Mark Edwards, PhD

For those wanting more information on algae and its low-carbon potential as an alternative fuel source, take a visit to Oilgae , a blog focused on this subject.

Some might even want information on how to grow their own. Below are clips from today’s post:

“Cultivation of Algae in Photobioreactor”

“Algae can also be grown in a photobioreactor (PBR). A PBR is a bioreactor which incorporates some type of light source. Virtually any translucent container could be called a PBR, however the term is more commonly used to define a closed system, as opposed to an open tank or pond.

“It allows more species to be grown, it allows the species that are being grown to stay dominant, and it extends the growing season, only slightly if unheated, and if heated it can produce year round. Because PBR systems are closed, all essential nutrients must be introduced into the system to allow algae to grow and be cultivated.

“A PBR can be operated in “batch mode”, but it is also possible to introduce a continuous stream of sterilized water containing nutrients, air, and carbon dioxide. As the algae grows, excess culture overflows and is harvested.”

The entire article is available at at the Oilgae blog. I happened on this site on the recommendation of a friend who is attempting to link me with Mark Edwards, PhD, professor at the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness at Arizona State University, and author of “Green Algae Strategy: End Oil Imports And Engineer Sustainable Food And Fuel.”

I am glad to have visited and think it is important for many of us to learn more about this alternative, sharing our discoveries with plenty of others.

]]> http://ourgreenstreetsblog.com/wordpress/2010/01/make-a-visit-to-oilgae/feed/ 0 http://ourgreenstreetsblog.com/wordpress/2009/12/lessons-on-sustainability/ http://ourgreenstreetsblog.com/wordpress/2009/12/lessons-on-sustainability/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:54:42 +0000 Bevan Suits http://ourgreenstreetsblog.com/wordpress/?p=828 Note: This opinion on sustainability is submitted by guest writer, Bevan Suits, founder of Access to Aquaponics (http://accesstoaquaponics.com/).

Sustainability is a state of balance. We see it in nature every day but we don’t notice it until something goes haywire. Take the Dust Bowl for example. In the early 1900s, cattle ranching across the Great Plains began to be replaced by cultivation. With new efficient technologies, farmers were able to plow vast areas of virgin prairie. They didn’t realize that the grass was essential to the ecosystem. The grass and twelve inches of topsoil was a skin that held in place the soil and moisture below. Removing it was preparation for a huge disaster. Erosion began to wash the soil away and all of the nutrients with it.

Beginning in 1930, drought allowed the soil to become dry dust. Over the next few years, a series of windstorms took the dust to the skies and the US experienced an ecological and economic catastrophe. Millions of tons of soil darkened the skies of the eastern US all the way to New England. In some areas of the Great Plains, day was turned to night by the “black blizzards” that reduced visibility to inches, destroying a way of life and an ecosystem only inches in depth.

This was perhaps our first hard lesson in sustainability. The US government stepped in to promote better farming methods and work on rehabilitating the land. The big word then was not sustainability but conservation.

We experienced on a very large scale how new, powerful farming technology, and the desire for profit, tipped the scales toward imbalance, with disastrous results for economy and ecology. This lesson did sink in, but not much beyond better ways to plow. Grass was still just grass.

Sustainability exists all around us in the ecology and the economy. It is a state of balance that is ordinary and invisible. We don’t appreciate it until things big things fall apart. In the fall of 2008, the economy was in a “free fall”. We were looking for the “bottom”, another way of saying sustainability. It seems to have leveled out, but we are reminded that our man-made economy follows natural laws of balance, and we seem to have a lot to learn.

Only 80 years after the Dust Bowl, we’re pressured to think and act smarter. We are smarter, but the question is this: “Who is driving?” Unfortunately, it’s too often the corporate mind-set that values short-term profit over long-term sustainable returns, which includes profit along with quality of life benefits.  The concept of just enough is spun into anti-business.

