Sustainable Urban Farming: Permaponics

VIFarms.com

SAVEfarms.org

In the City, off the Grid

• Sustainable Urban Farming: Permaponics • Vertically Integrated Farms developed the term “Permaponics”, an Aquaponic approach to

Permaculture with a focus on urban sustainability and vitality. In the combination of these farming principals, they found answers to the ultimate sustainable urban farming techniques, designed specifically for urban environment, yet could be practiced anywhere. This class will cover:

• · Definition and discussion of sustainability: Sustainability as a way of life. The art of relationships in the global ecosystem.

• · Agriculture: What happened to get us where we are now, what’s wrong, and ideas for fixing the situation.

• · Overview of permaculture techniques and food forestry. • · Urban farming: The art and science of growing soil (composting), crops and livestock in an

intensive urban, suburban, or any environment. • · Aquaponics: Growing plants, mushrooms, and fish in closed recirculating water systems. • · Intensive small scale Aquaculture techniques, in the context of Aquaponics. • · Vertical gardening, including home based techniques for getting the most out of limited

space and light. • · Cultivating mushrooms on urban trash like coffee ground and cardboard, the gourmet

varieties.

• Show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg&feature=share There is no tomorrow

• Fri, Sep 28 • 6 - 8 pm • Sat, Sep 29 • 9 - 11am • 2 sessions • $xxx • NCC 286-01 • SRC

Independent Survivalists

• Urban farming- We are all about food + 1 standard deviation, includes:

• Sustainable Housing

• Transportation

• Education

• Energy

Sustainability - the capacity to endure.

• Way of existing by using energy that is naturally occurring, food and natural resources that are abundant not at the expense of destruction of life on Earth.

• Pre-petroleum era and post-petroleum future. Short gap of massive global consumerism. (1859 Drake well- about 2042).

• On a planet where 20% of the population consumes 80% of the natural resources, a sustainable development cannot be possible for this 20%

• Society is not sustainable, learn how to be sustainable and off-the -grid independent yourself because you will need it soon

Modern agricultural methods

• Based on monocultures

• Excessive use of pesticides, herbicides which are in our food and drinking water.

• Is not sustainable, uses increasing amounts of non-renewable resources (water, petroleum)

• Loosing humus without restoring, using artificial fertilizers to feed plants)

• Big companies are not interested in change due to large profits and market controls.

Granada, Spain. There is very little surface soil on the coast, it is composed mostly of sand and gravel. The plants are fed with chemicals delivered through drip irrigation as the soil is too poor to support any growth. The greenhouses are plagued with insects and fungus which thrive in the enclosed, hot humidity. The farmers spray pesticides

and fungicides in great clouds when the humidity is at its peak. Our little terrier’s eyes used to weep constantly. Many times we were forced to flee the mornings so that we

could breathe. Farmers dumping cucumber crop to protest price of 0.03 pence per kilo.

However in the UK the supermarket shelves were still full of cucumbers bought from another source and selling for 67 times the price they offered. Tesco posted a profit of £6,000 per minute

in October 2010. source: cucumber suicide.

• According to the UN Environment Program (UNEP) some 60 percent of the world’s ecosystems have been degraded over the past 50 years.

• According to UNEP, ¼ of the planet’s land is threatened by desertification.

• With increasingly scarce land and water resources expected in the coming decades, as well as rising demand for food, farmers will need to find ways to produce more on the world’s remaining arable land. Without alternatives, expansion of agriculture can lead to deforestation and loss of other vital ecosystems that millions of people rely on for their livelihoods.

• Few innovative farmers are producing more food by using agriculture to rebuild ecosystems and turn degraded land into productive farms -Permaculture.

Permaculture- permanent culture, growing food intensely and sustainably.

• Permaculture is the science that studies the relationships of all components of nature (including ourselves) and their relationships.

• Aquaponics- taken from one of the Nature’s re-circulating systems.

• Food Forests.

