The Biggest Challenges Facing Aquaponics in Taiwan, China
In recent years, a "aquaponics" whirlwind has swept across Taiwan, China, with Facebook clubs and fan pages springing up everywhere, and course promotion in full swing, soaring all the way from a one-time free session to NTD 300, NTD 500, NTD 1,000, NTD 3,800, NTD 6,000, and NTD 30,000. Those who took the promotional courses either rushed home to buy materials for a DIY build, or hauled the aquaponics equipment from the course back home to start realizing their aquaponics dream; some even rolled up their sleeves to build a greenhouse, buy equipment and start a small-scale aquaponics farm.
For people in the city, aquaponics holds an inexplicable attraction, because hearing that fish waste is used to grow vegetables is truly a wonderful concept. We only need to feed the fish, and the fish waste can be converted through nitrification into the nitrate that vegetables need. You can harvest both fish and vegetables, save water and love the planet, and there is also the spiritual satisfaction at harvest time, as well as a healing effect. It really is a good thing with a multi-faceted harvest - why not do it!
Aquaponics was originally a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics, and can be translated as a combined farming and growing method; in Chinese-speaking circles it is mostly called "fish-vegetable symbiosis". From the perspective that aquaculture and hydroponics technologies in Taiwan, China are both already mature, this is a new model with a very good chance of creating water savings and the concept of reusing circulating water. However, at present not many institutions in Taiwan, China are investing in related research; in the course promotion run by private operators, the main profit comes from course fees, equipment sales, and full-site planning. Very few of the promoters themselves have aquaculture or hydroponics experience, so it very easily causes frustration and misunderstanding among students.
If measured from the angle of commercial operation, in an Aquaponics business the output of farmed aquatic products and the crop output of hydroponics should be the main body, and only then can it prove to be an effective production model.