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16.5 Aquaponic Potential or Misplaced Hope?
Contemporary aquaponic research has shown keen awareness of particular concerns raised in the Anthropocene problematic. Justifications for aquaponic research have tended to foreground the challenge of food security on a globe with an increasing human population and ever strained resource base. For instance, König et al. (2016) precisely situate aquaponics within the planetary concerns of Anthropocene discourse when they state: ‘Assuring food security in the twenty-first century within sustainable planetary boundaries requires a multi-faceted agro-ecological intensification of food production and the decoupling from unsustainable resource use’.
· Aquaponics Food Production Systems16.4 Paradigm Shift for a New Food System
To claim that Agriculture is ‘at a crossroads’ (Kiers et al. 2008) does not quite do justice to the magnitude of the situation. The gaping ‘sustainability gap’ (Fischer et al. 2007) amidst unanimous calls for sustainability are increasingly being met with common response amongst researchers: pleas for revolutionary measures and paradigm shifts. Foley et al. (2011: 5) put it quite directly: ‘The challenges facing agriculture today are unlike anything we have experienced before, and they require revolutionary approaches to solving food production and sustainability problems.
· Aquaponics Food Production Systems16.3 Getting Beyond the Green Revolution
The Anthropocene marks a step change in the relation between humans and our planet. It demands a rethink of the current modes of production that currently propel us on unsustainable trajectories. Until now, such reflexive commitments have not been required of agriscience research and development. It is worth remembering that the Green Revolution, in both its ambitions and methods, was for some time uncontroversial; agriculture was to be intensified and productivity per unit of land or labour increased (Struik 2006).
· Aquaponics Food Production Systems16.2 The Anthropocene and Agriscience
‘Today, humankind has begun to match and even exceed some of the great forces of nature […] [T]he Earth System is now in a no analogue situation, best referred to as a new era in the geological history, the Anthropocene’ (Oldfield et al. 2004: 81). The scientific proposal that the Earth has entered a new epoch—-’the Anthropocene’—-as a result of human activities was put forward at the turn of the new millennium by the chemist and Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000a).
· Aquaponics Food Production Systems16.1 Introduction
Key drivers stated for aquaponic research are the global environmental, social and economic challenges identified by supranational authorities like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) (DESA 2015) whose calls for sustainable and stable food production advance the ’need for new and improved solutions for food production and consumption’ (1) (Junge et al. 2017; Konig et al. 2016). There is growing recognition that current agricultural modes of production cause wasteful overconsumption of environmental resources, rely on increasingly scarce and expensive fossil fuel, exacerbate environmental contamination and ultimately contribute to climate change (Pearson 2007).
· Aquaponics Food Production Systems15.7 Conclusions
The goal of this research was to quantify the degree of flexibility and self-sufficiency that an aquaponics integrated microgrid can provide. In order to attain this answer, a neighbourhood of 50 households was assumed a ‘Smarthood’, with a decoupled multi-loop aquaponics facility present that is capable of providing fish and vegetables for all the 100 inhabitants of the Smarthood. The results are promising: thanks to the high degree of flexibility inherent in the aquaponic system as a result of high thermal mass, flexible pumps and adaptive lighting, the overall degree of self-sufficiency is 95.
· Aquaponics Food Production Systems15.6 Discussion
Self-Sufficiency The energy system proposed for the Smarthood concept is capable of achieving near full grid-independence through the use of the flexibility provided by the various system components. The aquaponic system, especially, has a positive Table 15.4 Flexible demand of the aquaponic system table thead tr class=“header” th Component /th th Order of magnitude /th th Flexibility /th /tr /thead tbody tr class=“odd” td rowspan=3 Pumps /td td 0.05–0.15 kWsube/sub Msup3/sup /td td rowspan=3 Not all pumps have to run continuously.
· Aquaponics Food Production Systems15.5 Results
The total electrical and thermal consumption of both the houses and the aquaponic greenhouse facility (modelled from the data in Tables 15.1 and 15.2) is shown in Table 15.3. The aquaponic greenhouse facility is responsible for 38.3% of power consumption and 51.4% of heat consumption. The power demand for an aquaponics facility integrated in a residential microgrid is therefore slightly over one-third of the total local energy demand, given that all of the residential energy and vegetable/fish production is done locally.
· Aquaponics Food Production Systems15.4 Method
A neighbourhood of 50 households was assumed a ‘Smarthood’, with a decoupled multi-loop aquaponics facility present that is capable of providing fish and vegetables for all the 100 inhabitants of the Smarthood. For the detailed modelling of the Smarthood, a hypothetical reference case of a suburban neighbourhood in Amsterdam was used, consisting of 50 households (houses) with an average household occupancy of 2 persons per household (100 persons total). In addition, one urban aquaponic facility consists of a greenhouse, aquaculture system, a UASB and a distillation unit.
· Aquaponics Food Production Systems15.3 Goal
The goal of this research is to quantify the degree of self-sufficiency and flexibility for a microgrid integrated with a decoupled multi-loop aquaponics system.
· Aquaponics Food Production Systems