WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • SEPTEMBER 2025 69 Sweet Potato (with leaves used as greens), Oregano, Strawberries, Shiso Greens, Amaranth, Beets, Rutabagas, Purslane, Malabar Spinach, Red Radish. • Peppers: Explosive Ember, Habanero, Green Bell, Golden Bell, Anaheim Chili, Maxi Bell, Red Cherry, Tabasco, Petter Super Chili. • Aquatic Animals: Goldfish, Giant Freshwater Prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii), Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), Blue tilapia (O. aureus), Mosambique tilapia (O. mossambicus), Wami tilapia (O. urolepis hornorum), Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), Striped Bass (Morone), Carp/Koi (Cyprinus carpio), Goldfish (Carassius auratus auratus) Platyfish, Guppies, South American armored catfishes and many more. Building Communities of Economics and Ownership If a low-cost smallholder business model in the U.S. using aquaponics proves economically viable, what kind of infrastructure would be necessary to support a community of them? Individually owned smallholder farms, built and managed to feed the family, can essentially exist by themselves, although not without challenges. However, it is suggested that to maximize their effectiveness, a community bonded by economics would be more effective and efficient over time. Such a community would look very much like the diagram in Figure 4. Whether you are producing plants or fish the chart looks pretty much the same. Eventually, there must be someone to provide all of the resources suggested by this value chain. Though there naturally would be some vertical integration, one interesting thing about this concept is that in the long term each one of the services could be provided by individual businesses within that community. This would, in effect, create a new local industry where none currently exists. Exactly what the potential is to create successful smallholder farms in the U.S. has not been calculated. However, the success of the concept in other parts of the world opens the door for future research and development that could begin to mitigate the U.S. aquaculture growth stagnation challenge elaborated in Hargreaves (2017) and Brooks (2017). Notes George B. Brooks, Jr., Ph.D.,* CEO at NxtHorizon, Phoenix, AZ, U.S.A. Corresponding author: info@nxthorizon.com References Brooks, G.B 2017. Can aquaponics help restore the US aquaculture industry? Part 1. Aquaculture Magazine. Retrieved from: https:// aquaculturemag.com/2017/10/05/can-aquaponics-help-restore-theus-aquaculture-industry-part-1/ Brooks G. B. 2019. Applying Design Thinking to Reimagine Aquaponics. A Case Study. Aquaculture Magazine. August/ September 2019. Pg. 60-64. Retrieved from: http://nxthorizon. com/PDF/design1.pdf Christensen C. M, H. Baumann, R. Ruggles, and T. M. Sadtler. 2006. Disruptive Innovation for Social Change Harvard Business Review 94 – 101. Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2006/12/ disruptive-innovation-for-social-change City of Phoenix 2025. Phoenix Backyard Garden Program. Retrieved from: https://www.phoenix.gov/administration/ departments/oep/oep-programs/food/arpa/arpa-bgp.html FAO, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Family Farming Knowledge Platform. Smallholders and Family Farmers 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.fao.org/familyfarming/detail/en/c/273864/ Fernández-Cabanás V. M. G. P. Suárez-Cáceres, L. PérezUrrestarazu, J. Lobillo-Eguibar and J. A. Gross 2023. Contribution of Household Aquaponic Production to a Low Price Healthy Mediterranean Diet in an Economically Depressed Community. Agronomy 13(2), 498-512, Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13020498 Hargreaves J. 2017. The Stagnation of U.S. Aquaculture World Aquaculture Society Magazine. Retrieved from: https:// www.was.org/articles/Editors-note-The-Stagnation-of-USAquaculture.aspx Hojatollah K. H. Nourmoradi S. Bakhtiyari, M. Jalilian and A. Mirzaei. Effect of COVID-19 on food security, hunger, and food crisis. COVID-19 and the Sustainable Development Goals. 2022. Jul 29:3–29. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-323-91307-2.00005-5 Retrieved from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9335023/ Lee, S. 2025. Planning the Victory Garden. Image Retrieved from: https://victorykitchenpodcast.substack.com/p/planning-thevictory-garden Ritchie H. 2021. Smallholders produce one-third of the world’s food, less than half of what many headlines claim. Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: https:// ourworldindata.org/smallholder-food-production Shroff J. 2022. Why smallholder farmers are central to new food security interventions. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/09/smallholderfarmers-key-achieving-food-security/#:~:text=In%20food%20 security%2C%20it%20is,24%25%20of%20gross%20 agricultural%20area Wageningen Social & Economic Research. 2025. Affordable Recirculation Aquaculture Systems (A-RAS) for small scale farmers. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ApzGhUcbYGw U.S. Department of Agriculture. Time for victory Gardens again. 2020. Retrieved from: https://tellus.ars.usda.gov/stories/articles/ time-victory-gardens-again If a low-cost smallholder business model in the U.S. using aquaponics proves economically viable, what kind of infrastructure would be necessary to support a community of them? Individually owned smallholder farms, built and managed to feed the family, can essentially exist by themselves, although not without challenges. However, it is suggested that to maximize their effectiveness, a community bonded by economics would be more effective and efficient over time.
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