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Comment by twistedanimator | Hacker News Reader

I was seriously coming here to say the exact same thing. Right now I am a web developer, but I've been dreaming about starting a medium sized aquaponics farm. I'm currently building a system that will use my master bath as a fish tank to learn the ropes.

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Ha! That's awesome! It's seriously the future of food security for urban areas. I'm dreaming up low-rise & high-rise apartment developments where there's dedicated floors of aquaponics, securing food for those people in the building. Rooftop gardens will have chickens and goats. Bet we could develop an awesome app systemising the process too. Good times!

Millions of acres are under cultivation, to feed America. It seems impractical to get that from some rooftops, even under intense cultivation.

I'm not American, so am more influenced by what I've seen in Australia and my travels around South-East Asia. There are many urban areas that are not surrounded by arable land, or the arable land they have is dedicated to growing cash crops for export. Globally there's a massive movement towards locally-grown, organically-sourced, low-mileage food, so aquaponics is one solution that taps that.

Its optimistic to call the effort 'massive'. Current agricultural practices are massive. The movement toward local produce is 'boutique' maybe. In fact the whole organic food deal is a speck on the agribusiness landscape.

A hybrized food system -- say with local herbs, tomatoes, lettuces etc-- however does not seem all that impractical?

Clearly, it depends upon the height of the building. A two-story with 4 familes = 20 people - that is a stretch. A 20-storey with 40 families- the roof is no bigger.

Agree, this is a good point... you would need dedicated spaces or what not, if not re-purposing unused. Depending on the economics of sq ft and energy needs, it may or not be good math.

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