THE WATER FARMERS
Aquaponics holds the promise of growing fresh food year round, but it’s an expensive process that requires sophisticated equipment. That means the entrepreneurs who are taking the plunge aren’t just worried about growing plants and raising fish; they also
Aquaponics holds the promise of growing fresh food year round, but it’s an expensive process, which means the entrepreneurs who are taking the plunge aren’t just worried about growing plants and raising fish; they also have to figure out how to keep their heads above water.
It sounds like a grow-op designed by Ikea. Paul Shumlich is describing the farm he’s planning to build. It will contain no soil and admit no sunlight. The walls will be industrial-chic concrete, the floors spotless. Plants will grow in meticulous rows under LED lights, their roots suspended in water. Fish will swim placidly in blue pools. It’s all very clean, very tasteful, very Scandinavian. It’s Deepwater Farms, an aquaponics operation, and Shumlich is betting it’s going to change the way Calgarians eat.
I’m interviewing Shumlich in his marketing manager’s downtown office. As we speak, he’s finalizing details with an investor to make the indoor farm a reality. If all goes according to plan, Deepwater Farms will be the largest, most advanced aquaponics farm in the Calgary area. (His preferred site is in the Chestermere area.) He’s convinced me that if anyone can make it happen, it’s him. Dressed all in black, he looks the part of the entrepreneur, but his youthful optimism and cherubic good looks drive home the fact that he’s only 26. “Local isn’t just a fad,” he tells me. “We need a resilient food system. That’s my drive.” He thinks the answer is aquaponics, a system of agriculture that few Calgarians have even heard of.
The unconventional farming method combines aquaculture (fish farming) and hydroponics (growing plants in water) in a single, closed system. Fish are kept in ponds or pools, and produce waste that is broken down into nitrites and then nitrates by micro-organisms. The waste water is sent to the plants, which absorb the nitrates and, in the process, clean the water, which is then sent back to the fish. Recirculation means that the system uses approximately 95 per cent less water than conventional farming methods. It’s completely organic, and it grows plants at incredible rates, many times faster than conventional methods.
Aquaponics was arguably developed by the Mayans, who cultivated chinampas, systems of canals and manmade islands on which they grew vegetables. There are also historical accounts of fish being farmed in rice paddies in China and Southeast Asia, but modern aquaponics is generally attributed to the work of the New Alchemy Institute and the research of Mark McMurtry, a graduate student at North Carolina State University in the 1980s. In the late 1990s, James Rakocy, a
"Local isn't just a fad" PAUL Deepwater SHUMLICH,Farms
professor of aquaculture at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), and his colleagues used their research on effluent treatment and raft cultures to develop a reliable and replicable commercial system. Rakocy and his colleagues taught the UVI method of aquaponics to students all over the world.
The field of aquaponics was becoming well-established and commercially viable. And that’s when Rakocy came to Alberta. In Brooks, a place more typically associated with feedlots and slaughterhouses than with permaculture, he and Nick Savidov, an Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development researcher, built a replica of the UVI system at the Crop Diversification Centre South. Lethbridge College was also experimenting with aquaponics, beginning with research in 1989 that examined whether triploid grass carp could control aquatic vegetation in irrigation canals. In 2015, the college recruited Savidov, cementing its reputation as an important centre of aquaponics research.
Aquaponics producers speak of Savidov in reverential tones. He is the Yoda of the field and is sought out by anyone in Alberta who’s interested in aquaponics. “Savidov handed us a big chunk of research that he’d already done. He’s already doing all the commercial viability studies. It was basically the reason that convinced me to get involved,” says Dan Ronald, owner of Aqua Terra Farms, a small Okotoks-based business. But like most aquaponics producers, the hard science wasn’t what triggered Ronald’s interest. For him, trips to the Arctic and the Amazon in 2008 “really bummed me out. I came back and was talking to my buddy, and we started talking about the future: ‘We’re going to be living on Mars in a hundred years! The planet’s in trouble.’ ”
Shumlich’s interest began when he was a student running a window-washing business. It was paying his way through university, but it wasn’t satisfying. “I wanted to put time and money into something more meaningful. I wanted it to be about the triple bottom line: people, profit, planet,” he says. Shumlich started scouring the Internet for ideas, and discovered aquaponics. He dove in, but at the back of his mind he wondered, “Is this some sort of hippy technology?”
He drove down to Lethbridge College to meet Charlie Shultz, Savidov’s predecessor, and came back convinced that he needed to start unconventional farming. The next step was rounding up a bunch of his window-washing buddies to help him build a rudimentary aquaponics system in the backyard of his parents’ rental house. They hit an immediate roadblock when they discovered that the bacteria needed to run the system would take 18 months to mature. But Shumlich found a guy on Kijiji who was selling his home aquaponics system, and was willing to include the bacteria. “It was like a one-in-amillion chance,” he says. With a few supplies from Home Depot, and some koi off Kijiji, the first system was ready to go.
“Stuff grew crazy quick,” Shumlich says. And that’s when he had his a-ha moment. “I was in Safeway. I was buying organic produce, and I said ‘Why is everything grown in Mexico or California?’ It was really sh--y-looking produce. I’m growing this stuff in my backyard.” He’d found his new business.
The main problem with backyard aquaponics systems in Alberta is called winter. Shumlich and his friends found some greenhouse space at Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary, and spent the winter focusing on the nutrient balance and trying to integrate the fish and plants. But the winter sun wasn’t adequate for growing plants, and, what’s more, Shumlich was asked to leave the greenhouse because MRU didn’t have a fish licence. He and his crew moved to a friend’s greenhouse, which worked well until a cold snap and an unsealed door made them realize just how sensitive the system was to temperature fluctuations. It was a turning point. “I said, ‘We’re going completely indoors, and we’re using LEDs,’” Shumlich recalls.
