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State University of New York
Michael Amadori looks into a fish tank growing tilapia in a lab at the State University of New York. The fish waste is used to grow lettuce.
If, in a few years, you are suddenly overcome with a sense that there's something fishy about the lettuce in your salad, you might be on to something. There's a chance it was grown with fish poop.
"There's no fish taste whatsoever," Michael Amadori, a master's student in ecological engineering at the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry, assured me Wednesday.
For now, Amadori is growing the futuristic lettuce in question as part of a science experiment aimed at closing the loop between the food we throw away and the food we eat.
Americans throw out about 25 percent of their food, he noted, a fact that led him to ask: "Can I take this waste product in our society and turn it into a value-added product?"
To find out, he's set up an experiment where he feeds dried food waste from a student cafeteria to fish in freshwater tanks and uses the fish poop to grow Boston Bibb lettuce.
The concept is called "aquaponics," a combination of fish farming and hydroponics (growing vegetables without soil). Though not new, this is the first time it has been tried with post-consumer food waste to feed fish.
Most aquaponic systems, Amadori said, spend about 50 percent of their operating budget on commercial fish feed, which is typically pellets made from ground up fish, corn, and vitamins.
So, while systems such as the Massachusetts Avenue Project in Buffalo, N.Y., and Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wis., are great socially and environmentally, "they are having trouble making a profit," Amadori said.
His experiment is set up in a greenhouse where tilapia, a hardy freshwater fish that will eat just about anything, is raised in half a dozen 55-gallon barrels holding 20 fish each.
The cafeteria food waste is ground up, dried, and broken up into pellets that are fed to the fish in three of the tanks. The other fish are fed commercial pellets as a control factor.
Temperature-controlled water from the fish tanks is cycled into graveled-filled containers where the lettuce grows.
"The gravel bed has bacteria that convert the fish waste into plant food and then the plants remove that and the water returns (to the fish tank) clean," Amadori explained.
The experiment has been running for about four months. The fish won't be harvested until they weigh around a pound, at about one year of age. The lettuce, however, is abundant.
"I'm making 18 heads a week and it is delicious," Amadori said. "It tastes just like the lettuce you buy at the grocery store."
More on sustainable food:
- Fishing for food solutions, aquaponics offers clues
- Could vertical farming be the future?
- Rooftops take urban farming to the skies
- U.S. OKs large fish farms in Gulf of Mexico
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
Leave a Comment:
Not sure if animal products like meat and cheese would be natural foods for tilapia. Seems that we get into trouble when we start feeding animal products to animals intended for human consumption. Perhaps that issue is addressed in the processing for the fish feed.
Nice video. another idea from Dr. David Epistein
com/2011/09/blog-post_944.html
update news is
Duckweed to solve the polluted water grow fish food.
Poop of any kind is always good fertilizer.
What a bunch of children. Poop is what you call it if you're a child.
It's called feces or sh*t.
I have offficially eaten my last salad.
Why?? Didn't you realize that all plants use the poop of earthworms and other soil organisms to get their nutrients? That is what soil is after all - decomposed plant and animal remains and some ground up rock.
I hear ya! My preference is bat dung.
I think you're just looking for an excuse not to eat salads. As Notanidiot points out, what do you think is in the soil all our veggies are grown in? What do you think is in fertilizer?
Call me naive, but I think this is an outstanding idea. Feed the fish with food waste, grow lettuce with the fish waste, and then -- when they're big enough -- eat the fish! From one source -- food that is thrown away -- comes two new sources of food. Fantastic!
I have offficially eaten my last salad.
Yeah, because poop is much worse than industrial chemicals used in most fertilizers.
The kind coming out of D.C. is great for mushrooms.
Bravo and Well Done to you, Mr. Amadori! Think you're a shoe in for the Master's degree.
Now there is a supply of poop that is inexhaustable-we'll never run out -Polypoop. Doesn't matter if it's Republican poop or Democrat poop-it's still POOP!!!
I've always been told to use fish water that you take out when it's time for the maintenance to pour it over the soil for your plants because it's more nutrition than just plain water.
Crap, thats all it is. Oh crap, that is what it is.
It would take me a year to collect enough to fill a thimble.
I'll stick with the cow manure I've used for years.
On a footnote, I used to raise pigeons and a kid, and I used the pigeon dropping on a tree in our yard.
It was a very healthy tree and grew bigger and taller than any of the same kind of trees in our neighborhood.
Poop, what's it food for? Absolutly nothing! Till now. Good idea. Recycle poop. But the Japanese have always put a bit of fish in their plants. I learned that a long time ago, and have done that for years. But now we can recycle "everything"!
Lol. This will go in my Post-Apocalypse mental survival guide if I'm still alive. Fish crap=delicous lettuce. :D
I did more than this a couple of decades ago as a high school science freshman project. Got food AND oxygen out of the waste. My diners and poop contributors were a couple of mice.
I Love POOP, POOP is the other word for 'organic'. If you are going green you gotta love poop.
Bettaer still, more often than not, in an election we vote for POOP, and thanks to the POOPOG! no one can manage the economy now!!! . "LOVE POOP!!" "Vote POOPOG!!"
Well i love this i can't write this type of thing on my blog because it is a <a href="//www.surgical-blog.com">Surgical-blog</a>
This is really great post for me..
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not much to say
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I've used fish-poop water from my aquarium for years as fertiliser, but it is so powerful it sometimes does bad stuff. This sounds like a good idea, so it will likely be...are you ready?...poo-pooed by most folks.
If you are interested in learning more about Aquaponics and Growing Beyond Organic, join us Wednesdays in July at thepoint.org find our more here... www.savefarms.org Thanks
i've never read so much about so many people who are all fired up about poop. i'll bet the politicians are starting to drool.
We actually use duckweed to feed our fish at The Massachusetts Avenue Project. It's 40% protein and is grown within the system. The fish fertilize their own food in a closed system.
Hey! This is fantastic! We are building a similar system down here at Messiah College in PA. We did the SOMAT (Pureed Post-Con Waste) for a little while, but switched to Sunflower Press Cake, as we press our own oil here. Just trying to close the gap! Keep up the good work Michael!
www.fshyplnts.wordpress.com