5 ms·
I love the idea of hydro/aquaponics and built a system as a student more than a decade ago. It’s a fun project. But as a form of agriculture it’s a spectacular
by NoLinkToMe 2mo ago
I love the idea of hydro/aquaponics and built a system as a student more than a decade ago. It’s a fun project.
But as a form of agriculture it’s a spectacularly bad idea at home.
This setup is about 1 square meter of NYC space, that’s about $18k. Meanwhile agricultural land goes for about $2/m2, or 9000x less. Then you spend $700 in parts to set up the 1 square meter, even if you put the system on cheap rural Kentucky land. Then you pay $170 a year to power the system for again, 1 square meter.
Meanwhile the 1 square meter produces like less than $100 in annual produce.
Green house farms like in the Netherlands have perfected this growing method and it’s quite effective. Home food production is a joke by comparison just like home anything production of a commodity product.
So fun DIY projects but as a serious way to grow food it’s terrible, not economical or sustainable. I tore down my project the same year I built it, taught me a lot but made no sense to continue.
- Gigachad 2mo agoNo one is reading this thinking it’s going to replace industrial farming. It’s just fun
- phoghed 2mo ago> no one reading this So probably 99% of the users are clicking directly to the comments and upvoting the inane GP comment to the top, and the “no one reading this” is actually almost no one. The article itself is clearly just a hobby learning fun project.
- hooverd 2mo agoNo one reading it /here/. People pitch this stuff all the time/
- tengbretson 2mo agoYeah. Just think about how much smaller of an apartment they could be living in.
- keiferski 2mo agoBy this logic, doing anything yourself is inefficient and a waste of time. However, I think that by reducing it purely to a monetary number, you are not measuring things correctly. Part of the output of doing DIY things is the knowledge, experience, and fun that comes from doing it. If you insist on putting a dollar sign on that, I’m sure it ends up being much more equal.
- gus_massa 2mo agoCan I agree with both? One one hand it's a fun DIY project for some people. On the other hand, every other year somone rediscover vertical farming that makes no sense except for very niche products.
- NoLinkToMe 2mo agoI think you missed the part where I said I built the same system and enjoyed it and learned a lot from it.
- slfnflctd 2mo agoYep. I initially looked into it as a potential avenue for sustainably producing some of my own food, but the math absolutely did not make sense. Growing a bunch of potatoes in a barrel would be a lot more bang for your buck with that goal in mind. To really optimize costs and labor, though, as you say, you need a greenhouse and/or a big old field, just like always. There are no small-scale shortcuts. Not yet, anyway. It makes me a bit sad that even with modern tech we haven't really made it much easier for people to produce their own food. But it's a reminder that our food production requires large scale collaboration and cooperation. Maybe that's a good thing.
- coffeebeqn 2mo agoThere are a lot of cool growing technologies but it’s really hard to beat the sun and rain and soil on cost. Once you go inside you have to provide the medium, the energy via lamps, watering system and all the micro and macro nutrients. Gets more expensive naturally
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- dandaka 2mo agoWhy are people obsessed with idea of "produce their own X"? When we learned to specialize, we have achieved low cost, scale and sophistication.
- vasco 2mo agoThe idea of self sufficiency either from individualism or associated with a sense of "being prepared" is enticing. But growing something yourself is also cool in itself. Watching a plant grow, eating the tomato you grew tastes better than the one you bought. If seen as a hobby it isn't more pointless than 3d printing dragons.
- Freedom2 2mo agoI think the problem is that a lot of soil here in the US isn't up to the quality of other countries. It may be tastier and healthier to eat imported tomatoes than ones that we even grow ourselves.
- dalbasal 2mo agoSo... This is more comparable to a guppy tank than a farm. Generally, yes you are right. Home farming (eg vegetable gardening) generally isn't economical. That doesn't mean it's not valuable. Besides being fun... I do think home gardening some resilience to the food system. Aquaponics is, in general, not really a viable commercial method. Or rather, the plants are just a filter for the pinds...not a true secondary product. Still... aquaponics is fun.
- dansmith1919 2mo agoNobody is arguing this will replace farming, nobody disagrees with you. The point is that it's fun and you learn something.
- NoLinkToMe 2mo agoYou have no clue about the armies of people online who think hydroponic home farms will be a serious and significant source of food then.
- RobRivera 2mo agoIn new york city, the value is managing your sanity
- ryukoposting 2mo agoWho cares? When you buy a couch, are you thinking "will this couch offset the value of the square footage it occupies" or "will this couch be comfortable and match my décor?" I'm glad someone is doing something fun in their home.
- marcosdumay 2mo agoYes, when you decide to buy a couch it's because you looked if it's the best use of the space you can do.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- mock-possum 2mo ago[flagged]
- ryukoposting 2mo agoI, too, bought a couch I could afford. It was new, but it was a cheap one. It's blue. When I bought a couch, I had a budget. What I didn't do was walk into the store and ask myself how this couch is going to pay for the square footage it occupies. It won't. It can't, that's not the point of a couch. By the logic in the top comment, nobody should own a couch because it doesn't generate money that would offset the cost of the space it occupies. That's my issue with the top comment. Nowhere in the OP is there a suggestion that they are doing it with the intention of saving (or earning) money. Nobody, no matter what their means, buys a couch because they think it will behoove them financially to do so. OP made an aquaponics thing because they wanted to. I bought a couch to sit on it. God forbid. And on that note, buying something cost-optimized to your space is itself a mark of privilege. My first couch was the nearest free one to my home, since I didn't have a car. It was much too big for the space I put it in. But it's what I could afford, which was nothing.
- eptcyka 2mo ago
- blanched 2mo agoPeople seem to think you’re attacking the article. I read the article but know nothing about aquaponics otherwise, and I was wondering why we don’t see it used more. So I appreciate you sharing your knowledge on the subject.
- j45 2mo agoIt's less about the square foot economics for at-home, and quite often the time to travel between growing space and home, if in the case of an apartment, it was somewhere else.