• Resilience, abundance, and ecological regeneration

• Grow food, build soil, secure fresh water, harvest the sun, and harmonize with natural communities

Permaculture Ethics • By Bill Mollison and VIFarms • Think about the long-term consequences of your actions. • Avoid introduction of potentially invasive species. • Cultivate the smallest possible land area, anywhere you can. Plan for small-scale, energy-

efficient intensive systems rather than large-scale energy-consuming systems. • Be diverse and polycultural (opposite to monocultural). This provides stability and helps to be

ready for change, environmental or social. • Use low-energy environmental(solar, wind, water, geothermal) and biological (plant, animal)

systems to conserve and generate energy. example: heating water with compost pile in winter, heating greenhouses with compost pile and chicken coop inside. use the natural energy of physics to your advantage- gravity, wind cycles, solar and lunar cycles.

• Use everything at it optimum level and recycle all wastes. reuse things. Avoid using plastics. • Bring food growing back to the cities where it always has been in sustainable societies • Assist people to be self-reliant and promote community responsibility. • Work where it counts (plant a tree where it will survive, assist people who want to learn) • See solutions, not problems. • Care for the earth and all living and non-living creatures- harmless activities, active

conservation, ethical and frugal use of resources. There is intrinsic worth in every living and non-living thing of nature. Treat yourself, people and nature with great care.

Permaculture factors

• Walk the landform, observe topography. Shady/ sunny spots.

• Aspect of hills: gentle is best for summer time, steep- for winter sun.

• Cliffy/rocky spots.

• Create microclimates within a climate (suntraps)

• Vegetation provides information about soil fertility, moisture, microclimate.

• Wind patterns

• Large water masses- thermo storage.

• Water-reflected sun on steep hills.

• Elevation- temperature drops 10 degrees every 1000 meters.

• Consider water retention and drainage of the soil.

• Any animals besides people and dogs?

• Imagine what it is like to be a Native American.

• Love your Land

Change yourself, change the World. • Modern lifestyles use too many

natural resources, destroying ecosystems, increasing social inequality, creating urban heat islands, and causing climate change.

• Lifestyle of average US citizen equivalent to having 7 slaves.

• Instead of waiting for laws to change, It is may be best to build your own sustainable dwelling with like - minded members of community (Transition towns).

• Address resource extraction and consumption, energy production, and waste disposal by mimicking Nature.

• Use local resources to meet local needs.

• Develop ‘resilience.’ -ability of an individual or community to withstand societal or ecological shocks –that can be expected in the future, sooner rather than later.

Recycling animal and human dung is the key to sustainable farming

• If we recycle our own waste products, fertilizer production would automatically keep up with population growth.

• Source: lowtech magazine

Renewable energy

• Germany: leader in green technology

• Renewables now account for 25 % of energy production, up from 21 % last year

• Wind energy was the largest contributor of green power, accounting for 9.2 percent of all energy output.

• Biomass, or material acquired from living organisms, accounted for 5.7 % and Solar technology for 5.3 %.

• Germany aims to derive 35 % of its total energy needs from renewable sources by 2035.

• “The use of solar energy has not been opened up because oil industry doesn't own the sun.- Ralf Nader

• Source: Reuters

About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from hydroelectricity. New renewables (small hydro, modern biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, and biofuels) accounted for another 3% and are growing very rapidly.

Renewables in farming • Biofuels: capturing

methane gas from manure

• Heat exchange from composting piles

• Geothermal food storage

• Jean Pain (1930–1981) - a compost-based bioenergy system that produced 100% of his energy needs.

What drives economies: Business structure

• S, C corps, LLC, - perusing profit by law, not concern with people or environment.

• New in NY state B-corps- for 3Ps: people, planet, profit.

• Not-for profit orgs.

• Re-allocating money to sustainable projects.

Sun Management: Passive Solar

• Plants of trellis for protection.

• Suntraps from rocks, trees (white birch, light shiny foliage)

• Reflecting water for collection of heat and light.

Wind Management • Grow belt of trees or

shrubs to shield house or garden from persistent winds.

• Reflective qualities of tree foliage help to create sun traps and warmer microclimates.

• Collection of trees/shrubs provide thermo mass, holds moisture and hosts wild birds for pest control.

Cold air drainage

Soil Management

• Quality of soil is not an obstacle in Permaculture because you grow your own. Any the most damaged site could be turned in a garden – examples of Will Allen, Sepp Holzer and Fukuoma-san.

