Aquaponic Growers

TOP TEN MISTAKES MADE BY aquaponic growers

BRIGHT

IS THIS E-BOOK RIGHT FOR ME? ...... 3 ABOUT THE AUTHOR ...... 4 ABOUT BRIGHT AGROTECH ...... 5 THE TOP 10 MISTAKES: 1) UNUSABLE OR HARD-TO-USE FARMS ...... 6

2) INADEQUATE CIRCULATION/SOLIDS REMOVAL/OR BSA ...... 7

3) POOR QUALITY WATER ...... 9

4) UNDERESTIMATING PRODUCTION AND SYSTEM COSTS ...... 10

5) BIOLOGICAL VIABILITY VS. ECONOMIC VIABILITY...... 11

6) CHOOSING THE WRONG CROPS...... 12

7) SYSTEMS THAT HAVE POOR TRACK RECORDS...... 14

8) LACK OF PEST CONTROL STRATEGY...... 16

9) GROWERS GET GREEDY ...... 18

10) FAILURE TO APPROACH MARKETS CREATIVELY...... 19 CONCLUSION...... 21

The learning curve of aquaponics is littered with the remains of failed aquaponic ventures and millions of dollars in lost investments. This e-book acts as a guide for beginning aquaponic growers who are interested in operating successful aquaponic systems- whether commercial or hobby systems.

This guide will detail 10 of the obstacles which I have encountered again and again on this learning curve and through various consulting experiences with other aspiring aquaponic farmers.

Why focus on mistakes?

Because let’s face it, we learn a heck of a lot more through our mistakes and failures than we do through our successes. And, the most successful farmers see mistakes as opportunities to learn and improve their farms.

I encourage you to learn from these mistakes and keep them in mind when starting or scaling your own aquaponics system. Doing so will save you a lot of heartache and/or financial despair associated with these 10 mistakes.

Nate Storey earned his Ph.D. in Agronomy from the University of Wyoming researching aquaponic production, novel produce sales, and distribution models.

As part of his research, Nate quickly discovered a market need for hydroponic growing towers and invited two friends to join me in serving this need with a product we knew could outperform anything on the market at that time.

Bright Agrotech was founded in 2010 in Laramie Wyoming in a garage. In 2011 we won what was then the UW Ellbogen 10K business competition and moved into office space and mentorship at the Wyoming Technology Business Center (WTBC). Around the same time we moved all of our manufacturing to a storage unit on the south side of town in order to expand our labor-intensive manufacturing operations on a monthly basis. The work was tough, and the winters building ZipGrowTM towers by hand were tougher, but it was the cheapest place in town to serve our growing customer base and build our bootstrapped business.

Meet the entire Bright Agrotech team here.

BRIGHT

The Leader in Volumetric Farming and Live Sales

BRIGHT AGROTECH

Leader in Volumetric Farming & Live Sales

At Bright Agrotech, we’re all about educating, equipping, and empowering people to take more control over their own food. From our educational resources to our ZipGrow™ Technol- ogy, we aim to make farming accessible to everyone from the backyard gardener, to the high school teacher to the commercial vertical farmer. We love seeing someone start with an idea to use space-saving vertical hydroponic production to grow better for themselves, their schools or their communities.

While the media likes to pander to the fearful and freaked out, we try to share stories of innovation, hope, and small-scale success. It’s important to remember that change usually doesn’t take place (i.e., almost never) on a large scale. From the guy tinkering in his garage, the chef growing greens in her kitchen, and the Upstart Farmer growing incredibly fresh herbs a few blocks from a local grocery store, change and innovation takes place on the individu- al level, one step at a time.

These relatively non-traditional farmers and innovators may seem small today, but they’ll be the ones feeding us tomorrow.

For more helpful videos on aquaponics, hydroponics, vertical farming, greenhouse growing, and more, visit our YouTube Channel.

GROWERS DESIGN UNUSABLE OR HARD-TO-USE FARMS

Designing an unusable farm is a mistake of inexperience more than anything else.

Many growers haven’t grown before (at least not on a large scale), so they don’t think about work flow and efficiency. Often beginning growers don’t effectively use their available space to increase labor efficiency and lower labor costs in general.

