Just been to the Ekka and there are some great aquaponic systems on display – they grow about 40 fish over a year to table-ready size and at the same time filter the fish tank water through a hydroponic vege garden to feed the veges. I got the brochures for [url=http://www.aquaponics.net.au]Aquaponics Made Easy[/url] – not local – they are down in North Maclean. The system costs about$1600 and they said the power to run it for a year is about $80 and about $35-$40 a year for fish food. Best place for it is in the sun. The fish used are jade perch and silver perch.
The cows were terrific. Couldn’t help wishing we could bring all the manure home for the garden.
A man John Feehan from the ACT (mcnamara@internode.on.net) was selling dung beetles in bulk. They are for farmers but they are able to break up really hard compacted earth and turn it into soil burying dung. He’s tried to interest local councils in a batch for a whole suburb which once released in the suburb would take on the systematic task of burying dog poo in back yards at the same time fertilising the soil with phosphorus. About $300 for a suburb. Thought we might be interested one day downt he track so got a brochure.
Another interesting one was a system growing trays of barley into thick green sprouted barley over six days as a very efficient fodder system for feeding livestock such as goats cows horses etc very cheaply and nutritiously ([url=http://www.foddersolutions.org]Fodder Solution[/url]s) . A unit to feed 3 horses costs about $6900. They air condition it to keep it at above 20 degrees but this is not so important in SEQ where we are about that anyway. The barley seeds are sprayed every 2 hours and need 10-12 hours of sunlight. It costs about $1.20/day to feed a horse using it. It would be a way to grow lots of fodder in very small spaces in backyards if we eventually wanted to be able to have livestock in the suburbs like they do in Rome (40% of urban Rome is farms and has been ever since they had to feed themselves within the city when the Huns attacked them).
Another system that helps stop food being wasted is a system of ziplock plastic bags which have small valves in and come with a pump to pump out the air and make a vacuum. (inthekitchen@westnet.com.au).
None of these systems have a local provider here in The Grove but they could be useful for us as we learn more about local food production.