Friendly Aquaponics in the news:
Friendly Aquaponics: Commercial and Home-Scale Fish and Vegetable Production
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 11.12.09
Food & Health (food)
It always appeals to me when I see a business that lists, as one of its goals, to “put ourselves out of business as soon as we can” by spreading its knowledge as freely as generously as possible—especially when Leonard Nimoy is quoted as inspiration. But I suspect Friendly Aquaponics in Hawaii will be in business for some time to come. And that’s no bad thing. If their website is anything to go by, their aquaponics system is one of the most impressive I’ve seen.
From the Urban Aquaponics of Will Allen’s Growing Power to the ready-to-use aquaponics kits of Aquaponics USA, the idea of combining hydroponics and aquaculture in a mutually beneficial system is appealing from an efficiency standpoint. And while some have argued that aquaponics is cruel, it’s certainly no more cruel than any other type of aquaculture.
Despite being relative newcomers to the field, and despite “a long history of killing houseplants”, Susanne Friend and Tim Mann of Friendly Aquaponics seem to have their system down. Having decided in 2007 that the construction industry was no longer for them, the couple attended an aquaponics course at the University of the Virgin Islands. They now run their own commercial aquaponics system which they claim produced $5000 worth of produce and fish per month. The couple is also running a smaller off-grid system, ideal for family use. They are growing lettuce, two types of tillapia, prawns, cut flowers and taro—a root and leaf crop traditionally grown by Pacific Islanders.
The couple are also running trainings, offering consultancy, and selling their copyrighted plans for commercial and domestic aquaponics systems online. Their plans don’t come cheap—but by the looks of things they’ve invested a lot of time and effort into making them work.
Great to see yet another entrepreneurial outfit pushing aquaponics forward. Whether they’ll ever put themselves out of business remains to be seen.
Hawaii Business News, May 2010
Click here for the full article
Susanne Friend wants Hawaii to take back its food supply. “Over the last 50 or 60 years, we’ve let our food supply be taken over by agro-businesses with massive transportation lines,” Friend says. In response, she and her husband, Tim Mann, founded Friendly Aquaponics to help teach others about aquaponics, a hybrid system of aquaculture (raising marine life) and hydroponics (cultivating plants in water). “We have a natural ecosystem inside a man-made environment,” Friend says.
Sustainability
The aquaponics system uses 2 percent of the water, 33 percent less electricity and yields up to 10 times more produce than tradi- tional farming, says Friend.
Options
Friendly Aquaponics sells manuals that show people how to build three different sizes: the “microsystem” for backyards; a “family system” for a community or church garden; and a “full commercial system.” Friend says they are planning a manual for a small windowsill or lanai system. “We don’t make it hard to figure out,” she says. “What we do in the manual is tell you everything we figured out.”
Future
Friend says Friendly Aquaponics now supplies the Big Island’s Costco outlet with lettuce, using three commercial systems. She says that if Friendly Aquaponics was large enough it could supply all seven Costco stores in Hawaii, but adds, “I have no desire to be the Lettuce Queen of Hawaii. I want to teach other people how to do this, and build a sailboat and sail away.”
