Increasing Accessibility to Sustainable Farming Practices by Providing Intensive Aquaponics Training for Educators and Farmers

Commodities

• Animals: fish

Practices

• Animal Production: aquaculture
• Crop Production: nutrient cycling
• Education and Training: farmer to farmer
• Production Systems: aquaponics
• Sustainable Communities: food sovereignty, urban agriculture

Project Focus:

Oko Farms will provide hands-on training and support in accessible aquaponics implementation to farmers and service providers. Oko Farms is one of the 31 service providers whose capacity to educate or assist farmers with utilizing aquaponics will be developed through this project. Oko Farms will directly train 30 farmers, especially those representing historically underserved communities, who wish to integrate aquaponics into their own farms or community food projects.

Oko Farms will also train 30 service providers, comprising farm trainers who wish to develop aquaponics curricula, educators from organizations providing educational resources for farmers, and farmers who have opportunities to train other farmers. These service providers engage young farmers and historically underrepresented farmers who have chosen to directly enter the agricultural workforce instead of college and are receiving farm training, as well as farmers who receive technical assistance from agricultural education organizations.

Aquaponics, or growing plants and fish in a recirculating ecosystem, is a promising sustainable farming solution to problems of waste, water scarcity, and community food access. Farmers from underserved communities often have geographic or financial barriers to accessing education or support with implementation, which with misperceptions about the feasibility of aquaponics leads to low adoption.

Oko Farms is NYC’s oldest and only outdoor aquaponics farm, established in 2013. We are also the only aquaponics farm focused on hands-on, community-based and accessible farm training in the Northeast. We receive over 1,000 requests for training annually, necessitating new approaches to our aquaponics intensive to reach more farmers and development of train-the-trainer training to enable other farmers and farm trainers to teach aquaponics.

Solution and Approach:

Oko Farms will deliver farmer-to-farmer aquaponics intensive training to 30 farmers in Year 1 and train-the-trainer aquaponics intensive training to 30 service providers in Year 2, and dedicate Year 3 to supporting farmers’ and service providers’ integration of aquaponics at their farms, community food projects, or educational programs. Our ethos focuses on affordable, easy to implement aquaponics systems with simple designs that can be managed by beginners and incorporated into existing farms. Both types of training will utilize our existing aquaponics intensive curriculum, tailored to farmers’ and service providers’ needs as informed by focus groups, and delivered via hybrid and online formats to overcome financial, time, or geographic barriers to training. Learning modules housed in a Google Classroom will include Aquaponics Hardware and System components, Water Quality Management, Fish Cultivation and Welfare, Hydroponics, Food Safety, Integrated Pest Management, Aquaponics System Management, and Business and Marketing Fundamentals; with an additional Teaching Aquaponics module for service providers. Farmers and service providers will also receive hands-on training (with a fully online alternative) and post-training technical support and consultation to support successful application of learning.

Service Provider Performance Target:

31 service providers (farm trainers, farmers who educate others) will integrate aquaponics into their farm training programs to help 72 farmers adopt or change aquaponics practices.

Farmer Performance Target:

13 farmers who complete Oko Farms’ farmer-to-farmer aquaponics intensive, representing 10 farms, will adopt or change at least one aquaponics practice.