Our economic condition is our latest lesson on sustainability. Hopefully we are gaining a larger awareness of how things are connected that will help us make better decisions. This awareness is what’s behind the interest in local food, a building block of economics that has been lost. The interest in local food drives the interest in aquaponics, a technology that grows fish and vegetables in the same system. It has the capacity to deliver a lot of food quickly in a small space.

If you consider the history of agricultural technology, it’s all been about cultivating increasing acreage with greater efficiency. Aquaponics breaks the mold and provides a solution based on concentrated yields in portable or fixed containers. It’s a scalable system that can be delivered and installed most anywhere at a very low cost.

Aquaponics is sustainable technology that doesn’t seem to have a downside. It has a lot to teach. May I suggest it is worth your time to look into it.

Interest in aquaponics attracts many people wordwide Source: www.aquaponics .com

We are happy hearing from senior spokespeople in the promising field of aquaponics, especially as a way to provide food in a sustainable way for poorer countries.

After a request to contribute on the subject, Rebecca Nelson, co-founder of Wisconsin-based Nelson & Pade and publisher of the Aquaponics Journal, writes to Green Streets (my emphasis):

“Nelson and Pade, Inc specializes in aquaponics, which is a sustainable, highly efficient method of agriculture.  The company is well-established in the industry and known around the world for extensive contributions to aquaponics technology.  Nelson and Pade, Inc is very fortunate that, even in this economy, interest in their products and services is growing and the business is in an expansion mode.  With clients throughout North America and around the world, the mission of Nelson and Pade, Inc is to continue to lead the aquaponics industry by providing quality systems, supplies, training and technical support.

“In aquaponics, you grow plants and fish together in one integrated, soilless system.  The fish waste provides fertilizer for the plants and the plants provide a natural filter for the water the fish live in.  Aquaponics is a sustainable ecosystem in which both plants and fish can thrive.  Aquaponics produces safe, fresh, organic fish and vegetables.   Combining aquaponics with controlled environment agriculture gives a grower the opportunity to consistently grow premium quality, all natural fish and vegetables.

“Nelson and Pade, Inc has been at the forefront of aquaponic technology for many years.  Offerings include complete aquaponic systems for all applications including commercial production, education, research, producing food in remote villages and home food production.  In addition, Nelson and Pade, Inc. has written and published books, videos and school curriculums on aquaponics for over 15 years and has been continuously publishing the Aquaponics Journal (www.aquaponicsjournal.com ) since 1997.   Individuals from throughout the United States and numerous countries have attended aquaponics training workshops offered by Nelson and Pade, Inc.

“In an effort to meet the growing demand for their products and services, Nelson and Pade, Inc., in has recently purchased  a 12 acre property in Montello, WI that has offices, warehouses and room for expansion.  System assembly, order fulfillment, training and daily operations will take place in this new facility.  A complete revision of Nelson and Pade, Inc.’s popular and informative website, www.aquaponics.com is on the works.

“Nelson and Pade, In is currently guiding the installation of two of the largest aquaponic greenhouses in the world. They are also working with several other companies that are in the design stage of large aquaponic installations.  More announcements about these projects and the growth of this innovative company will be available soon.”

Our thanks to Rebecca Nelson. We look forward to hearing more.

www.treeculture.org

The Canada-based Tree Culture Association, founded by people who have put tree products to use — printers — is introducing new digital gift card. The gift cards are already available in different denominations through the Tree Culture website, www.treeculture.org, across Canada and the United States.This is a website worth the visit.

According to this organization, the person looking to give a unique gift simply needs to visit the Tree Culture website, choose how many trees to give, fill out some basic information, add a personal message to the recipient, and set a date to send the gift card. The recipient will then receive an email with an attached digital gift card. “They read their congratulatory message and follow a link to the world map. There they get to drag a tree around the map and place it in one of the regions where Tree Culture Association has planting projects in place. Our system registers that” says Igal Rogalsky, one of this organization’s founders.

Tree Culture Association is a non-profit initiative that was established by Victor Narynskyyi and Igal Rogalsky in Kelowna, BC. Both come from the printing industry and Tree Culture Association is a result of their efforts to make the printing businesses more environmentally sustainable. The mission of the organization is to compel producers and consumers of printed materials to plant a tree with every print order. The gift cards is their initiative to create more public awareness about their organization.

