Our food security solution, tilapia and veggies.

Tilapia And Veggies ~ Greater Food Security Using Less Than 500sqm.

High quality, always available 

I was born in Canada. One lesson that Canada teaches is that diverse geography and climate requires diverse solutions to life’s problems.

In times past on the West Coast, Indigenous canoes were carved out of entire cedar trees. Birchbark canoes were the norm in what is now Ontario. Buffalo was a food staple for those who lived on the Great Plains. Fish of all types were the staple for coast dwellers. In the far north, seal was a mainstay and what the colonizer pronounced as kayak was made of drift wood, whale bone and covered with seal skins.

The same simple truth can also be applied worldwide. Which means that I offer the following as an inspiration rather than as a one size fits all solution.

Our Goal:

We wanted to find a sustainable, low tech, way to produce not our entire supply of food but to add in a layer of food security that we were lacking.

Our Situation:

We live on the side of a tropical mountain (sleeping volcano) where because of inferior farming practices the soil had been seriously degraded.

We have municipal water from a natural spring that gets chlorinated. Thankfully, it has been consistent and has adequate pressure for our needs.

We have enough sunlight and the proper temperature range to grow leafy greens, beans of many types, snake gourds, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, papaya and bananas.

Electricity is minimal and erratic.

Our Solution: (found over time, through online research and practical experiments)

We routed part of our water supply onto our cement roof and use a water sprinkler to apply a constant flow of water which cools our roof. This plus the shade from the bamboo we planted means we have natural air con.

We then use gravity to run the water from our roof to our upper tilapia pond. The water will have lost its chlorine because of the sprinkler action. The slope on our land allows us to keep the feeder hose elevated, which means the pond is constantly being aerated. This pond will, the gods be willing, supply us with thirty to fifty kilos of mature tilapia over a twelve-month period.

The upper pond is within our main vegetable patch, so we can use the nutrient rich pond water (tilapia excrement) as liquid compost.

We also drain the upper pond into the lower pond. This larger pond supplies us with, on a good year, nearly 100 kilos of tilapia. As well, the pond is used by our small gaggle of geese. They enjoy the water, feed from the mud, and leave their droppings to enhance the composting quality of the water.

Both upper and lower ponds have become a natural habitat for wild Box turtles, which in a pinch could be eaten.

Conclusion:

Our system would be better if we had a natural spring or deep well on our land. But we don’t. We do however have multiple water tanks for those rare occasions when we lose our municipal water. Thankfully, a rare occurrence.

Our system uses (including our home’s roof) less than 500sqm. We have a constant supply of vegetables and fruit. Plus, we harvest fish three times a year.

Does our solution supply all of our food needs? No. But that was not the intent. It does allow us to eat higher quality vegetables and fish as well as tree ripened fruit in quantities that make both our helpers family and ourselves healthier and richer.

So, it is my hope that this post will inspire others to try their own experiment in greater food security. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them in the comments section.

Brian

Brian