My last post outlined my idea for vertical farming, i.e. raise chickens, chicken manure goes to hot compost, hot compost goes to worms, worms feed chickens, vermicompost from worms goes to gardening. It also occurred to me that I should define what I mean by vertical farming. Some people define vertical farming as building a garden that isn’t just on the ground, i.e. stretched into the air by a series of structures that allow plants to be grown in the air (using vertical space). While I am all for that — and I’m actually talking about that below, what I actually mean by vertical farming is something else.

Vertical means controlling every aspect of a process — all the components necessary to do something. For instance, vertical manufacturing in the car industry would involve building the nuts and bolts, to assembling the bumpers, and every little aspect of the manufacturing process. By vertical farming, I mean managing the cycle of several components of a farming system that all work together.

I’ve been doing some more research, and I think I’ve come up with a better model for vertical farming. Before I get into that though, let me talk a little about one of the websites that I’ve been researching. It is called Synaptoman and he talks a lot about aquaponics (and complains a lot about South African politics). How good is his blog? It’s good enough to sort through 2 pages of political drivel in order to get to each gem of an article he has about aquaponics, it’s that good. If you are interested in anything about aquaculture or intensive fish farming, check out his blog and bookmark it.
So anyways, here is the new theory on vertical farming I have. The downtime for hot composting being 6 months, waiting for the chicken manure to age, decompose and not be a “hot” manure anymore (i.e. burn roots from excess ammonia when directly applied to plants), is a bit excessive. I’m completely scraping that portion.

In addition, worm farming is ok — but not nearly as profitable as what I think my new system involves. So here is the new plan, everyone please feel free to tell me what you think.

The new system integrates:

• chicken broiler raising (from one day old chick through 45 day ready to sell for food).
• aquaculture and aquaponics (either tilapia or bangus milk fish, still debating that one)
• to a smaller degree, worm farming — but not to produce vermicompost, and not necessarily to feed fish or chickens (though that may happen)
• and gardening

So here is a breakdown of how the system will work together.  First of all, the broilers.  Instead of having a goal of feeding the broilers worms, I intend to have their feed be 100% nutrition balanced food that is designed to make broilers grow as quickly as possible.  Worms may or may not be added to their feed.  This will be a commercial sized operation.  Their manure will be recycled through a system of vertical farming processes (explained below) — and growing the broilers is something I want to be able to scale up as much as possible for the purpose of selling the broilers.

Next — the chickens have to poo.  What to do with it?  One of two things.  If I decide on bangus fish for the fish farm — I will have the chicken manure go to a special pond designed to grow algae.  When chicken manure (any manure really) is added to a shallow pond in a nice warm climate — algae grows like crazy.  Bangus (milk fish) are in the family of carp, and they eat algae as food.  Now I’m planning on designing this system as low maintenance as possible.  So low maintenance, in fact, that I plan on building the chicken coop right over the pond, so that when the chickens go — it drops right into the pond.  The algae will help add oxygen to the water during the day time, which will allow the fish pond to be a little more intensive (higher density of fish).

There is a downside to this however, Bangus fish really like brackish (partly salt) water.  They are also difficult to breed, and all of the bangus fish fry must be purchased (from a location that is quite a drive away).  This is because Bangus fish don’t really get to breeding age until they’re at least five years old — and they only breed on the edge of the ocean in brackish water.

Or — I could choose to raise tilapia.  Then the coop setup would change slightly.  Instead of it going chicken poo > algae > bangus food — it would go chicken poo > fish food.  Although tilapia would eat algae a little, they would more go for the undigested ingredients of the chicken manure.

Benefits of raising tilapia — they can be raised in fresh water.  It is easier to raise tilapia babies (in fact it is possible to get special lines of tilapia which are red, or improved body form, or produce hybrids which have much larger filets).  I would have to buy expensive breeding stock for tilapia to do it the way I would want — expensive as in several thousand dollars a small breeder setup of one male to six females.  However, with the improved offspring, getting bigger and fatter in a faster time, with less food — over the long run it would pay for itself.  The improved breed tilapia have been improved as a breed by one gentleman (who created the first red tilapia, which he called a “Cherry Snapper”) for over 40 years.  For more information about the improved breed tilapia, follow this link.

The downside to raising tilapia?  My wife doesn’t think it tastes nearly as good as Bangus white fish.  My wife’s sister doesn’t think it tastes as good either.  In fact, in our local market bangus white fish sells for three times as much as tilapia.  But then again — they rarely buy bangus because it costs so much.  Another benefit of bangus, it tastes great.  Another downside — its full of bones and its difficult to de-bone.

There are many advantages and disadvantages to raising either tilapia or bangus and I’m still in the decision process of which to raise.  I would, however, like to fish farm intensively (lots of broiler chickens, lots of chicken manure, lots of feed for fish — directly or indirectly — lots of fish).  For more information about chicken poo going directly to feed tilapia, check out this blog article from synoptoman using chicken manure to feed tilapia.

Next, the fish water will be polluted and need to be filtered.  I intend to do this through a setup like the one commonly found at that synoptoman blog I referenced above.  The water is filtered through a series of gravel inside greenhouses.  The fish poo and debris and solids are filtered through a series of cement runners filled with gravel.  Through all these runners, the nutrients from the solid fish waste are settled and absorbed by plants.

Whatever is not filtered by plants — that is where the worms come in.  Yet, instead of actually harvesting the worms, they are left in the gravel — and produce worm castings.  These worm castings instantly start producing worm tea, or vermicompost tea, right inside the gravel (thereby improving the manure already coming from the fish).

All of this gets looped around back to the fish point of origin and cycles itself.

To make the project more interesting — we are planning on purchasing a piece of land that has a river with a head drop of at least a meter.  We dam it up and use it to construct a pulsar pump (or pulsating pump) that uses bubbles from the waterfall to compress air.  We can use the compressed air directly to add oxygen to the fish ponds — or indirectly as an airlift water pump.  The bubbles created by the compressed air will allow our fish ponds to be a little more intensive (stock more fish).  And the air lift water pump will be necessary to replenish water to the system as it will not be 100% efficient at conserving water.