• In Permaponics building soil is enhanced with Fish Juice

• On the large scale, green manure plants like lupines, clover, peas, beans, vetch, leguminous trees help to fix nitrogen, if mulched before they go to seed.

• Acidic soils with low pH - grow plants that thrive on such soils like Blueberries or bring pH to close to neutral by adding compost, grazing chickens or adding bird manure, using Hugelcultur technique. In case of alkaline soils plus use animal manure, urine.

• Worms neutralizing pH and help adding nutrients like Ca by excreting CaC (calcium carbonate). Comphrey plants are accumulators of Ca and help to raise pH, also ash.

• Wet soils are usually more acidic, arid- more alkaline (pH8-10) which is caused by calcium, magnesium or alkaline salts accumulation.

• In poor, compacted soils plant deep-rooted plants like chicory, Lucerne, daikon radish, potatoes, Jerusalem artichoke and other tubers will aerate the soil and add a lot of nutrients, plus you can harvest some for yourself. Pigs like tubers and you can run few pigs on the area to add manure and for further soil loosening.

• Prevent erosion by covering bare soil with local fast-growing plants (weeds). If slopes more than 15 degrees steep, make terraces, which will also help with water management.

• Shape the earth, making raised and lower levels to aid water retention and drainage.

• Nitrogen N (in urine, roots and leaves of acacia, legumes, wool) • Phosphorus P (in bird and animal manure, fish bones) • Potash K (Comphrey leaves, wood ash) • Trace Minerals

Building soil and garden on weedy plot • Plant trees and shrubs • Sprinkle chicken manure and some

dolomite to reduce acidity. • Few buckets of kitchen scraps or local

supermarket produce rejects, for worms. • Cover the area with wet cardboard found

near local supermarket, lay on top of weeds to suppress them.

• Add mycelium of oyster mushrooms between 2-3 layers of cardboard to facilitate soil creation and for mushroom crop.

• Leave valuable plants poking out. Place tubers (potatoes) and large seeds (beans, peas, nasturtiums) on the bottom of this layer by making holes.

• Add 10 cm of horse stable straw, poultry manure sawdust, old leaves.

• Top with 10 cm of dry straw, bark, chips or sawdust. Water a lot.

• Plant seedlings in under-cardboard layer by making holes.

• Building soil:

• 2nd year the soil is revolutionized, with worms and soil bacteria. Kitchen scraps disappear over night, dead fish- few days, old jeans –few weeks.

• No need to rest the soil or rotate crops, only occasional re-planting mixing various spices.

• Diversity of plants act as hosts to variety of insects, frogs, birds and is a major factor in pest control.

• If some strong weeds come back, push them down to mulch and cover with more wet cardboard/ newspaper and sawdust.

Fact: bare ground cools down 20% with shade arrival.

If you have a lawn, turn it into garden.

• The American Lawn uses more resources than any other agricultural industry in the world.

• It uses more phosphates than India, and adds more poisons than any agriculture.

• If we put the same effort, money, fuel into reforestation, we can reforest an entire continent.

• A house with 2 cars, a dog and a lawn uses more energy than village of 2000 Africans.

To turn part of the lawn into Garden

• Make a cross-cut of any size in a lawn and gently roll grass apart.

• Add compost mixed with kitchen scraps.

• Plant seedlings into the compost and place grass back around new seedlings.

• Sow clover seeds to interplant with grass-for weed control and nitrogen fixing.

• Grow food using Permaponics principles in small urban areas in community gardens, terrace, windows, public parks or any public space.

• Vertical gardens-trellis on verandas, chain-link gardens outdoors.

• Use fish water for your gardens (open aquaponics) to add nutrients

• Protect young garden until it is established by any kind of creative fencing.

Where it all begins

A better way to compost

• Mushrooms are essential element of soil growing and urban food production.

• Add the mushroom patches to your vertical garden, vegetation will provide the shade.

• This left-alone mushroom patch yielded 2-3 lbs of mushrooms from 2 medium-sized cardboard boxes, while turning them in rich soil.

• Mushrooms will self-reseed.