Remember: labor is the largest variable cost of production on any farm - aquaponic or otherwise!

Growers who ignore this variable tend to design systems that are hard to harvest, that require lots of transplanting and tending work, or that are not conducive to pest control.

In troubled systems, access to important system components is limited, making the space not only difficult to use, but dangerous!

“Labor is the largest variable cost of production on any farm... Planning ahead will save you many headaches”

The cure for this mistake is to think carefully from the start about how you will use your system, how you will harvest fish and produce alike, and how you can plan your system to be user- friendly and efficient.

Consider all of your variables, from growing needs (light, water, nutrients, pests, etc.) to user needs (access, convenience, automation, redundancy, etc.) from the start, and only begin to design your system after you’ve seriously considered these variables. Talking to established growers and touring their system designs can be a great help as well. Be sure to ask questions and find out what they would do differently if designing their systems today.

An aquaponics system needs to supply plants and fish with three things they both need to survive and flourish:

1) Oxygen rich water 2) A method for removing waste 3) Biological Surface Area

Something that seems so simple is surprisingly tricky if we look at the number of fish-kills, plant disease outbreaks, and dead systems out there.

Remember: aquaponic production is not something that you can just “wing,” especially with raft systems where everything depends on circulation.

This is a fundamental problem with many systems, and often it’s disguised as something else.

Think strongly about your growing media.

THE 3 CULPRITS OF THE POOR DESIGN SYSTEM

Poor Circulation = Poor Oxygen Content in Your Water

Systems with poor circulation will often be prone to plant and fish disease outbreaks, facilitated by plant and fish stress from poor dissolved oxygen content and/or ammonia accumulation. This is caused by lack of nitrification (either by poor delivery of ammonia-rich waters to nitrification sites or biofilters, or by lack of oxygen for aerobic nitrifying bacteria).

Solids Removal

Disease outbreaks can also be caused by oxygen consumption by plants, fish, and microbes followed by inadequate replenishment. This problem can be further complicated with poor circulation patterns or “pockets” in systems where solids and waste accumulate, consuming oxygen as they decompose.

Biological Surface Area

These circulation, solids removal, and biological surface area (BSA) issues can be prevented by better understanding the role of [grow] media and by using a media based system where it’s easy to maintain aerobic conditions. We use ZipGrowTM Towers (with specially designed matrix media) for this purpose, and others do just fine using media beds. While ZipGrowTM Towers are really the only realistic media-based aquaponic technique for commercial growers, both towers and media beds illustrate the benefits of high rates of oxygen exchange and high biological surface area. The more BSA a grower can have in their aquaponic system, the better, and operating a high-BSA system is much easier in the long run. Having a very high ratio of BSA to nitrogen input results in great biofiltration, solids breakdown and mineralization. 8

Good Water is Key! As with all farming and gardening, water quality is key! Many growers embarking on journeys into aquaponics start with basic water (high pH), or water containing carbonates that prevent the pH of the system from dropping for quite some time. Because of this, growers have a hard time getting their system down into the pH range where most crops plants are most productive. Fundamentally, this is a water quality problem that can be corrected with an Reverse Osmosis filter. However, most growers never correct this issue because they think that pH ranges above 7.0 are perfectly fine for commercial systems.

This is a common problem that is complicated by traditional aquaponic thinking and many aquaponic “experts” who, to this day, will claim that 7+ pH ranges are great for commercial systems. Let me correct this for you. The proper pH for a productive commercial system will typically be in the range of 6.0-6.4.

Traditionally, aquaponic systems ran at much higher pH ranges, and this practice still perpetuates today. This is utter nonsense. The thinking behind this “rule” is that nitrification will slow or crash at lower pH values. This is blatantly false and based on a number of aquaculture studies that didn’t take the requisite time to lower pH slowly and by increments, allowing the nitrifying bacteria to adapt and the bacterial population ecology to change. Acid soils around the world have healthy populations of nitrifying bacteria that operate in much lower pH ranges than this, with high efficiency.

