Canada: Aquaponics farm puts fresh fish and greens on plates of Calgary restaurants

Reid Henuset and Paul Shumlich of Deepwater Farms in Calgary’s first commercial aquaponics farm. Al Charest/Postmedia It looks like any non-descript industrial park warehouse, but the new Deepwater Farms facility in southeast Calgary produces fresh, local food daily using technology that some believe could be the future of agriculture. By Amanda Stephenson Calgary Herald Excerpt: This urban farm, located in a 10,000-square-foot building, is the city’s first commercial-scale aquaponics facility — meaning it combines hydroponics and aquaculture to raise both leafy greens and fish. Giant tanks house as many as 10,000 fish of varying ages and sizes (currently, Deepwater is raising sea bass), and the waste from the fish is then broken down into nitrates that are used to fertilize the racks upon racks of lettuce, herbs and other greens growing under giant LED lights. The unconventional technology has given Deepwater the capacity to harvest about 450 kilograms a week of organic, locally grown produce. The company expects to triple that output once it is fully ramped up in late 2019. It can also harvest about 900 kilograms of fish a month — fresh, sustainable seafood that can go straight to the plates of landlocked Calgarians. “I literally just […]

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