Toward home-scale aquaponics

(Cover image "Tech Loops" reproduced under Creative Commons BY-NC 2.5 license from http://xkcd.com/1579/.)

Home-scale aquaponics providing food worth the equivalent of at least $28 per hour (saved, i.e. after-tax dollars) seems like potentially a big win for efficiency (for at least 87% of US residents) as well as for DIY. For my initial, planning phase, I've been attending Tucson AquaPonics Project meetups, reading about some best practices, interviewing some practitioners and experts, and drafting some of my analysis, e.g. here.

I'd been aware of aquaponics for some time (and XC's member Victor C. has been running AP systems at Tierra y Libertad and at Community Food Bank) but thought of it again recently after seeing the xkcd comic "Tech Loops." The comic reminded me of why I think aquaponics -- alongside amateur-built tiny houses and other DIY "downscaling" technologies such as electric bicycle kits to reduce use of cars -- could be powerful incremental life hacks and experiential learning tools.

Without the internet, and without education in computer engineering, computer science, and economics, I'd probably not be so acutely aware of how inefficient our highly-mediated lifestyle is. But a lifestyle that is like a Rube Goldberg contraption, even if it permits me to realize it, does not strike me as quite obviously efficient -- certainly not more so than that of the fisherman in this story.

E.g. one might have:

• long work hours (to compete with ever more "efficient" competitors)
• sedentary desk job
• childcare (not particularly near work)
• rented or mortgaged housing (not particularly near work)
• car
• commute (sedentary time in car)

in order to work a job to pay for (mostly):

• gym membership and personal trainer
• childcare
• transportation to childcare
• taxes for regulation of childcare
• car
• taxes for regulation of car production
• taxes for cleanup of pollution from car production
• taxes for bailouts of car companies
• rent or mortgage
• taxes for bank regulation
• taxes for bailouts of poorly regulated banks
• taxes for roads for car
• taxes for cleanup of pollution from road construction
• manufactured food
• food distribution salaries & fuel
• food retail salaries & energy cost
• taxes for regulation of food production, distribution, and retail
• fees to "certify" that some of the food is even cleaner than the law requires
• healthcare to fix problems caused by job, manufactured food, and toxins from food production, distribution, transportation production, transportation, etc.
• taxes and insurance that subsidize healthcare for others
• profits, taxes, health care, and other overhead for (how many?) levels of middlemen
• taxes to subsidize middlemen's tax obligations and insurance
• taxes to subsidize children of middlemen who go broke
• life insurance to support a family who needs to pay mortgage and buy food

plus the little bit that he actually needs, i.e. the actual cost of:

• minimal sufficient housing
• clean, nutritious, toxin-free food
• for one's kids to learn sufficient living skills and artistic skills in a safe environment.

Or one could simply:

• get known-clean food by some minimally-mediated means appropriate to the context (in a 21st century first-world urban context, i.e. with only 30 minutes per day and not much space, that may be home aquaponics)
• build own house from found materials (gradually, from a minimal $500 shack,to a larger, nicer $5000 cottage, to a... you get the idea)
• help teach or mentor for an open school (like the classroom of John Taylor Gatto, who was twice New York State teacher of the year), instructing kids into a sustainable and satisfying way of life (i.e. the same way in which one has been living, treating the entire world as a makerspace and classroom)

What is the endgame? If one manages to increase efficiency beyond the best-known historical levels, one would finally surpass "the original affluent society," i.e. hunter-gatherer societies, who, at least as recently as the 1960s, (i.e. on whatever marginal land was left over after colonists had taken the best of it) would spend about 2-3 hours per day doing the bare minimal required work (i.e. harvesting plants, hunting and fishing, things many of us do for fun) and after eating "the stuff on the floor," as comedian Louis CK put it in this bit, they would dance, sing, hike, swim, make love, make art, make and play musical instruments, etc.

For now: One needs, at the last, some space, pond liner, water and air pumps, fish, and plants. I could help others with my knowledge and skills (human capital). I've helped build in cob (especially a variety with newsprint and lime), which would be useful for forming fish tanks and grow beds to be lined with plastic pond liner, which may be the cheapest method.