Let me explain why pH management is important. Many plant nutrients are only available for plant uptake within a certain pH range. Outside of that range, the plants have a difficult time uptaking that nutrient, or are simply unable to take it up at all. This means that outside of that pH range, plants begin to show nutrient deficiencies even though that nutrient is available in the solution! This can be very frustrating for aquaponic growers and results in lower yields, plant stress, disease and pest susceptibility and unsaleable or blemished crops. By the time these deficiencies rear their ugly heads, the grower is often too late, and adding micronutrients or acids is often an ineffective and poor use of resources. Instead, growers should concentrate on introducing high-quality water on the front end. This will allow pH to be easily manipulated in the system and makes system acidification with nitrification possible from the start.

PRODUCERS UNDERESTIMATE PRODUCTION/SYSTEM COSTS

Overbudgeting is Never a Bad Thing If there’s one thing that’s certain about building things, it’s that it will always cost more than you originally planned for! Most growers starting out in aquaponic farming, or even traditional market farming for that matter, fail to completely understand their costs. The large costs are easily accounted for. It’s the boxes of screws and similar materials that will send you over budget. This is one reason that there are so many unfinished aquaponic systems out there.

Budget to Finish Many growers get started, invest in large facilities, expensive utilities and equipment, but never get the chance to fully utilize them because the budget is consumed by unanticipated taxes and fees, incidental costs or even the costs of getting the first crop to market!

Things Add Up Quick Production costs play a role here too. Most producers don’t anticipate the need for packaging costs or pest control costs (organic insecticides are expensive!). Most don’t think about the cost of insurance, printed marketing materials or ongoing maintenance costs. These are major costs that add up! And the cardinal sin is this: Most beginning growers vastly underestimate the cost of labor - whether it’s their own or someone they’ve hired.

Raft Systems are Notorious for High Costs Raft production is the most spatially inefficient and labor- intensive hydroponic production technique that is still commonly used. Common cost composition places labor costs around 35-45% of total production costs. For raft systems the labor costs can be significantly higher - as much as 45- 60% of total costs. Most producers don’t even consider this in their labor estimates, so when the cost of harvesting and processing comes in, the bottom line quickly drops from the black to the red.

PRODUCERS CONFUSE BIOLOGICAL VIABILITY WITH ECONOMIC VIABILITY

Know Before You Grow There is a misconception that starting a farming or aquaponic production business is 90% growing and 10% selling. In our experience it’s just about the opposite. Most farmers don’t take into account the time and financial costs of getting their produce to market once it’s grown, and as a result, they don’t budget enough time or money to effectively sell their produce. In the worst-case scenario, growers implement production methods that are not productive or have exorbitant operational costs.

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Beginning growers can easily be tricked into investing their time and money into systems that look productive in a photo, or because they have been told the system is productive by whomever is selling it to them. This is unfortunate because many pretty farms lose money, while the less attractive farms (usually operating with lower costs) often have the greatest potential and return on their investment.

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Another mistake commonly made by new growers is relying on the wrong metric for production estimates. A common misleading metric is the number of plants that a system is capable of producing. A more useful and financially accurate metric is pounds per period of time. This is why it’s so important to use actual metrics when performing your cost analysis.

“The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter how pretty your crops are if you can’t afford to harvest them, or don’t have the ability to sell them”

GROWERS CHOOSE THE WRONG CROPS

Grower Beware I, like many novice growers, have been seduced by the flowery descriptions of exotic new crops that populate so many seed catalogs these days. If I had every dollar back that I’ve wasted over the years trying to grow crops that are either: a) not suited to aquaponic production, the climate or production method or... b) not in demand in my local markets,

I’d have a hefty chunk of change back from the seed companies.

Before you choose crops, you need to ask a few questions: What are your local conditions? What growing technique will you be using? Is it appropriate for this type of production?

Different Techniques for Different Crops Different crops have different needs, and some can only be cultured in certain ways. Folks using rafts should not be trying to grow tomatoes. Similarly, folks using crushed gran- ite media should not expect to be able to produce marketable root crops.

The crops you grow need to be appropriate to the technique you are using. Similarly, the crop should be suited to your climate and location.

