Sustainable Seafood and Vegetable Production: Aquaponics as a Potential Opportunity in Urban Areas

Wu, Fan; Ghamkhar, Ramin; Ashton, Weslynne; Hicks, Andrea

doi:10.1002/ieam.4187

Cited by 31 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 128 publications

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“…Conversely, there were also a few articles that only mentioned food systems superficially but had a breadth of research in terms of number of components and relationships. For example, Wu et al.’s (2019) study on sustainable seafood and vegetable production evaluated innovations through aquaponics, environmental and economic sustainability impacts, demographic (urban) drivers, and implications for diets, food safety, and human health, but food systems was only mentioned once. Whilst our review deliberately focussed on those studies that invoked the term food systems, we don't argue that is a necessary attribute of good, useful or impactful research on food systems.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nudging fisheries and aquaculture research towards food systems

et al. 2021

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Food system is a powerful concept for understanding and responding to nutrition and sustainability challenges. Food systems integrate social, economic, environmental and health aspects of food production through to consumption. Aquatic foods are an essential part of food systems providing an accessible source of nutrition for millions of people. Yet, it is unclear to what degree research across diverse disciplines concerning aquatic foods has engaged food systems, and the value this concept has added. We conducted a systematic review of fisheries, aquaculture and aquatic food literature (2017-2019) to determine the following: the characteristics of this research; the food systems components and interrelations with which research engaged; and the insights generated on nutrition, justice, sustainability and climate change. Sixty five of the 88 reviewed articles focussed on production and supply chains, with 23 considering human nutrition. Only 13% of studies examined low-and middle-income countries that are most vulnerable to undernutrition. One third of articles looked beyond finfish to other aquatic foods, which illuminated values of local knowledge systems and diverse foods for nutrition. When aggregated, reviewed articles examined the full range of food system drivers-biophysical and environmental (34%), demographic (24%) and socio-cultural (27%)-but rarely examined interactions between drivers. Future research that examines a diversity of species in diets, system-wide flows of nutrients, trade-offs amongst objectives, and the nutritional needs of vulnerable social groups would be nudging closer to the ambitions of the food systems concept, which is necessary to address the global challenges of equity, nutrition and sustainability. | 35 SIMMANCE Et Al. 42 4.2.1 Relationships between food systems components researched 44 4.3. Emerging challenges for food systems 45 4.4. Nudging towards the concept of food systems 46 4.4.1 Consider a broader set of aquatic food types amidst diverse diets 47 4.4.2 Examine system-wide flows of nutrients and tradeoffs amongst objectives 47 4.4.3 Focus on vulnerable and marginalized social groups 47 5. CONCLUSION 48

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nudging fisheries and aquaculture research towards food systems

et al. 2021

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“…With respect to environmental sustainability, many studies evaluated the environmental impacts of aquaponics (Bohnes et al, 2018;Cohen et al, 2018;Kalvakaalva, 2020;Maucieri et al, 2018;Somerville et al, 2014;Song et al, 2019;Wu et al, 2019). Cohen et al (2018) found that combined aquaponic fish-vegetable production would result in significant reduction of impacts in eutrophication, water intake (water use), and geographic footprint (land use) environmental impact categories, compared to large-scale traditional non-integrated production (Cohen et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The investigated impacts usually only cover a limited subset of the relevant environmental impact categories (Bohnes & Laurent, 2019;Wu et al, 2019); (b) the investigated systems are predominantly located in warm weather locations, in which heating and lighting requirements are relatively lower; and may not be representative to cold weather locations, in which heat requirements are relatively high (Wu et al, 2019); and (c) applied alternatives to mitigate the environmental impacts of aquaponics are not fully explored within the studies .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evaluation of environmental and economic implications of a cold‐weather aquaponic food production system using life cycle assessment and economic analysis

Ghamkhar

Hartleb

Rabas

et al. 2022

J of Industrial Ecology

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Aquaponics, in which fish and plants are grown in a symbiotic closed-loop industrial metabolism, are promising test beds to implement industrial ecology in food production at a commercial scale. These systems have the potential to enhance the environmental and economic performance of aquaculture systems by reducing the overall burden on natural ecosystems (i.e., reducing resource and emission-based impacts per unit of food produced). To holistically evaluate the environmental and economic implications of aquaponics, specifically in a cold-weather climate, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Economic Analysis (EA) were performed on a Midwestern United States aquaponic system, using data from 3 years of annual operation cycles with varying fish species production; tilapia, conventional walleye, and hybrid walleye. For the LCA, environmental impacts were quantified using 10 midpoint indicators. Assessments indicated that 1-kg production of live-weight tilapia, conventional walleye, and hybrid walleye resulted in 20.2-13.8-11.7 kg CO 2 -eq, 23.0-7.8-3.9 g N-eq, and 0.2-0.3-0.4 kg SO 2 -eq, consecutively, using the investigated system. The most sensitive parameters for environmental impacts were heat, aquafeed, electricity, and infrastructure (in all scenarios).For EA, benefit to cost ratios (BCRs) and three other widely used indices were analyzed for production cycles. The BCRs were 0.47, 1.16, and 1.75 for tilapia, conventional walleye, and hybrid walleye, respectively (using a 10% discount rate and a 20-year horizon), highlighting the necessity of optimizing both cash inflows (e.g., energy costs) and outflows (plant and fish revenues) to achieve practical enhancement of return on investments. The major cost contributors were infrastructure, labor, and heat (contributing to >89% of total costs for all cycles). Suggested steps for in-effect improvement of the investigated aquaponic system's environmental and economic favorability include heat and infrastructure optimization by (a) applying effective heating strategies (e.g., advanced insulation techniques), and (b) expanding the system's operational lifespan (e.g., prevention of waste accumulation).

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“…Dal Bo Zanon et al 2017), rooftop production(Sanjuan- Delmás et al 2018;Toboso-Chavero et al 2019;Salvador et al 2019), or urban aquaponics(Wu et al 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Implementing the urban food–water–energy nexus through urban laboratories: a systematic literature review

2021

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The sustainability of complex resource systems, such as the food, water, and energy (FWE) nexus, is increasingly threatened by climate change impacts, expanding populations, urbanization, and economic instability. However, while research on the topic has burgeoned, studies focused on solution development and implementation, especially at the urban level, have lagged behind. Against this background, we review the urban FWE nexus literature. We focus on the operationalization of solutions for implementation, and seek to identify opportunities for participatory approaches. Our results suggest that operationalization would benefit from: (1) more fully integrating urban social complexity; (2) extending our understanding of the nexus to include social responses to the impacts of interventions; and (3) ensuring that projects build knowledge that is not only actionable, but also credible, salient, and legitimate. We then discuss the potential of local, transdisciplinary approaches, in the form of urban laboratories, to shift the focus of FWE nexus research towards operationalization. We conclude with five recommendations: (1) knowledge development should extend to implementation; (2) stakeholders should be engaged, and be able to align solutions with the agency to implement; (3) research should move beyond material flows, and focus on the behaviors, habits, and social patterns that underpin urban complexity; (4) FWE nexus thinking should become part of participatory/laboratory approaches; and (5) policymakers should integrate nexus research into municipal strategies and plans.

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Sustainable Seafood and Vegetable Production: Aquaponics as a Potential Opportunity in Urban Areas

Cited by 31 publications

References 128 publications

Nudging fisheries and aquaculture research towards food systems

Nudging fisheries and aquaculture research towards food systems

Evaluation of environmental and economic implications of a cold‐weather aquaponic food production system using life cycle assessment and economic analysis

Implementing the urban food–water–energy nexus through urban laboratories: a systematic literature review

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