In order to raise public awareness of aquaponics, Interreg France-Wallonie-Vlaanderen is launching the Smart Aquaponics project. The cooperation program between the four border regions (West and East Flanders, Wallonia and the Hauts-de-France and Grand Est regions in France) is receiving two million euros of EU support to further develop the combination of aquaculture and vegetable cultivation.
With the European support, methods will be developed in the Smart Aquaponics project to make the concept more widely known. First of all, a smart game will be developed for innovative education on aquaponics. In addition, there will be an app for remote monitoring and management of an aquaponics system, both for private individuals and professionals. Smart Aquaponics also plans to develop a decision model to design, model and predict the yields of aquaponics systems efficiently.
In Flanders, a number of companies are already fully engaged in aquaponics. A good example is the collaboration between tomato nursery Tomato Masters and the adjacent Omegabaars perch nursery Aqua4C in Deinze. In the spring of 2018, the largest aquaponics company in Europe was opened at the Abattoir Farm in Anderlecht.
Source: VILT