Green Crude: The Quest to Unlock Algae’s Energy Potential

Earlier this year, Sapphire Energy began producing oil on its 300-acre algae farm in Columbus, New Mexico. By next year, the company hopes to produce about 100 barrels a day at the “green crude farm.” (Sapphire Energy)



Tiny Columbus, New Mexico (population, 1,678) is hot, flat and uncrowded — an ideal place to launch a new green revolution in agriculture. That, in essence, is what a well-funded startup company calledSapphire Energy wants to do: It is turning a 300-acre expanse of desert scrub into the world’s largest algae farm designed to produce crude oil. Sapphire began making oil there in May, and its goal is to produce about 100 barrels a day, or 1.5 million gallons a year, of oil, once construction of the “green crude farm” is completed next year.

“We take algae, CO2, water and sunlight, and then we refine it,” says Cynthia Warner, the chief executive of Sapphire, who joined the company after working for more than 20 years at oil-company giants Amoco and BP. Algae, she says, has the potential to change the world, by reducing carbon dioxide emissions and enabling almost any country to make its own oil. “This technology is so compelling — and it will make such a big difference — that, once it gets out of the gate, it will ramp up very quickly,” Warner says.

Sapphire is one of scores of companies worldwide that today are making biofuels from microalgae, albeit on a small scale, according to the Algae Biomass Organization, a trade group. Solazyme, which is arguably the industry leader, last year sold an algae-derived jet fuel to United Airlines, which used it to fly a Boeing 737-800 from Houston to Chicago — the first time a commercial jet flew using a biofuel made using algae. Synthetic Genomics, a company founded by geneticist J. Craig Venter and financed by ExxonMobil, is building an algae farm in the Imperial Valley of southern California. Other algae farms are under development in Hawaii, by Phycal, and in Karratha, Australia, by Aurora Algae, and in Florida, by Algenol. In Europe, the Swedish energy company Vattenfall and Italy’s Enel Group have been using algae, which is then made into fuel or food, to absorb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and Algae-Tec, an Australia-based company, has agreed to operate an algae-based biofuel plant in Europe to supply Lufthansa with jet fuel.

Although scientists and entrepreneurs have been trying to unlock the energy potential of algae for more than three decades, they don’t yet agree on how to go about it. Some companies grow algae in ponds, others grow them in clear plastic containers, and others keep their algae away from sunlight, feeding them sugars instead. To improve the productivity of the algae, some scientists use conventional breeding and others turn to genetic engineering. “Algae is the most promising source of renewable transportation fuel that we have today,” says Steve Kay, a distinguished professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, and co-founder of the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology, a partnership of research institutions, business, and government.
And yet there’s plenty of reason for skepticism about algae. Scientists and entrepreneurs have been trying for decades to unlock algae’s energy potential, with mixed results. After the 1970s oil shocks, the U.S. government created an algae research program that analyzed more than 3,000 strains of the tiny organisms; the program was shut down in 1996, after the Department of Energy concluded that algal biofuels would cost too much money to compete with fossil fuels. A decade later, after President George W. Bush declared that the U.S. is “addicted to oil,” government research into algae was restarted, and venture capital flowed into dozens of algae startups. Oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron placed bets, too.

But algae companies haven’t made much oil yet: Sapphire’s annual production target of 1.5 million gallons for 2014 compares to U.S. daily oil consumption of 18.8 million barrels. Even algae’s most enthusiastic advocates say that commercialization of algal biofuels, on a scale that that would matter to the environment or the energy industry, is at least five to 10 years away.

High costs remain the big obstacle to commercial production. The algae business has suffered from “fantastic promotions, bizarre cultivation systems, and absurd productivity projections.” says John Benemann, an industry consultant and Ph.D. biochemist who has spent more than 30 years working on algae. Even if the capital costs and operating costs of algae farms are low, and the productivity of the algae is improved, Benemann says that “algae biofuels cannot compete with fossil energy based on simple economics… The real issue is that an oil field will deplete eventually, while an algae pond would be sustainable indefinitely.” In a thorough 2010 technology assessment, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that producing oil from algae grown in ponds at scale would cost between $240 and $332 a barrel, far higher than current petroleum prices.

Perhaps more worrisome, government scientists say the environmental benefits of algae remain unproven. Writing in American Scientist, Philip T. Pienkos, Lieve Laurens and Andy Aden, all of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, say that the few life-cycle assesements of algae done so far have shown “unpromising energy returns and weak greenhouse gas benefits.” By phone, Pienkos acknowledged that, in theory, algae should produce low-carbon fuels because the CO2 emitted when the fuels are burned is absorbed from the air when algae grow. But, he says, calculating the true sustainability benefits of algae requires doing a detailed study of inputs and outputs and “that will be difficult until big algae farms are built.”

