Pairing aquaculture with agriculture; sustainable fish, vermiculture, and insect rearing on produce farms to improve revenue, yields, and soil health.

Commodities

• Vegetables: greens (leafy)
• Animals: fish, other

Practices

• Animal Production: aquaculture
• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity
• Soil Management: soil quality/health

Sustainable farms are becoming increasingly important in our region for their role in food access and food security. There has been a high demand for local produce from our community over the years and a concern for increasing access to diverse and healthy food for low-income populations. However, there remain few farms and producers in our region. Land is limited and expensive with much of the area consisting of rocky and clay soils. Because the land is not historically agricultural land, often the soil conditions are poor, requiring a lot of labor and input to make it suitable for crop production. Furthermore, water resources are becoming increasingly scarce. Wells are very expensive in these areas, and many growers utilize small ponds or other water catchment for irrigation purposes. Many farms struggle with these obstacles. We will pair aquaculture, vermiculture, and grub farming, with agriculture and provide examples of ways to improve soil, yields and income for small farmers. We will continue to establish a sustainable aquaculture system in one of our ponds and compare this to another catchment system without aquaculture. We will irrigate identical fields from each treatment to look at how aquaculture can improve crop yields and soil health. We will examine how vermiculture and grub farming can benefit these systems, by lowering overhead costs and creating optimal growth in fish. We will look at the benefits of these systems for increasing revenue and providing additional commodities for small farms, increasing profits while lowering costly inputs like organic fertilizers. This will increase sustainability on farms in our region and provide a much-needed example of how small farmers can overcome obstacles like poor soil, fertility, and high overhead costs. Our results will be shared with the community, schools, and producers through organized farm tours, workshops, presentations and educational pamphlets.

We will develop and improve the sustainability of an aquaculture system in a small irrigation catchment pond and compare this to conventional watering from catchment tanks without aquaculture. We will plant and irrigate identical study areas on the farm for each treatment to look at how aquaculture can improve crop yields and soil health. In addition, we will show how fish production can serve as another commodity for small farms, increasing profits while lowering costly inputs like organic fertilizers. We will examine the benefits of vermiculture and grub farming to sustain aquaculture and compare fish growths across different worm and insect treatments and develop sustainable methods for producing fish feed on the farm. Our results will be shared with the community, schools, and producers through organized farm tours, workshops, presentations and educational pamphlets.