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, trying to grow long day length crops in an eight- hour day won’t work well for you. If you’re in the South, and constantly battling the heat, attempts to grow a cool weather crop like rhubarb would be a terrible decision.

Be thoughtful about what you grow.

Assess the Competitive Landscape Consider what your competitors are growing. If you live in an area where summer competition is fierce from field producers, then concentrate on something they can’t grow during that period. Most likely, if a restaurant customer wants local organic lettuce and a field producer will sell it at $0.50/lb. you won’t be able to keep that customer over the summer. Figure out what you can do to make ends meet in light of this seasonal competition, or lock your customers into long-term purchasing contracts.

Don’t be a Zucchini Dumper! Another thing that must be considered is your market. Whether you’re growing for your family or for a farmer’s market, you’re still directly or indirectly selling your produce. Growing a crop that no one wants is a waste of your time and money.

When I was growing up and zucchini season hit, everyone was trying to unload zucchini on unsuspecting neighbors and friends. The home gardeners in our neighborhood made the mistake of growing an easy-to-culture, but unwanted, crop. There’s only so much zucchini a human can consume. Bok Choy Basil

So, analyze your market carefully. Herbs Zuccini

If your children don’t like spicy things, then don’t grow wasabi. Even though it will grow well in your system, you don’t have a market for it. Similarly, if you’re growing for local markets, analyze what is most commonly consumed and start there. Choose a crop with a guaranteed market.

Taking gambles on new varieties or on exotic crops is fine - just make sure it’s in small enough quantities the first year that you won’t lose your shirt.

GROWERS OPERATE SYSTEMS WITH POOR TRACK RECORDS, AND EXPECT DIFFERENT RESULTS

Do Your Homework When you’re thinking about implementing a system, don’t be sold on the supposed profitability. Ask for references for system users that have been in business for several years. If they can’t provide them, walk away. Interview references carefully to find out whether or not they’re profitable and doing well.

Farming is hard, and there are very few farmers of any variety who make boatloads of cash, so if someone is promising you lots of easy money, he’s probably not being honest with you.

The key offenders when it comes to non-functional systems are stacked bed systems (i.e. systems that position one bed above the other) and raft systems in areas where labor is expensive and greenhouse production is required. Neither of these system types has ever been very profitable, and both have tricked folks into investing life savings, then failing out of the market.

Stacked Beds Exclude Light & Have Limited Bio-Filtration Stacked bed systems usually fail because they require artificial light to light the bed resting in the dark below the top bed. Plants need light to grow, so any technique that excludes most of the light from the crop is denying your crop plants their most fundamental need.

While this shading can be counteracted by artificial lights, this typically means a large investment in lighting on the front end, and continuing investment in electricity every month. This type of production is poorly designed, and the lack of biological integrity of the system excludes the possibility of a functional system, let alone business profitability.

It can also drastically increase your labor efficiency...

Back to Top Raft Production is Labor Intensive & Space Inefficient Raft designs can be very productive and profitable in areas where greenhouse production is not required for most of the year and where labor is fairly inexpensive. In northern climates, greenhouse raft production is simply not cost effective, as evidenced by the lack of established commercial raft growers in the Northern United States. Although many are drawn to raft production because of the low startup costs, the poor productivity per square foot of greenhouse space means that expensive resources are not used as efficiently as they must to be a viable business.

Ask for references to system users that have been in business for several years, if they can’t provide them, walk away.

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This guide will teach you...

What kind of production numbers for greens can you expect, what a typical turn looks like, and how you can calculate the productivity of your growing space. How and when to harvest herb crops like basil, oregano, chives, rosemary and more. The difference between uniform production like batch harvesting and generational production like conveyor harvesting and what kind of production numbers you can expect from each style. How ZipGrow towers compare to other growing techniques when growing fruiting crops like strawberries.

Download the Guide Here.

GROWERS USE SYSTEMS WITH NO PEST CONTROL STRATEGY

Successful Aquaponics Require Proper Pest Management Pest control is a common problem for both aquaponic and organic farmers. In aquaponics the aversion to pest control stems from a lack of fish-safe controls, while in organic farming the aversion stems from a desire to be pesticide-free. Regardless of the reasoning, operating without a pest control strategy is playing Russian roulette with your farm.

