Young farmer finds niche in aquaponics
WHO said farms should be expansive areas of land on the outskirts of town and that agriculture production cannot mutually co-exist with the hustle and bustle of city life? New farming strategies are coming up to diffuse that old myth and 29-year-old Mr Ranga Munjanja is using one of the techniques that requires little space and uses little water to produce the much sought after vegetables in Bulawayo.
The young aquaponics farmer strongly believes that with the modern farming method that he uses, he can easily grow any of the horticultural crops that the country’s markets require.
Having stayed in the United States of America for 11 years, the young farmer is back and intends to grow leafy greens and herbs using aquaponics at his enterprise, Aquaponics Zimbabwe. He invested US$15 000 into the project and began assembling the required inputs.
Mr Munjanja explained that aquaponics was a modern method of agriculture that combines aquaculture, which is growing fish, and hydroponics, which refers to growing of plants without soil. Instead of growing crops in soil, aquaponics relies on use of fish waste to provide crops with nutrition, with the used water thereafter recycled to the fish tank as clean water. “It is suitable even for urban areas because it is conducive for growing large amounts of produce in a small space because it is in a controlled environment,” he said.
“Aquaponics allows for all year-round produce. Significantly, aquaponics is about growing produce organically without use of pesticides or herbicides and uses 90 percent less water than traditional horticulture.”
Introduced to the method “by mistake”, Mr Munjanja said he came across aquaponics after realising that there are opportunities in agriculture than mining, which was his initial investment plan when he came to Zimbabwe in April this year.
After research and consultations, Mr Munjanja noticed that there was a niche that could be exploited in aquaponics.
He had already been researching on hydroponics when he came across aquaponics and once he had made the decision to venture into agriculture, aquaponics were his solution to his plans for the family plot in Riverside.
Mr Munjanja is producing cucumbers, pepper, tomatoes, strawberries and lettuce and is determined to prove that large scale farming can be done in an urban area because the method is efficient, sustainable and highly productive.
The greatest advantage is being in close proximity to clients like supermarkets, restaurants and walk-in customers.
According to Mr Munjanja, who is working on 400 square metres of land which has the capacity to produce a yield similar to what can be produced on two acres, Zimbabweans are becoming increasingly conscious about what they eat and are leaning more towards organically grown food. But there is another, if equally laudable, ambition.
“Our aim at Aquaponics Zimbabwe is to help solve our country’s high food import bill by growing different types of produce for the local market,” he told Sunday News Business.
“The high cost of horticultural produce is a rare opportunity for aquaponics to participate in locally grown produce for the local market. With large-scale aquaponics farming, there can even be adequate produce for export.”
He believes that aquaponics can be the solution for problems of the agricultural sector like shortage of land and scarcity of water and funding. For many Zimbabweans looking to venture into horticulture, the large financial outlay required for fencing, debushing and sinking a borehole is an obstacle. In this young farmer’s view, the capital needed to fence up a 10-hectare farm can be used to buy a backyard aquaponics system that can bring good income all year round.
“Being allocated land, including that for farming, has proven to be nearly impossible for the ordinary Zimbabwean,” he pointed out.
“We do not all have the financial strength to buy farms or to drill boreholes or find good water to irrigate vegetables. Modern agriculture like aquaponics permits farming literally anywhere, including in towns and cities. It is a great solution to the many stumbling blocks of lack of land, water and finance.”
But his aquaponics project would not have worked if he did not have a sound financial footing and most young people have no access to funding. He admits that inadequate knowledge of aquaponics and fear of the unknown among his family members who are based in the US and Canada were a serious stumbling block.– @ RealSimbaJemwa