Hydroponics at work.
Most of his rooftop is given over to an aquaponic system, which produces food by linking fish tanks of tilapia with gravel-filled planters.
The integrated system feeds the water from the fish tanks into the plant beds, where Abu Ahmed’s crops — lettuce, peppers, broccoli, celery and herbs — are fertilised by waste produced by the tilapia.
As the water trickles through the gravel, the plants absorb nutrients from the fish waste, cleaning the water, which then replenishes the tanks.
“The idea really was to help the poorest people in Gaza be able to grow some of their own food, and healthy food, grown without pesticides,” explains Mohammed El Shatali, the project’s deputy manager.The Raw Story
Fish and vegetables grow without soil on Gaza rooftops
Agence France-Presse
See also:
Drip Irrigation
The 2012 World Food Prize will be awarded to Dr. Daniel Hillel for his role in conceiving and implementing a radically new mode of bringing water to crops in arid and dry land regions - known as “micro-irrigation.”
Dr. Hillel’s pioneering scientific work in Israel revolutionized food production, first in the Middle East, and then in other regions around the world over the past five decades. His work laid the foundation for maximizing efficient water usage in agriculture, increasing crop yields, and minimizing environmental degradation.The World Food Prize
2012 Laureate
3 comments:
See also Internet of food: Arduino-based, urban aquaponics in Oakland and Kijani Grows
It's happening.
Notice how real progress doesn't have to high technology but depends on the context of where technology is used. Cities are the places for "high technology" but rural farm and forest area should be balanced with "low technology."
Neoliberalism has inverted the balance by trying to turn rural farms into high tech genetically engineered and synthetic chemicals monocrop factories dependent on the increasing "low tech" and broken down infrastructure of the city.
Hopefully we can start to turn this around starting with prop. 37 in California.
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