So why continue to pursue the algae dream? Because algae, even skeptics say, are remarkable little creatures that could someday realize their potential as energy producers. Algae are easy to grow, as any owner of a background swimming pool knows (and as does the U.S. National Park Service, which this month began draining the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to remove a sea of green). Algae grow rapidly, reaching maturity in days. They absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. They thrive in fresh, saline or brackish water. And they don’t compete with food crops for land.According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, algae yield more lipids, or oil, than other biomass feedstock — as much as 30 times more per unit of land when compared to terrestrial oilseed crops like palm and soy.

What’s needed now are concentrated efforts to deploy all the tools of modern agriculture to bring down the costs of growing algae, harvesting the crop, and extracting its oil. That’s the focus of all the algae startups. In New Mexico, for example, Sapphire is trying to drive extraneous costs out of its ponds (do they need plastic liners, or will dirt do?), out of the process of removing algae and returning water to the ponds, and out of the thermo-chemical process used to separate oil from the algae. “Each step requires multi-disciplinary, multi-year R&D,” Warner says.

None of this comes cheap: Sapphire has raised $300 million from investors including venture capitalists Arch Venture Partners and Venrock, British charity The Wellcome Trust, and Cascade Investment, which manages the personal fortune of Bill Gates. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Sapphire a $50 million grant in 2009, and the company has secured a $54.4 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Solazyme experimented with open-pond technology in the late 2000s before deciding to abandon the sun (though it kept the “sola” in its name). The company now grows its algae indoors, in big industrial fermenters in a factory in Peoria, Ill., and feeds them biomass such as sugarcane or corn stover. In an email interview, Solzayme’s CEO, Jonathan Wolfson, said, “The economics for producing oil via open ponds was simply not viable in a time frame that would work for our commercialization plans. While algae is a prolific oil producer, it is far from the most economic way to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into sugars, which is the first step in making oils.”

By engineering its algae to perform whatever task is at hand, Solazyme says it has developed for the first time in history “the ability to design oil rather than simply use what’s available in nature.” The company makes not just transportation fuels, but oils for food products including cakes, cookies and ice cream; personal care products like soaps and detergents; and chemical products like lubricants and surfactants. Serving a variety of markets enabled Solazyme to attract investment from the likes of Chevron, British entrepreneur Richard Branson, and Unilever, and to generate enough revenue so the company could go public last year. (Its current market value is about $650 million.) More important, Solazyme plans to grow its production capacity faster than its rivals — it says it will produce about 142 million gallons a year of renewable oil by 2015.

By far the biggest opportunity to reduce the costs of algal fuels lies within the algae. Just as crop scientists have bred corn and wheat to improve yields, with spectacular results, the algae companies are using conventional breeding and genetic modification to develop strains of algae to grow faster, yield more oil, and repel pests.

Venter’s Synthetic Genomics is going a step further, studying natural algae in order to design, from scratch, a plant of its own. Venter was not available for an interview but he told Scientific American last year: “Everybody is looking for a naturally occurring algae that is going to be a miracle cell to save the world and, after a century of looking, people still haven’t found it. We hope we’re different.” Venter noted that genetic tools “give us a new approach: being able to rewrite the genetic code and get cells to do what we want them to do.”

For now, Synthetic Genomes is growing algae in a greenhouse in La Jolla, Calif. The company recently acquired 81 acres of land in the California desert, near a power plant that is expected to be a source of cheap CO2. Like the other algae companies, Venter’s venture is well financed. ExxonMobil has promised the company $300 million over the next decade, provided that its research and development milestones are met; other backers include BP and venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Venter admits that success is by no means guaranteed, and that patience will be required to see the benefits of algae. Algae plants may grow in days, but a real algae industry will need years, if not decades, to reach maturity.


by marc gunther@e360.yale.edu

All About Aquaculture.

                                                                           Marine finfish like Atlantic salmon are raised in net pens like these

The term “aquaculture” refers to a broader spectrum of practices than many realize.  In freshwater and marine ecosystems, finfish and shellfish are raised in a variety of different man-made structures.  Mesh nets, lines, cages, and rafts are used for shellfish aquaculture, which in New England produces mostly mussels, clams, and oysters.  These systems are placed in estuaries and bays, which are natural habitats for shellfish.  Seed (very young shellfish) are obtained from hatcheries or collected from wild populations and allowed to settle on the aquaculture structure being used, where they can filter food and nutrients from the surrounding marine environment and grow to a commercially harvestable size.

Saltwater finfish aquaculture, which in New England consists mostly of salmon farming in Maine, is carried out in large net-cages placed in coastal marine waters, which are stocked with fry from freshwater hatcheries on land.  There have also been efforts to expand this technology offshore in the U.S. for raising or growing out other finfish species and some extensive operations based on offshore structures elsewhere in the world. Because the fish are not free to forage or hunt for themselves, finfish aquaculture requires feed from the fish farmer.  On land, aquaculture is carried out in natural habitats such as ponds as well as artificial environments like raceways and tanks.  Freshwater finfish aquaculture in New England consists mainly of trout and salmon hatcheries in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, where juvenile fish are raised to a certain size in tanks on land and then released into streams and ponds.