We send our hearty applause for this effort!

Bevan Suits,Sustainable Design Group

Bevan Suits, head of Sustainable Design Group and recently featured on Green Streets in a review of  his Aquaponics Guidebook, penned this analysis: “Hydroponics is an industry. Aquaculture is an industry. Aquaponics is not an industry…yet. What current trends will guide its growth?”

As author of The Aquaponics Guidebook, Access to Personal Agriculture, Suits has a pretty good notion about how such questions might be answered, especially by today’s college students.

To make a point, he refers to compelling book on food by Michael Pollan, “In Defense of Food.”

If you have not read the book, this quote tells a lot about his concerns.  “Food. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

“Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science.”

Suits believes Pollan’s work appears to be taken as a call to action by many university students attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Incoming freshmen were given copies of the book for free and seemed happy to think of it as a guidebook.

While what happened with Wisconsin’s students had no direct relationship to aquaponics, Suits, reports there is great potential on the horizon, based on the idea of locally grown fresh food.  “We are clearly on the verge of something with the potential to go mainstream,” says Suits. “I would add that the the volume of students and their level of enthusiasm is striking.”

Green Streets has asked Suits to provide occasional perspectives on the subjects of food and aquaponics. He has consented.

“There is some crossover,” he writes, ” with the worlds of hydroponics, aquaculture and ponds, but as a functioning economic platform, it’s still in prototype form. in other words, this baby is not yet born.

“If aquaponics were to take off, there would need to be a thousand times more experts at it than there are now. This is why education and promotion is the most valuable aspect to pursue. The students of Michael Pollan may be the future leaders for producing food in America with aquaponics.

“Some hydroponics vendors are moving ahead with installations, but for consumers who might like to learn about it and try it out, there is no single resource. There are plenty of websites by people who are aquaponics contractors, with expertise ranging from top-notch to eh. But these are not designed for teaching.”

Stay tuned. More is to come come on the teaching end of the food spectrum.

Home page banner for Access to Aquaponics

The word, aquaponics, may still sound new and foreign-sounding, but the term is beginning to get the attention of many who see it as one sustainable agricultural solution for an increasingly crowded planet.  This might be especially true for poverty stricken countries.

A Georgia-based author, Bevan Suits, has written an engaging new e-book about the topic, “The Aquaponics Guidebook, Access to Personal Agriculture.” For those interested, and there are plenty of good reasons to be interested, the book acts as a doorway to the world of aquaponics, “so you can learn about it quickly and get started, no matter your experience, budget or available space.,” says Suits. “Even beginners on a small scale will see amazing results. Greens like lettuce or basil can grow to harvest in four weeks.”

Aquaponics is an established growing system combining fish in tanks with vegetable grow beds. Water is recirculated continuously with a pump. One way of describing it might go something like this:  Aquaculture (growing ­fish) + Hydroponics (growing plants) = Aquaponics.

Suits says until now, there hasn’t been a single reference on the topic. The book covers the technology, science, history and economics of aquaponics.

The book is available as an interactive PDF download, and provides links in the text to supporting websites to get a tour of the aquaponics world, which is gaining popularity in the United States.

In its review of the book, the Ecologist wrote, “The ultimate inspiration for anyone interested by the idea of producing vegetables and raising fish on a micro-scale and in a sustainable way.”

Suits says his book is being promoted across this country by several hydroponics retailers, adding that Colorado is one of the states where interest in aquaponics is most noticeable. The book is available in a PDF format for $12.00. Sample pages can be read at http://www.accesstoaquaponics.com/book.html

Boulder's Best Organics

With the holiday season approaching, some folks may want to learn more about Best Organics, he company that provides Boulder’s Best Organics and Colorado’s Best Organics.

