Environmentally, aquaponics can help solve the problems of food production in areas where unpolluted water is scarce. Using, on average, 90% less water than traditional soil agriculture, aquaponics can allow a community to produce far more, and far more nutritious food than they could otherwise manage. For issues of global poverty and malnutrition, aquaponics presents an opportunity for underdeveloped and remote communities to produce plentiful, healthy supplies of vegetables, fruit, and fish. In locations where protein is often difficult to come by on a regular basis, this could be life changing, mitigating many of the damaging effects of chronic malnutrition on a community-wide basis. Closer to home, the ability to produce fresh produce and fish literally just down the street offers an opportunity to eliminate the problem of food deserts, where lower income neighborhoods simply don’t have regular access to nutritious fresh foods. Aquaponic farms can be set up in spaces as large as unused warehouses, as small as the alley behind the local repair shop, or as unlikely as atop the roof of the community Boys and Girls Club.
Aquaponics can also benefit the environment. Modern soil-based agriculture uses approximately 70% of all water produced in the US, most of which is lost to evaporation. As sources of unpolluted water literally dry up, this profligate use of resources has become unsustainable. In contrast, aquaponics is nearly a closed system, losing only the water contained in harvested produce. In addition to using trillions of gallons of water every year, industrial agricultural techniques produce runoff that contain excess fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and other chemicals that, in turn, flow into our lakes and rivers, and seep into our groundwater. Aside from keeping the growing system closed, with no outflow to local waterways, aquaponics permits the provision of both protein and fresh produce without the use of any sort of chemical - no chemical fertilizers, no pesticides or herbicides, and local production also means an enormous reduction in the use of fossil fuels, carbon emissions, and other pollutants related to transporting a product such as lettuce 3000 miles across the country.