These different practices can be categorized by the level of human intervention involved in the animal’s growth and life history.  Extensive aquaculture, which requires minimal intervention, usually involves introducing species from a hatchery or a wild stock into a new natural or slightly altered environment and then leaving them alone until they are ready to be harvested.  An example of extensive methods can be found in ancient Chinese carp aquaculture, in which the carp ponds were stocked with fry from wild populations but left to feed on naturally occurring or introduced algae.  Many shellfish farms – such as theNantucket Oyster Company in Massachusetts – also practice extensive methods, in which wild or hatchery seed is set on a man-made raft or line suspended in a natural marine environment.  Because shellfish are filter feeders, they do not need any supplemental feed.  Since rearing seafood in this manner requires modest energy inputs, extensive aquaculture is among the most efficient and sustainable food production processes in the world.

Intensive aquaculture is at the opposite end of the spectrum.  Both feed and habitat are artificially supplied in intensive aquaculture systems, which are generally less sustainable because the higher level of human intervention requires higher energy, water, and land use.  Within intensive systems, farming low trophic-level species (herbivorous and omnivorous fish such as tilapia and catfish) is much more sustainable than farming high trophic-level species (piscivorous fish like salmon) – a future blog post in this series will explore the issue of sustainability further.  Cage aquaculture – such as that used by True North Salmon Company in Maine – is often considered intensive because even though fish may be raised in a natural habitat (rather than on land in a recirculating system or raceway) they are entirely dependent on humans for survival.

Semi-intensive aquaculture involves an intermediate level of human intervention, in which feed may be provided in a natural environment or an environment is provided but feed is not.  In some cases, feed may be added to a natural environment to augment growth or nutrition of the cultured species, but at levels below those required to fully sustain the population.  Some people consider the New England lobster industry to fall in this category as current populations are nurtured and grow as a result of millions of pounds of food put in the water in the form of baits in traps. Of course, if the lines between these three categories seem fuzzy, it’s because they are – every farm is different, and there are many ways to farm the same aquatic animal.  Extensive, intensive, and semi-intensive are general terms that attempt to roughly describe the amount of energy needed to produce the final seafood product.

talkingfish.org

All About Aquaculture: from 2000 BC in China to Today in the U.S.

To many people, aquaculture – the practice of breeding and raising fish and shellfish for harvest–is a confusing, new-fangled approach to producing these products, which is only making it harder for them choosing sustainable choices in the supermarket.  In fact, aquaculture has been around since at least 2000 BC and today is the fastest growing food-production sector in the world.  Aquaculture is believed to have first been practiced in China, where the common carp was raised with minimal intervention in earthen pools.  The first written record of aquaculture practices, a book called “The Classic of Fish Culture” by Chinese historian Fan Lai, dates to around 500 BC.  Since then, the practice of aquaculture has spread from carp to all kinds of finfish and shellfish, from China to the rest of the world.

Many champion aquaculture because of its potential to address food security concerns and create jobs by producing sustainable, healthy seafood products at a faster pace and in greater volumes than conventional wild-capture fisheries.  In the face of a rapidly increasing global population and in light of recent estimations that 87% of the world’s wild marine fisheries are at or above full exploitation, aquaculture is argued to present a compelling solution to the conflict between feeding the world’s people and conserving the world’s fisheries. However, the expansion of global aquaculture production at that scale inevitably involves addressing the many potential environmental impacts of many forms of aquaculture, which many consumers see as an ethical obstacle to consuming farmed fish.

In the United States, aquaculture began as an effort to boost recreational fishing opportunities by stocking rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds with fish.  The first fish hatchery opened in 1887 in Madison, WI, and its success spurred the growth of the aquaculture industry.  In the 1960s, catfish aquaculture became popular in southeastern states, and Atlantic salmon farming in ocean-based net pens began in the 1970s in the Pacific Northwest.The shellfish aquaculture industry in the U.S. emerged in the first half of the 20^th century as some fishermen shifted from harvesting wild shellfish to “enhancing” beds of mussels, oysters, and clams with additional seed (very young shellfish) from the wild stock.  Finally, some shellfish farmers began using hatchery seed for their shellfish farms, thereby separating the process entirely from wild populations.

Reported aquaculture production in United States from 1950-2010 (Photo Credit: FAO)

Today, two-thirds of U.S. aquaculture operations raise shellfish, mainly oysters, clams, and mussels. The other third produce finfish products, the majority of which is catfish raised mainly in the Southeast. The majority of domestic aquaculture produces freshwater species – only 20% of U.S. aquaculture produces marine species.  The Northeast, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest have the highest concentration of shellfish aquaculture production, while Mississippi and Idaho lead freshwater finfish production and Maine and Washington lead marine finfish production.  Atlantic salmon production continues in marine habitats along the northwestern and northeastern coasts (mostly in Washington and Maine), but opposition to salmon farming based on environmental risks and a lack of comprehensive federal regulation is likely to impede significant growth of marine finfish aquaculture in the U.S.