Adriane Little, an account manager for Best Organics, says one of the company’s target markets is the business sector. “We are targeting business to business sales and focusing on many different business industries, including natural and organic, service industries, medical industries, renewable energy companies, marketing/advertising, law firms, accounting, and many more.”

From body care to energy products, the choices are abundant

For potential buyers, Best Organics gift boxes are priced from $25 and go up from there, depending on the size of the box and the products it contains. “We have both selected gift sets, or you can create a custom box,” adds Little.

The organics product line has served this company well, having been voted the second largest growing business in Boulder County by the Boulder County Business Report.  In addition, Little says all gifts “meet strict ‘Green’ standards. ” The company may be contacted at 303-499-6742.

from Open Forum

Eco-terre-orism on the Rise

Haily Zaki (Inhabitat)

Oct 05, 2009 -

The national alert is high, code level…green.  Whether we notice it or not, a group of eco-terre-orists are waging a quiet war against neglect and scarcity of public space.   From London to Berlin, Miami to San Francisco and Southern California, a new breed of free range tillers are harnessing their inner flower (and fruit and veggie) power, sewing seeds for a greener tomorrow.  They hope that their hard (and surreptitious) work will help transform derelict soil and abandoned lots into floral and food outposts.

Manufacturing an urban seed ball Credit: Los Angeles Times

Their weapon of choice?  The seed ball.

Made from clay and compost mixed with seeds, these little life mines are tossed into neglected patches of urban landscape in the hopes that they will take root and explode with green over time.

Guerilla gardeners communicate and track their work via blogs like Guerilla Gardening.  Regional chapters like Los Angeles Guerilla Gardening are popping up, serving as resource to help coordinate eco-terre-orism efforts.  If one is considering joining the eco-crusade but can’t find a local chapter, there are guidebooks on how to prepare for seed bombing campaigns.  Some guerilla gardeners are transforming mild civil disobedience into a new form of public art, like Toronto’s Posterchild, who made an old flyer box into a perky and poignant urban marigold garden.  Some groups have formal names, likeTree-0-5 in Miami, and take credit for their work as they continue to explore creative ways to spruce up their cities.  Others move under cover of darkness and prefer to remain anonymous.

By day they lead normal lives.  By night (or weekend), they don their secret identities and deploy throughout the world’s cities, seed bombing, watering, and fertilizing.  It’s certainly not a crime to transform wasteland to green space, but if labeling urban gardening a guerilla enterprise helps make more people want to do plant seeds, than all the better.  It sounds more powerful anyhow to say that one is a guerilla, not just an activist.

Fresh tomatoes from this aquaponics system. Photo: Deb Dorband

LOVELAND, CO – They are innovative, inexpensive, pleasant to look at, and sustainable. Called, sustainable aquaponics, these compact systems can be used by families worldwide, producing fish and vegetables to feed individuals on an ongoing basis.

Developed by Mountain Sky Group (through its WorldWide Aquaculture subsidiary), in cooperation with the Institute for Ecolonomics,  the system combines traditional agriculture and aquaculture methods without soil, producing a healthy culture system for fish, herbs, fruits, vegetables and ornamentals to thrive. The only additional material required is water.  Fish are fed some of the plants growing in the system, and their waste fertilizes the plants.

Wayne Dorband, Ph.D, founder of Mountain Sky Group and expert in aquaculture, says aquaponics is a relatively new science. “There is no need for additional fertilizer, weed killers or outside food if the system is properly designed,” he says, pulling a trout filet from his freezer that required four months to mature.

According to Dorband, the simplest of Mountain Sky’s aquaponics system can be purchased and installed for less than $100. All components are built with recycled materials such as 55-gallon drums otherwise destined for landfills, PVC pipes, pumps and washed gravel. No special water is required, as the plants purify local, well, or pond water.

The aquaponics system can be put into a homeowner’s backyard or driveway during the growing season in each region. A family could grow enough fish, herbs, vegetables and fruits to fulfill their needs for several months.

Using artificial light in a home or garage, can convert the system to produce year-round.  For proof, just look at the garden growing in the dark warehouse at Mountain Sky Group.