One bad insect outbreak can ruin four crop generations at once, putting you out an entire production cycle or more. If a pest control strategy isn’t in place when you restart the system, the same problem can arise and the cycle can start all over again. If you are growing on a larger scale, be it a large family system, a market system or a large commercial system or farm, you must have a pest control strategy in place before you start. No excuses. A pest breakout on a large-scale production mean your customers lose access to your product.

Design Matters For aquaponic producers this can be challenging because of the risk of exposing their fish to the pesticides - especially with raft and gravel bed systems. Therefore, you’ll need to think about designing pest control into a system early on so that you have the freedom to spray without worrying about fish. This means that you’ll either

Think strategically when designing your system - be sure to build in mechanism & procedures to combat pests from the start.

In our greenhouse we apply both strategies. We have the ability to decouple our fish from our plants, although we haven’t had to use it much because using towers limits pesticide exposure.

Types of Pest Control

CULTURAL BIOLOGICAL

PHYSICAL CHEMICAL

You will need to know what to use and how much you can use before it becomes a concern. We use a host of OMRI certified organic controls in our greenhouse, including ones that other aquaponic practitioners simply can’t use (one of the benefits of using towers with contained media). I use a variety of bio-controls and chemical controls depending on the insects that seem to be on the rise in the greenhouse. It is a constant battle but one that can be consistently won with a good pest control strategy and good controls. I will detail this later, when more time can be devoted to this subject alone.

Pest Management Summary

To start without a pest control strategy jeopardizes your entire operation. A viable pest control strategy is a small but essential piece of the aquaponic puzzle. Action Item: Understand what pest control measures you can use that will kill insects without harming your fish. “Regardless of the reasoning, operating without a pest control strategy is playing Russian roulette with your farm.”

Slow, Sustainable Growth

This is a common mistake. Beginning growers try to go too big too fast with too little experience. This leads them to take out loans from a bank or seek out venture capital for large expensive facilities before they fully understand their cost structure or the market they’re attempting to service. Growing slowly requires patience, but it allows growers to grow into their market organically, meeting local needs and demands with products. Large entrants tend to flood the market with products that they believe are desired, often with mixed results.

Growers that grow too fast also seem to have catastrophic failures more often. These are failures that threaten the entire enterprise - often because the build and establishment costs were higher than expected.

Big system failure means big money failure; more importantly, system failure causes a gap in supply to customers who want consistent delivery.

When this happens these customers begin to look elsewhere, and by the time the grower is back on line, he’s often lost many valuable clients.

Big System Equal Big Surprises Growing too big also sets you up for surprises that you could have learned less expensively on a smaller system - surprises like seasonal competitors who can undercut you on price, in- creased energy costs during certain months, or sudden and massive disease outbreaks because of a system flaw or human error. Surprises are usually bad in this business and typically mean that you’re losing money on something, so minimizing them is important. Unfortunately for large producers, surprises typically represent very large losses.

So reign in the need to overwhelm the market. Grow slowly, and be thoughtful about how you approach your market and how you operate your system. Make mistakes when they cost you little and learn from them, so that when it is time to build your $10 million dollar greenhouse complex, you’ll have gotten all of the expensive mistakes out of your way.

Don’t Compete with Traditional Methods in Traditional Marketing Many growers assume that the best they can do is the traditional market instead of thinking about new markets and new ways to access those markets. At the same time, growers should be thinking about how to reduce costs and increase revenue while accessing these markets. If you’re trying to figure out how to do this but coming up blank, it’s for a reason. Figuring out new markets and new ways to reach them is hard! All of the easy or obvious things are already being done. Now all that are left are the non-obvious and difficult.

Most aquaponic farmers fail to recognize that the cost structure inherent in aquaponic farming puts them at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to traditional markets and competition with conventional products. In these markets, aquaponic produce simply cannot compete. So, to stay afloat, aquaponic farmers must find markets where their produce can be marketed to people who want “aquaponic” produce or “local organic” produce.

