A Forever Young Aquaponics facility broke ground in Jonesboro last Thursday, which will be able to produce food locally for cities around the Southeast including Atlanta. Aquaponics is an agricultural technique that combines hydroponics — growing plants without soil, a technique often seen in vertical farms — and aquaculture — cultivating fish in an enclosed system.
The 70,000 square foot facility is a joint effort between the Andrew J. Young Foundation, the Clayton County Board of Commissioners and WaterFarmers Aquaponics. The foundation also has another farm in development located in Colorado, which plans to have its first harvest in December of this year.
Ambassador Andrew Young was joined with a host of partners at the groundbreaking ceremony where the facility will be standing in the near future, where he expressed his excitement and enthusiasm for the development which boasts a predicted 48 percent less carbon footprint than traditional farming and a 92 percent water reduction.
In aquaponics the byproducts from fish, specifically ammonia, gets converted into nitrites and eventually into nitrates by microorganisms which the plants can then use as nutrients. All of these methods generally fall under closed environment agriculture (CEA), which benefits from limiting external factors such as weather and insects and eliminates need for pesticides and can grow specific crops that would otherwise be out of season in a region, eliminating the need to source food from thousands of miles away.
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