In 2004, NOAA launched a National Marine Aquaculture Initiative to increase domestic aquaculture production and consumer education. While the Initiative has made progress and shellfish farming has been on the rise in the U.S., growth in domestic finfish aquaculture has leveled off and even slipped in recent years.  Despite federal goals for the expansion of aquaculture, concerns over its environmental impacts and the lack of a streamlined federal regulatory structure – both topics that will be discussed in later posts in this series – have continued to hinder its growth in the U.S.

BY MADI GAMBLE@talkingfish.org

Fish farming in Kiambu, Kenya

Now, as Mary Wambui ponders her next move, here in Kiambu women are seeking a revolution of sorts with the coming of a new constitution. The county is not known to vote women into political office. But something may be about to change, take a look at we found.

The Israeli Guest that’s Welcome Around the World

Fast becoming one of the world’s most important fish for food, tilapia, with roots in Israel – and the high-tech farms that raise them – are making a big impact

An AquaMaof indoor fish farm (Photo credit: AquaMaof/Yair Kachel PR)

Once a staple only in gourmet restaurants, amnon, or St. Peter’s Fish  – also known as Israeli (blue) tilapia – is fast becoming one of the most important fish in the world, enabling millions in the Third World, as well as in developed countries, to enjoy tasty, nutritious, and healthy fish. With overfishing becoming a major problem, Israeli fish-farming technology is being welcomed in countries around the world — as are the tilapia fish that are often grown in these farms.

There are nearly 100 tilapia species out there (most of them freshwater fish), and various versions of the fish are common throughout the Middle East; for example, the Nile tilapia (Nile perch), native to Egypt, is farmed there using basic methods, and other species are farmed in Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Tilapia is also wildly popular in the Far East, with China the world’s biggest producer/exporter of the fish. But only Israel has perfected the high-tech methods of fish farming that allow farmers to generate far more fish than with traditional fish-farming methods. Many fish farmers and policy makers say that Israeli tilapia are the tastiest of the bunch.

Tilapia, currently the second-most farmed fish in the world (behind salmon) have come into their own over the past few decades. Whereas 30 years ago, few people had even heard of tilapia, food policy officials in countries around the world have come to recognize that the fish can help solve the overfishing crisis that has become more severe in recent years. Tilapia can survive in warm-water environments, aren’t particularly picky about their food, and survive well in brackish water. They grow quickly in a short period of time, so their bodies have less time to absorb chemicals like mercury, the bane of many fish. And, tilapia are almost tailor-made for raising on farms, as they are easy to breed and raise — allowing policy makers to ensure a definite supply of an important protein source for their country’s populations.

Israeli-raised tilapia were popular long before hi-tech fish farming; they have been introduced into lakes and rivers in a number of countries, including the United States, where almost all the tilapia hail from stocks imported from Israel. In the US, the geographic range of tilapia is limited, because they cannot survive in colder water (below 50 degrees Fahrenheit). Tilapia are considered an invasive species, however, and in some places in the U.S. people who enjoy sport fishing have complained that tilapia tend to corner the resources in an ecology, basically taking over the “neighborhood” by eating many of the plants that provide oxygen (although they generally do not compete for food eaten by other fish). On the other hand, they also eat weeds, algae, and other other “undesirable” underwater plants, keeping rivers and lakes cleaner. In some places, in fact, tilapia are used in reservoirs to keep municipal water supplies clean.

And countries around the world have embraced Israeli tilapia fish-farming systems. Last month, the governments of Kenya, Germany and Israel recently inked a trilateral cooperation agreement to use Israeli hi-tech methods to improve tilapia farming. In Kenya’s Lake Victoria, fish stocks are being depleted even as the demand for fish — and tilapia in particular — continues to increase. Fish prices in Kenya and much of Africa have doubled over the past two years, said Ilan Fluss, director of policy planning and external relations at the Israel Foreign Ministry’s Agency for International Development Cooperation (Mashav). The new program, he said, will help Kenya “industrialize” its tilapia output, enabling the country to significantly provide better nutrition for residents at lower prices, and to turn Kenya into a tilapia exporter, Fluss added.

But Israeli tilapia-based fish-farming systems are welcome in the “First World” as well. This week, the largest fish farm in Europe — to be used mostly for the production of tilapia — will open in Poland, courtesy of the Israeli company AquaMaof Aquaculture Technologies. The company has developed an innovative farming system that makes it possible to breed fish under controlled temperature conditions in all types of weather, in any country, and during all seasons, independently of external factors — while cutting energy costs by some 70%, the company said. The 8,000-square-meter (24,000-square-foot) facility will produce some 1,200 tons of tilapia annually, said AquaMaof, which has already built similar farms in Africa, the US, and Asia.