Develop a Niche Market This is called niche marketing, because it requires you to sell your product to a small market with Upstart University 1020: specific demands. Niche markets are nice because you may often be the only ones “The Four Markets” competing in this type of market! Big companies cannot afford to market their produce to these types of markets, especially small niche markets. The needs of these markets are simply too specific and the payout is too small.

Niche marketing is fine, but it poses hurdles to scaling. That means you can only grow so big, since the thing that makes niche markets niche is the fact that they want very specific products and are a relatively small, unaddressed sub- sector of the main marketplace. This raises the question of whether or not the niche is big enough to support you in the first place. If it is Learn more about this Upstart not, or if it is just big enough, it means that you University Course either cannot survive in that market, or you won’t be able to grow.

Back to Top 17 So, to stay afloat, aquaponic farmers must find markets where their produce can be marketed to people who want “aquaponic” produce or “local organic” produce.

Finding and Selling To Your Marketing So, while niche marketing is a great place to start, you must figure out a way to sell enough to live, grow and operate a successful farm. If your niche markets are large enough to accommodate this, then great! Most folks have to find alternative markets for their produce though.

Get Creative and Give Value This is one of the reason I started doing live sales using ZipGrowTM towers. We supply niche markets, but in order to supply the larger market, we had to figure out a way to reduce our costs in order to compete with conventional growers while simultaneously standing out in the grocery aisle. Live sales was the answer that we hit upon, because it both reduced our costs (eliminating the handling and packaging costs, which are 60% of the average growers budget) and stood out as remarkable.

Bright Agrotech’s Live Sales Model Using this model, towers are transported from our greenhouse and clipped into displays at the market to form edible Green Walls. Customers harvest the produce that they want from the display and pay by weight, making the purchase experience fun and scalable to the customer’s needs. To this date, as far as I know, we’re still the only business in the country doing this type of sales. As a result, we have a valuable and loyal customer base, both in the local foods and organic and health foods niche markets, but also among conventional customers who are drawn to the experience of harvest and quality of our produce. This is just one example, but there are thousands of different sales and marketing models waiting to be explored. It just requires creativity, marketing ability, and the ability to be flexible and adapt to the market’s needs.

Click to enlarge

Knowing the Common Errors Will Save You Time and Frustration These are the top ten mistakes new growers and small commercial farmers encounter when getting started.

While focused on aquaponic farmers, there are also some takeaways for the emerging classes of urban farmers and market gardeners looking towards the local food movement for income. This includes our elite group of Upstart Farmers, an innovative and collaborative net- work working hard to make a living as vertical farmers and make an impact on their commu- nity (or the food system as we know it!) in the process. I’d love for you to meet some of them and find out more about the Upstart Farmer movement here.

Regardless of your particular form of agriculture, there are major challenges associated with trying to compete in an industry that has for so long been ruled by price-focused competition and “sur- vival of the biggest.”

That being said, the culture of food is changing this rapidly, and more people are wanting quality, local food. And, I don’t know about you, but I’m really excited about what our food and farm innovators will do next.

Looking Forward I hope that this short e-book gives you something valuable to consider. If you are embarking on the adventure of a large aquaponic or hydroponic system or even a small backyard garden, consider some of these mistakes as you plan and build. While there are many more mistakes to be made out there, these are the most expensive ones. Don’t be afraid to ask the advice of someone who is already doing this - sometimes, even if you have to pay for advice or consulting it’s much less expensive in the long run.

Again, I hope this was helpful. Thanks for reading and we’ll see you in the Future

Nate Storey, Ph.D.

Bright Agrotech is composed of a rapidly growing group of incredibly hard working, passionate individuals committed to empowering the farmers of tomorrow.

Our ZipGrow vertical farming/gardening towers help small hobbyist growers and commercial producers everywhere see maximum yields and economic profit. We want to help farmers live better, increase their margins, and give their consumer the most high quality produce possible.

We would love to help you get started. Call us and we can guide you through the planning and ordering process as well as addressing any concerns you might have with growing.

307-288-1188 [email protected] 22