He set about building a commercial system in his grandparents’ three-car garage. It took three months to clean out the space and set up the equipment. That was the easy part. The system would require constant attention, so, with the lease on his apartment set to expire, Shumlich decided to move into the garage with his plants and fish. If parenthood is defined as being available to your dependants 24/7, Shumlich was now a doting dad. He said to himself, “If I’m still living here next winter, I’m doing something wrong.” He began making regular trips to Lethbridge to consult with Savidov.
Around the same time, Shumlich entered the entrepreneurship stream at MRU, and began interviewing chefs in Calgary, trying to understand the market for his produce. “I found eight ingredients that they all wanted year round and said, ‘Boom—here are our products,’ ” he says. This ingredient list included various lettuces and herbs. At one point, his research involved some unconventional methods. “He just walked in with a bag of lettuce and asked if we could use any of it in the restaurant” says Eric Hendry, a chef who was working at Model Milk at the time. “He ran with it. I give him props.”
Calgary’s chefs are interested in seeing businesses like Shumlich’s succeed, because, like growers, they’re forced to reckon with Alberta’s climate. “In Calgary, our climate lends itself really well to what he does right now,” says Connie DeSousa of Charcut Roast House and Charbar. “I think it’s really beneficial. We still make do with a lot of cellared vegetables during the winter months,
but it’s nice to be able to provide our guests with other varieties.”
Local food also makes good business sense. “We get stiffed when produce comes from the U.S.,” Hendry says. “The economy is really affecting us. Anyone sending us produce from California, as soon as it’s in the box, it’s money for them. But because it’s in transport for so long, the produce is more damaged, chances are it’s been picked when it’s less ripe, and it goes through Vancouver first.” This is in stark contrast to Shumlich’s model, where produce and fish will be packed into reusable totes, delivered to stores, and sold to consumers the same day. “As far as what Paul wants to do, his vision, it’s the best-case scenario in my mind,” Hendry says.
Constant monitoring is a factor in running an aquaponics system, as Shumlich discovered during his six-month stint in his grandparents’ garage. “It’s more complex (than other agricultural methods) because of how tightly integrated and interconnected the system is,” says Nick Hsu of Earthis Ltd., an Okotoks-based aquaponics producer. “In other operations, you can do things in isolation, but in aquaponics you have to look at the holistic effects of your water, pH, dissolved solids, nitrate levels, and water temperature, among many other things. You have to balance the specific needs of the plants, the fish, and the micro-organisms, and you have to find the middle ground.” Hsu is philosophical about the effort needed to keep the system balanced: “I always see it as a microcosm of the balancing act of nature; in the planet you can pollute a river, but you won’t see the effects immediately. With this system, the connection is a lot more obvious.”
Building and maintaining that microcosm doesn’t come cheap, according to Riley Duigou of Tricklin’ Water Produce, a small aquaponics start-up in Calgary. “What works well on a small scale often doesn’t work the same way on a large scale,” he says. “You need bigger pumps, bigger pipes, and more sophisticated filtration systems. There are heat and energy requirements year-round.” Different producers find different ways of raising the necessary funds. Some start aquaponics operations only after being successful at other forms of farming: the owners of the massive Current Prairie Fisherman Corp near Nobleford, Alta., transformed it into an aquapon-
ics operation only after their fish-farming business proved successful. Then there’s Dan Ronald of Aqua Terra Farms, who is running a Kickstarter campaign selling home aquaponics units to fund his commercial goals.
As for Shumlich, he’s doing what entrepreneurs do: trying to sell his vision to investors. While he was still a business student at MRU, he won significant seed money at various student-pitch competitions across Canada, and when he was living in his grandparents’ garage, he spent the summer months touring potential investors around his indoor farm.
He also networks with Calgary’s business community, and has discovered that there is a real appetite for what he has to offer. In a city hit by falling oil prices, Shumlich’s vision couldn’t have come at a better time. Calgary Economic Development (CED) quickly took up his cause. “What a lot of people don’t realize is that this province did around $14 billion in food manufacturing sales in 2015,” says Sasha Musij, of CED. “Agriculture can help offset the downturn as we diversify into other industries that make sense for the city. There is a big appetite in Calgary for this. And Paul is at the forefront.”
That support is crucial, because the challenges are large. Legislation hasn’t kept up with the growing industry. Shumlich is working with the city to change that. “We’ve been having open discussions about how they implement policy that will catalyze urban agriculture in Calgary. They’re asking how they can help with fish processing. It’s supportive at a municipal level. At a provincial level, they are helping all growers in Alberta co-operate and get organized. They’ve had a lot of meetings with big growers.”
There’s also the organic issue. Aquaponics is so new that it still isn’t certified organic, and that can affect what consumers are willing to pay.
And then there’s the squeamishness factor. “As a society, we have become disconnected from how food is grown and some are grossed out that ( the plants) are grown with fish, without understanding their symbiotic relationship,” says Duigou. “It’s an unfortunate stigma.” The stigma is also somewhat ironic, considering that consumers often don’t know how imported food was grown.
According to Bruce Martin, the general manager of Community Natural Foods, that lack of clarity has given rise to a new development. “The public is just very interested in local—more so than organic,” he says. “I think they make the assumption that if it comes from a local farm, it will be cleaner, better.”
It’s hard to get more local than a farm right in Calgary’s backyard. If Shumlich can get his industrial-chic farm up and running, Calgarians will have access to some of the freshest produce they’ve ever tasted. And Deepwater Farms will be helping to grow an industry alongside its plants and fish.