With the new system, Poland, too, could become a major fish supplier to the rest of Europe, as catch limits in the European Union are increased, limiting or outright prohibiting the sale of some types of fish, whose stocks are quickly being depleted because of commercial fishing. Thanks to Israeli fish-farming systems — equipped with Israeli tilapia — Europeans will get the fish they crave, while fish still in the ocean will have an opportunity to replenish their stocks.

By DAVID SHAMAH@timesofisrael.com

Kenyan Government Enhancing Fish Farming in North Rift

Children getting fish out of one of the ponds in Nabiswa village of Trans Nzoia County. [Photo | Leonard Wamalwa]

Fish farming has in the last three years improved a great deal in Rift Valley province with the number of fish farmers rising from 1500 at the start of the three years before the introduction of the government’s economic stimulus program –ESP and has since rose to 9400 farmers to date.

Rift Valley provincial fisheries officer George Onyango told reporters in a fish farmers workshop in Kitale that the practice is being embraced by many farmers who have developed interest hence overwhelming the new trend of farming in the region.

Onyango noted that in the last two decades fish farming in Rift Valley had not been doing well but shot up after the introduction of the ESP that facilitated the process at the initial stages that have since stabilized and are fully fledged in most parts.

“At the moment I would like to say that this program has been so beneficial and there is quite a high enthusiasm from farmers and we are overwhelmed at the moment,” said Onyango.

He noted that the ESP program did not only impact on farmers alone but it also impacted greatly in creation of jobs especially in the Kazi Kwa Vijana –KKV program whereby youths were employed to construct 9400 ponds leading to them being paid over Kshs 85 million.

Rift Valley Provincial Fisheries Officer George Onyango and the Trans Nzoia and West Pokot County fisheries officer Jamleck Njeru (R)as he addressed journalists at the workshop.

Accompanied by the fisheries officer in charge of Trans Nzoia and West Pokot counties Jamleck Njeru, Onyango noted that due to the fast growing practice of fish farming, the government is doing sensitization programs to farmers, capacity building through trainings and putting measures to avail the fish feed to the farmers.

“We realize that most of the farmers jump-started and didn’t know much about fish farming hence necessitating the trainings and other sensitization programs on fish farming,” noted Onyango.

The officers revealed that the government has moved in to procure four peletizing machines fairly distributed in the region with one situated in Trans Nzoia to produce the fish feed.

Peletizing machines were bought as a form of cottage industries to be given to clusters within the region to manufacture their own fish feeds locally at a cheaper cost with the available materials.

The four machines are in Saboti, Naivasha in Subukia, Ainamoi in Kericho and another one in Eldoret with each purchased at Kshs 800,000 with a start up fund of Kshs 100,000 accompanying them.

The government is also putting in place measures to put up fish processing machines in every county across the country to facilitate the buying of the fish harvested by farmers in the respective regions and process its products.

Njeru pointed out that the putting up of the processing machines will also go in tandem with the number of farmers and the amount of fish produced in a region to necessitate the essence and time to start up the machine though the minimum production requirement is not yet revealed.

Read:

• Fish farming transforming lives of Trans Nzoia residents
• Fish farming  in Trans Nzoia
• Sh 6 million to boost fish farming in Trans Nzoia County
• North Rift farmers encouraged to venture in to fish farming business 

Production of fish in the region

In the last one year that ends in this month of June a total of 604,000 kilograms of fish were produced in the region amounting to over Kshs 102 million entering the farmers’ pockets.

The practice is noted to be receiving favor from most of the farmers both from the large and small scale due to the small amount of land used to put up the ponds and the high profits at the end of the harvest as compared to other crops including maize in a similar piece of land.

Trans Nzoia and West Pokot fisheries officer Njeru noted that in a 20 by 15 meter piece of land converted in fish farming can earn a farmer between Kshs 30,000 to 50,000 as compared to maize that can earn less than Kshs 300 hence farmers are quickly embracing the fish farming.

“If a piece of land measuring 15 by 20 meters can give a farmer between Kshs 30,000 and 50,000 as compared to maize that can only give about Kshs 300 and thus the farmers have seen for themselves and are entering the practice in large numbers,” said Njeru.

Declining production of fish at the lakes

It was noted that the government is supporting fish farming as a way of alleviating the declining production of fish from the lakes that have been for a long time the only major source of fish in the country.

The officers revealed that the lakes have reduced in production of fish due to pollution and over-exploitation hence failing to meet the ever increasing demand for the products that necessitate enhancing of fish farming.

The fast growing fish farming is believed to be the only remedy to the situation at the lakes and thus maintain the supply that can meet the market demands.

