Aquaponics: Music to Your Food’s Ears
Written by Paul Graif on 25 June 2020
The Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke says that it has begun exploring a potential Aquaponic food project as part of the movement towards food security and food sovereignty. Chief Cody Diabo, the lead on the Environment Portfolio at the MCK:
“There’s a fish kind of farming, or fish growing schematic to it. It’s the fish waste that then fertilizes the produce. So you have a two-fold system where you have 1 point where you have fish to harvest and then you have produce. The company deals with Arctic Char and Rainbow Trout. So those are the fish that essentially will be also sold to the community as well as fresh produce with no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers.”
Chief Diabo says that he has been working with the company specializing in Aquaponics whose name (EAU) is a French-language acronym for Urban Food Ecosystems: www.eau-agriculture.com/en/about . Having signed a project contract with EAU to create a business plan, that contract will come to an end in October. At that point a report containing the results of the community feedback and the business plan will be formally presented to the Council of Chiefs to determine whether to proceed or not. Diabo is confident in the results:
“Early results, the company suggests a minimum about a 10 sq ft building and that alone would produce around 30 tons of fish annually and depending on what produce you are going to grow, they are saying between 30 and 50 tons.”
