A food security solution
for the development of sustainable communities.
.jpg)
AQUAPONICS
_JPG.jpg)
In partnership with experts in the field of aquaponics and terraponics, the Andrew J. Young Foundation is working to establish sustainable agriculture programs in a variety of locations in the United States, Africa, and around the world.
Aquaponics is a closed-loop controlled environment agriculture system that mimics mother nature to create a symbiotic biome environment to grow organic fish, greens, vegetables, herbs and fruits.
These systems are housed within a greenhouse with automated controls to produce 10 times more food in the same amount of land using 5% of water used in conventional agriculture.
The controlled environment allows safe and quality organic food production with produce predictability for communities and/or commercial ventures. A one-acre farm produces 1200 pounds of organic greens and vegetables per day and over 2000 pounds of organic fish per week.
About five years ago, the foundation designed and built an aquaponics farm at The Andrew and Walter Young Family YMCA in Atlanta to help children learn about growing food. The farm supports training and all produce grown is used by the YMCA to feed children.
This project, which has helped thousands of children, is currently sustained by a grant from the Cox Foundation.
Essentially, this is a portable farming system that can be shipped and quickly erected almost anywhere.
The foundation has assembled the best in class team from Australia, India and Korea, and is currently working with private entrepreneurs on developing a farm in south west Atlanta at a turnkey cost of $3.0 million, out of which 30% has been raised. The farm will also have a training institute attached to it to train future farmers in this innovative farming technology who would be employed at future commercial scale farms.
Initially, the foundation is working with Dutch Greenhouse Delta, a consortium of horticulturists to bring this technology to the US.
Significantly, in addition to being used to grow large quantities of vegetables and fruit, as well as edible fish, the aquaponics system being advanced by the foundation is integrated with another of our most important initiatives: Duckweed.
Fish thrive on it.
The introduction of duckweed to aquaponics completely eliminates the expense of any other fish food and essentially creates a self-contained ecosystem.