Written by Leonard Wamalwa@West FM

Young Ivorians Fishing Big Profits out of Small Ponds

Mathieu Djessan looks over the four-hectare expanse of fish ponds with satisfaction. The aquaculture enterprise the 29-year-old runs here near the town of Tiassalé in southern Côte d'Ivoire is quickly proving profitable.

"When we harvest them in May, it will be our third batch of fish in 13 months. We sold the first two lots to reach maturity between December 2011 and February 2012: 5,500 carp and 4,900 catfish. Despite major losses of fry – juvenile fish – we pocketed more than five million francs CFA (around 10,000 dollars)," Djessan told IPS.

Djessan manages three fish ponds along with three friends, here 120 kilometres northwest of the Ivorian commercial capital, Abidjan. Each pond holds 6,000 carp and catfish, growing fat on rice bran.

The four partners started the project with money they scraped together between them, combined with 4,000 dollars borrowed from several private benefactors. They say they've already repaid their debt.

"We needed to find something to do to make ends meet," said Chantal Aya, 26, one of Djessan's project partners. "So we chose to invest in what looked like a promising sector, not just in this region but also in the north, centre and west of the country which often lack fish."

Even here in the south, much closer to the ocean, over the past two years fish has seldom been available in the markets in places like Tiassalé and Sikensi. When there has been fish, brought in from Abidjan, it was too expensive for most people.

"Carp which normally costs 1,000 CFA (two dollars) was selling for nearly 2,500 CFA here," Eugènie Logbo, a fish monger at the Tiassalé motor park or transit hub, told IPS.

Logbo's two large tables are covered with carp. "These don't come from Abidjan, they're from the aquaculture ponds right around here. For two or three months now, there's been a steady supply of fish from the ponds, and the price has become affordable. The cost of a half-kilo carp has fallen back to 1,500 CFA."

At Bonoua, on the edge of the Aby Lagoon southeast of Abidjan, Williams Yao Brou has built two ponds covering 2.5 hectares. At the moment they're filled with 3,800 newly-hatched fish.

Through the whole of last year he sold nearly 3,500 fish, but he expects to sell all the fish now maturing in his ponds within the next three months.

"A maintenance problem cost me 300 hatchlings, but I don't think that will happen again," said Yao Brou. He says he earns around 6,000 dollars per production cycle.

"This business has become more exciting as other young people start coming to me for training, and to help me… This will allow us to produce enough to make up for the occasional shortages of fish," he told IPS.

He learned aquaculture techniques in the early 2000s, when he worked at a massive complex of ponds that were built in 1996 at Mahapleu, in the west of the country. That project, set up with finance from the African Development Bank, was abandoned in 2007 for lack of investment in the upkeep of the ponds.

In addition to supplying fishmongers at the local market, the young aquaculturists are looking for new outlets for their output. "Selling fish at the market or at motor parks won't yield quick profits. We want to find restaurants to supply directly, so we can shift our fish faster," said Aya, formerly a management student in Abidjan. Unable to find a job in the city, she opted for self-employment in aquaculture.

"Generally, the problem is finding start-up funds," Yao Brou told IPS. "But young people nowadays understand the need to share their ideas and projects, and together find some small seed capital to get started."

According to Dramé Sékongo, an agricultural engineer in Tiassalé, aquaculture requires only minimal equipment, money and know-how. "What Ivorian farmers are starting to do – especially the youth – is digging ponds in low-lying areas, alongside rice fields, to earn a bit of money. But some government support would help a bit," he told IPS.

In March, Côte d'Ivoire and the International Fund for Agricultural Development signed a 22.5 million dollar agreement to finance a project supporting agriculture and commercialisation in three northern regions – Bouaké, Korhogo and Bondoukou.

According to an IFAD press release, the project's goal is to help improve food security and boost incomes for small producers, particularly rural youth and women.

Co-financed by the Ivorian government, this project will be carried out by the Agriculture Ministry and IFAD expects it will bring direct and indirect benefits to more than 25,000 poor rural families. 

By Fulgence Zamblé@Internet Press Service News Agency

Zimbabwe: Zinwa to Implement On New Projects

                                      Urban Zimbabweans are struggling with water shortages. (Photo Courtesy http://www.irinnews.org) 

The Zimbabwe National Water Authority is set to embark on aquaculture and water-bottling ventures that would increase its revenue streams and ensure maximum utilisation of the majority of water bodies which currently are lying idle. The two new ventures were born out of the realisation that Zinwa cannot fund all its activities from the current revenue streams and neither can it afford to remain keeping under-utilised water bodies across the country.

The water authority has a debt overhang of U$55 million mainly due to other State agents like NSSA and Zimra.

However, this debt does not tell the true position as Zinwa is owed a staggering US$88 million by various stakeholders including local authorities, farmers and domestic consumers among others.

The most recent statistics within Zinwa show that the country is only using 25 percent of the water resources available in the dams across the country.

