”

‘The typical response I get from RAS operators in plants, that’s another business. Fair enough, argument in that.’ How is industry going to develop? ‘I think it’s going to go through the same teething problems that RAS and hydroponics have gone through. It’s new industry syndrome 90 per cent for aquaponics businesses.’

Lennard said the ‘newbies’ with no aquaculture or hydroponics background who jump in without any training give the industry a bad name.

‘No one will go near it for 10 years, and then the three or four of us who know what we’re do- ing will hopefully keep some projects going and then it will become more prominent again, which is exactly the same growth pathway as for RAS.’

Apart from delivering lectures and workshops around the world, he runs his Aquaponic Solu

‘I try to teach people how to design properly with engineering principles, give them spread You need to know how to design and engineer properly.’

scale aquaponics.

going to have a place but it’s going to be a very niche enterprise.

‘You read on the internet it’s going to feed the world but that’s nonsense. No one grows basic carbohydrates in aquaponics, it’s not viable. I defy anyone to build a 10,000 acre aquaponics facility that grows wheat, it’s not going to happen.

‘The vast majority of the world live on raw carbohydrates- wheat, corn, rice- you can grow it So why do it at all? ‘Aquaculture people, especially RAS farmers, should consider it because it lowers the environmental impact.

‘In the Scandinavian countries there’s a big debate going on at the moment about how they’re going to expand the salmon industry. they currently do and that means they have to keep them on land in RAS longer.’

That creates an environmental impact, he said, but they could ameliorate waste through aquaponics – ‘make a saleable crop out of it that you can make money from’.

Lennard has not been invited to Norway to someone outside the salmon industry who is unit to show what can be done.

And his European business partner is Max staged the Devon workshop.

make money or forget it,’ said Lennard.

You’ve got to know business to make money.’