had thought of processing your fish on site and utilizing the byproduct (guts, scales and bones) into a fertilizer for use by others on your property. This would value add to the fish production side with, for example, smoked fillets were produced in house. Up to two thirds of the fish weight I understand is not consumed and would need to be dealt with somehow. Fish emulsion or something similar is a very good organic fertilizer ( NPK of around 4-2-2). On site supply of fertilizer would lower costs for other siteholders and reduce carbon outputs for the transport of fertilizer.
Certainly planning to.
What I’d rather be doing though is turning the fish wastes into stock feed. There are a couple of regulatory hoops to jump through but I plan to process the fish waste and some of our onsite horticulture waste via Black Soldier flies. We can then feed them to chickens. What would be even better would be to take back food waste from our hospitality customers as well.
Like I said need to satisfy a bunch of regulations.
Oh and also need a chicken farmer to join us.
All sounds very good so far …. But what will you be feeding the fish ?… Turning fish waste into stock feed as mentioned above is concerning… Maybe , going all organic will get some serious interest … But feeding animals by product of animals… and feeding fish the mass produced pellets full of growth hormones etc … Thats just adding to the whole real issue we have .. Which is over consumption of food…. By creating more food with less water is not really solving the issue at hand. The issue is educating people on how to eat properly , organically to the best of our ability and that alone will reduce water consumption , energy etc… Please don’t enter into a mass producing food supply of chemical laced fish, veg and meat…. Our health system is crippling because of it .
Some good points but also some misconceptions.
First of all its standard practice to take fish processing waste and recycle that into fish food. There are no diseases that are a concern from this practice. Which is of course why the feed manufacturers are allowed to do it. It is also a practice that helps farmed fish be more sustainable because it lessons the need for wild caught fish to be added to the fish food. Logically there is no real difference between adding fish meal sourced from wild caught fish (fish waste from your fish monger) or from farmed fish.
Second: We can’t send our fish waste to the feed manufactures to be used to produce more fish food because there is basically only two, one in QLD and one in Tas, and its just not feasible. So instead by feeding the waste fish to soldier flies and then feeding the solider fly maggots to chooks. This is a perfectly safe practice.
Third: The pellets we will be using don’t have ANY growth hormones or pharmaceuticals added to them. We do have an organic producer of fish food lined up but before we can use their food we have to be able to order 20t at a time.
Fourth: The issue we are tackling is the current and future environmental footprint of the agricultural industry. Unless we can offer farmers alternatives to feedlots, factory farms and hydroponics they will use those methods of food production to produce food. While reducing food waste and consumption is a worthy goal it is not within our power to do much about it. Once we have established ourselves we can re look at that but for now we need to demonstrate how we can produce more food with less environmental impact but more profits. Unfortunately the way our society works is you have to show people the money to get them to change.
Great idea, there’s a company in Port Stephens NSW that has been running a aquaponics system for years. They grow lettuce in the waste water. However they still had to add additional nutrients to the water for successfully have a commercial crop. Have you started small scales trials yet to see what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes the waste water will have high salt loads when fish health treatments are conducted.
Very dry counties like Israel have been using multi use systems for a number of years. So good luck.
I know the farm you are referring to in NSW. There system is a run to waste system which is one of the biggest reasons why they have to add additional chemical fertilizers, they do have some water savings and a some what reduced environmental foot print. Their system would be roughly akin to the savings possible where integrating aquaculture with irrigation.
We have been running trial systems for close to 10 years and have a very good idea of what crops work with our methods and an even better idea of what doesn’t LOL