Of this 25 percent, 80 percent is consumed in the sugar-producing Lowveld while the remaining 20 percent is used by farmers across the country.

These statistics reveal that a mammoth 75 percent of water resources intended for irrigation is lying idle.

This is a result of a myriad of factors among them inadequate irrigation infrastructure or lack of financial resources by the farmers.

It is with the foregoing background that Zinwa has set up to enter into the lucrative aquaculture and tourism at large water bodies across the country.

Aquaculture refers to the commercial management of fisheries and crocodile farming.

These enterprises are highly profitable but need specialised human resource.

Zimbabwe provides the best climatic conditions for fisheries and crocodile farming.

These two enterprises have huge markets both locally and internationally.

Fish provides proteins for the majority of people while crocodile skin exports would become a very lucrative foreign currency earning revenue stream.

The authority would also make some of the water bodies become tourist resorts.

Water tourism is a lucrative business and evidence from Kariba, Mutirikwi, Mazvikadei, Chivero and Darwendale show.

This could be replicated and enhanced at other water bodies like Osborne in Mutare, Biri in Chinhoyi and Mazowe. The other project, Kumakomo Spring Water, is at advanced stages and has a potential to compete and carve itself a significant market share against existing water bottlers.

These two projects would play a complementary role in bringing in new revenue to that which comes from raw and treated water sales, consultancy on dam construction and from groundwater that deals with boreholes.

This new thrust would also go a long way in solving the country's paradox of having large and full water bodies conveniently spread across the whole country but still suffering the effects of droughts more frequently particularly in the last 30 years.

Zinwa would be able to fund from its resources the urgent implementation and rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure in communal areas like Chimanimani, Nyanyadzi, Chisumbanje and Mutoko, just but to mention a few.

These developments would overnight change the fortunes of peasant farmers by increasing their outputs and saving them from the harsh effects of droughts.

Interestingly, it would also bring the water authority closer to fulfilling its mandate in water management and its twin goal of improving irrigation infrastructure.

Zinwa believes these projects and endeavours reaffirm its commitment to become a self-sufficient institution that will not rely on government financial support to deliver on its broad mandate.

To that end, the water authority is moving with speed to implement these projects and bring a real difference to farmers, tourists and the economy at large.

 AllAfrica.com

Rooftop Aquaculture

It’s an indiegogo project for an aquaculture system that you can put up on your roof… or backyard or whatever. Assuming you have a flat roof. The guy does a TED talk about. Which gives it a little more credibility I think than the indiegogo thing, which seems to come up with unnervingly round numbers. Like 100kg per year as an estimation of fish output – that looks like a number pulled out of thin air to me, but if these guys have experience doing this stuff, then maybe not. It appears they do – website here etc.

Which does seem to be able to generate a reasonable amount of food. For a completely closed system though, you’d need to do more than feed fish effluent back into the plants (if you’re going to eat the plants/fish)… you’d also need to spray human excrement, styrofoam containers, plastic bags, heavy elements and greenhouse gases in a fine drizzle over the whole system. Bring an umbrella.

Balls to that though. I’m going to make a mini one of these with fresh-water crayfish, because most of the ideal fish are illegal in NZ. The best ones anyway – pretty much everything else in the rest of the world is a threat to native wildlife.

Here are a load of really interesting pictures (if you like this sort of thing) off Conceptual Devices, the design partner’s site. This stuff rocks – kind of needs an easily defineable BOM though… so it can be like the reprap of DIY food.

genomicon The Crowd-Sourcing of Intelligent Design

The Plant

The Plant is a new kind of organization in a very old building. It’s part vertical farm, part food-business incubator, part research and education space – and it will be entirely off the grid. Read on to learn more about what we’re doing – and welcome!

What is The Plant? A Farm for the Future.

From its beginnings as a 93,500 s.f. meatpacking facility, The Plant is being repurposed into a net-zero energy vertical farm and food business operation. A complex and highly interrelated system, one-third of The Plant will hold aquaponic growing systems and the other two-thirds will incubate sustainable food businesses by offering low rent, low energy costs, and a licensed shared kitchen. The Plant will create 125 jobs in Chicago’s economically distressed Back of the Yards neighborhood – but, remarkably, these jobs will require no fossil fuel use. Instead, The Plant will eventually divert over 10,000 tons of food waste from landfills each year to meet all of its heat and power needs.

A Net-Zero Energy System

Funded in part by $1.5 million in grant money from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, The Plant will install an anaerobic digester and a combined heat and power system to operate completely off the grid. By 2015, the completely enclosed, odorless anaerobic digester will consume 27 tons of food waste a day (~10,000 tons annually), including all of the waste produced in the facility and by neighboring food manufacturers. The digester will capture all of the methane from that waste, and the methane will be burned in a combined heat and power system to produce 400 kWh of electricity, plus all the process heat needed for New Chicago Beer Company’s 12,000 sq. ft. brewery. Excess heat will be used in an absorption chiller to regulate the building’s temperature. The Plant will also be energy efficient: while the building is already heavily insulated, we are improving the efficiency of existing mechanicals using recycled and locally manufactured materials.