• Trick: don’t miss the fruiting!

• Skunks like mushrooms too.

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Growing mushrooms in the City

• NYC recycles only 50% of 2100 tons of paper a day. That is, 1050 tons of paper a day becomes a waste.

• Grow expensive food on free spent coffee grounds or paper waste.

• Grow mushrooms under your bed or in the basement, together with fish (they both need warmth and dim lights)

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Directions to growing mushrooms indoor.

• You will need: • -Cardboard. Do not use cardboard made in China, some of it may contain harmful

chemicals, including lead in the ink. • 3-5 gallon plastic bag or a bin • -2% Peroxide solution to disinfect the cardboard

- Mushroom spawn (available here or via many other suppliers) -Water, oxygen, indirect light. A complete lack of light causes Oysters to malform into coral-like structures. Soak cardboard in 2% Peroxide solution for 30 min; rinse with fresh water. Place the cardboard in your container of choice and mix with the spawn. To ensure successful, use at least 20% of spawn. Close the container loosely with a lead to ensure oxygen delivery. If using a plastic bag, punch small holes. Incubate a patch for 2-3 months at a room temperature, see white mycelium take over the cardboard, make sure it stay moist. When the cardboard is fully colonized, soak the container in cold water, fully submerged, for 24 hrs. Take out, spray few times a day with water and watch mushrooms pop. Harvest while caps are still concave.

Spore-Mass Inoculation

Collects spores by making spore prints or make a spore-mass slurry. Choose mature mushrooms ( buy at store or use once you have grown before) and submerge them in 5 gallon bucket of water. Adding a couple grams of salt will inhibit growth of bacteria yet will not harm spores. Adding 50 milliliters of molasses will stimulate spores into germination. After 4 hours of soaking remove mushrooms from the bucket- after mushroomed released tens of thousands of spores. Allow the broth to sit for 24-48 hrs at 50-80F (10-26C). The slurry can be expended by a factor of 10 in 48 hrs. Prepare cardboard patch outdoor as described above. Pour the slurry in between the cardboard sheets. Cover with debris and try not to miss the fruiting. • Source: Mycelium Running, Paul Stamets

Food Forest

Initiative: turning your public park into a food forest

• Multi-layered semi-wild forest made of layers of edible plants, grown with minimum interference.

• Nut trees • Fruit trees • Berry bushes, vines • Herbs and vegetables • Mushrooms

• Create enough edges. Time

staking- Starting new crop before old is harvested, like Fukuoka. Graze pigs and chickens like Holzer.

Ocean management

• Ocean covers 72% of Earth • One person eats 36lbs of seafood a year • Ocean becomes increasingly : warmer, acidic, oxygen

deprived, polluted. • Pacific ocean garbage patch- 3.5 mill tons of garbage, area

twice of US • In US 51 mill bottles used yearly, only 1 in 5 recycled. • Fish eats plastic and other garbage, we eat fish. • Plastic in the oceans will not breakdown for 600 years • 80% of things thrown in US are recyclable, only 28% are

recycled. • Source: mastersdegree.net

Permaculture Water Management

• use gravity to direct water to sites of use • make landscape water traps, - terraces, heals

and slopes, swales. • swales are long excavations intended to store

water in the underlying soils. grow plants that require more water in these specific areas. trees must be planted on the sides of terraces and swales to prevent erosion, to collect silt and build up humus.

• building small dams if have water source for cattle and irrigation, build roads on top of dams, plant trees.

• if you store water in tanks, add mosquito larvae-eating fish or screens and cover the tanks. growing algae filters water.

• more at Sepp Holzer

The best stuff on

Earth

• Re-circulating system when fish by-products nourish plants and plants filter water for fish.

• Uses low amounts of water, wastes are managed by plants

• Growing food intensively

• 1lbs/fish for 5 gallon of water

• 1 fish tank can nourish 1 to 5 grow beds

Aquaponics- sustainable way to grow fish and veggies

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Nitrification Cycle, It’s mostly Archaea, the ancient micro-organism To maintain pH: add oyster shells!

Designer Aquaponic systems, by Rick Stillwagon.