Growing Vegetables with Fish

Recycling will also take place in the aquaponic farm systems. Aquaponics is a closed-loop growing system that creates a symbiotic relationship between tilapia and vegetables. The tilapia produce ammonia-based waste that is sent through a biofilter where solids settle out and the rest is broken down into nitrates. Those nitrates are then fed to plants growing in hydroponic beds. By absorbing the nitrates, the plants clean the water, which is returned to the fish. The Plant will sell both the fish and the vegetables to local food markets and restaurants, and will do so at a profit.

The Plant 

South Bronx Business Touts Farm Fishing In Trash Cans

                                                            Bronx Best Blue Tilapia

One Bronx business is farming fish in a trash can and the owners want others to follow their lead.

Bronx Best Blue Tilapia is what Christopher Toole calls the fish he sells at his South Bronx business. Raised for food, the small ones live in traditional glass fish tanks, but the larger ones thrive in garbage bins.

“They like the depth, they like the 3 or 4 feet deep. When they get big, they want to sink away into the dark,” Toole told CBS 2′s Elise Finch. “They prefer that when they’re larger, it keeps them calm. They’re happier to grow faster that way.”

The urban farmer said even though they’re marketed as trash cans, the food-grade plastic containers are perfect for fish as long as they’ve never actually held any trash.

Toole and his partner, Anya Pozdeeva, chose to sell Tilapia because they’re hearty and easy for people to raise. The duo also sells edible plants, which are aided by the nutrient-rich fish water.

“They get your plants to grow really, really fast. If you link that together with some pumps, then the plants will also clean the water for the fish. So it becomes a cycle — just like nature,” Toole said.

The couple believes that growing plants and fish in recirculating water systems is crucial for a sustainable future.

“I think we’re talking about sustainability on the level of family. Each family can grow their own food, which they know is clean, they know exactly what they want to grow and it’s right there,” Pozdeeva said. “Kids can eat better, people can be healthier.”

“That’s the right thing to do, rest the oceans and grow our own,” Toole said.

According to the couple, the supplies needed to start growing your own plants and fish cost less than $200 — garbage bin included.

If you buy some of the Bronx Best Blue Tilapia, it will take roughly nine months for them to grow large enough to eat.

CBS News NYC 

Business Snatches Up Carp

                   Blair Jamieson holds a silver carp which feeds on algae and can weigh upward of 20kg.

Almost 20,000 small grass and silver carp are being sent by a fish breeding business to a start-up land-based aquaculture business in Nelson.

If the venture is successful, Warkworth fish breeders Gray and Blair Jamieson say a new $600,000 aquaculture business could be established at Warkworth.

The first 3000 fish were counted and loaded into tanks for the journey to Gardens of the World at Hope, near Nelson.

While some will be used for clearing weed, about 90 per cent will be grown on, probably for supermarkets. Grass carp are a herbivorous Asian fish species. They have been used to clean waterways since being imported in the 1960s, but have not been bred as a food source in aquaculture, Blair Jamieson says.

They have advantages over carnivorous aquaculture fish stock which are fed large amounts of fish meal and fish oil processed from mainly wild caught fish.

The fish raised by the Jamiesons at New Zealand Waterways Restoration, the only one of its kind in the country, come from fish bred from the original 12 to 15 imports. The Mahurangi Technical Institute at Warkworth was involved in their successful breeding.

Grass carp shouldn't be confused with pest koi carp, Mahurangi Technical Institute director Paul Decker says.

New Zealand conditions are at the bottom end of their survival range and they are considered sterile here in the wild, needing specialist help to breed, says Mr Decker, a partner in the venture.

Grass carp can reach about 18kg. Silver carp, which eat only algae, can weigh slightly more. When grass carp have escaped, as they did in the Waikato River in the 1980s, they failed to breed, Mr Decker says. That's backed by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

While many of the Jamiesons' clients are councils, they also undertake clearing of water bodies for private owners. That includes South Head's Lake Kereta which in 2008 was 75 per cent covered in hornwort weed up to 2m high. A recent NIWA report confirms 99.9 per cent of the weed is gone.

Grass and silver carp come under the Conservation Department's permitting system with permits generally costing up to $2000, Blair Jamieson says.

Although there have been instances when permits have been much higher, with permit conditions often prohibitive, he says.

Restrictions are needed, including those to protect native plants which native species like eels feed on, DOC spokeswoman Amy Cameron says.

But the department's concerns about grass carp aren't shared by the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society.

"We don't have any serious issues with grass carp," Forest and Bird Auckland and Northland officer Nick Beveridge says.

"They don't breed here, nor do silver carp." 

Written by  Delwyn Dickey@Stuff.co.nz