Our educational set up at THEPOINT.org, using AquaBundance system by TheAquaponicSource.com

Friendly Aquaponics, Hawaii , Tim and Susanne offer commercial and home scale building plans

Deep water method.

Install fish tanks, trench for plumbing, install pumps, blowers, air stones, and assemble troughs.

Cost: 5.37/sq.ft

Buy your fish, grow seedlings

Practical Aquaponics, TotePonics with Murray Hallam, Australia

• Re-Using 275 gallon IBS totes to build Aquaponics systems.

• Cut in 2 or 3 parts to create fish tank and a grow bed

• Expended clay/shell/ gravel as media

Barrelponics

• Second hand plastic drums and other similar equipment are commonly used by people to build aquaponic systems.

• From fastonline.org

Farmery, by Ben Green, N. Carolina: growing fish, greens, mushrooms aquaponically using 4 shipping containers. Cost: 25,000

per prototype, space: 55” x 55”. An urban farm and shop.

Aquaponic polyculture: tilapia, crawfish and clams

• Australian red claw crayfish excrete higher amounts of phosphorus, advantage with flowering and fruiting plants.

• Clams which are filter feeders help clarify the water and further breakdown fish poop.

• Challenge: the more complicated the system, the less stable it is in a non-natural environment

• Separate fish and red claw

Preserving food in Geo-thermal storage- a whole in a ground.

• Do not need refrigeration, temperature remains stable 56F during summer or winter months, fluctuating only few degrees and preventing freezing and spoilage.

• Preserved foods can last 2-3 years, potatoes, root vegetables-over winter. Grow mushrooms.

• Use your existing basement or, apartment dwellers, dig a hobbit whole in the ground.

• The entire off-grid sustainable hobbit house can be built for $5k

• Pogreb http://sam-stroy.info/pogreb.htm

Housing: urban planning and transport • The sustainable city block can

house up to 1,000 people, and in addition to its strong community aspects it is a zero carbon and structure that wastes no water. On-site power from solar panels will meet the energy demands of the community, while waste and rain water will be collected for use in landscape irrigation.

• Work out of home minimizes commute

Co-Op Canyon: Ecotopia Inspired by Anasazi Cliff Dwellings

Machu Picchu City

• The cultural life of this self-contained city is focused internally yet the structural forms of the rising buildings and the box-hedged terraces that ring them speak to and have views out on the surrounding natural landscapes, tying this new urban design to existing environmental formations.

More like it

• More amazing than the trash-strewn architecture and garbage-stuffed city streets is the strange fact that this place is fully occupied and abuzz with activity. People live, work, eat and sleep within this object graveyard outside the city center of Cairo, Egypt. Spaces not occupied by people are given over to livestock (fed with trash scraps) and guerrilla urban gardens.

Garbage City • Officially known as Manshiyat Naser, this district has shops and apartments like any other, but its residents earn their keep by specializing in collecting, sorting and recycling specific types of trashed materials. A group of children can be found sifting for plastic bottles while an organized team of women scours the remnants for cans or glass. Other items are burned locally as fuel.

• Source: http://dornob.com/

Passive Solar City, Ralph Knowles

• Avoid monoculture buildings, that look the same regardless of climate.

• Shapes are called by variety of climates, coming back to historical ancient designs.

• Solar access to an individual building is determined by only four factors: latitude (the distance north or south from the equator), slope, building shape and orientation.

• Solar access to a city (or any other built-up environment) is determined by seven factors: the four just mentioned, plus the height of the buildings, the width of the streets, and the orientation of the streets

Buildings within the solar envelope do not overshadow neighboring buildings during critical energy-receiving periods of the day and the year

Transportation If we want more energy efficient

cars, the we need not more, but less technology

• Firewood in the fuel tank Wood gas cars are surprisingly efficient and ecological alternative to their petrol cousins, whilst their range is comparable to that of electric cars.

• The Citroen 2CV: cleantech from the 1940s In spite of all the high-tech that has been squeezed into cars since then, the 2CV from 1949 is still more energy-efficient than the smallest model of the French car designer today. 8 horsepower, 40 mph

• Source: lowtech magazine

• Converting diesel cars into a yellow grease cars

• Live locally