Founders Highlight Series: EcoSystems Farms

For this month's Founders Highlight Series, we spoke to the co-founder of EcoSystem Farms, Brendan Dobson! EcoSystem Farms has created a closed-loop farming system where both aquacultural and agricultural systems benefit from one another. Their farming model is scalable, adaptable and promotes sustainability by mitigating waste and optimising resources.

This farming system is based around aquaponics; A process in which the waste produced by farmed fish supplies the nutrients for plant growth, and in turn these plants filter and purify the tank water!

Our conversation with Brendan dives deeper into the science behind EcoSystem Farms and discusses the opportunities this new model will have for farmers.

1.What is the concept behind EcoSystem farms and how did it all come about?

Current farming methods, for crops and animals, are not only unsustainable but also not going to be able to increase production levels sufficiently to meet the 50% increase in food required by 2050. We came across aquaponics separately and didn’t understand how it was not already scaled commercially. It takes the waste issues of aquaculture and uses plants to clean the water. And on top of that, addresses the issues agriculture has with soil, water, and fertilizer demands by using this closed loop, soilless system too. It seemed like it was a no-brainer!

Whilst I was at university, a friend sent me some information on aquaponics and straight away, I started to do my own small-scale setups, until I had scaled up to a system the size of half my backyard that didn’t work very well. I went to get supplies to try and make it work and came across my now co-founder, Steven, who had been doing these systems for many more years, had a lot of success, and knew a lot more about them - we quickly became friends. 

After a couple of years, many conversations about how the food production systems needed to change, and around the end of my degrees, we had the experience of our systems working very well in comparison to what we were seeing on the internet. I thought that others in the industry were tackling the problem from the wrong angle- creating small-scale systems and that aiming for something that could scale and use the things large-scale food production was good at, was the way to make an actual impact in food production. With us both agreeing that if we wanted to see a change in the world, we couldn’t just expect someone else to do it, we set up our first prototype bed, the size of a shipping container, in my backyard. When we got it working better than we had hoped after the first year, we looked for a local farm to build a scaled-up system. The first half of our current farm, just outside of Willunga demonstrated how well it could function, and with some Research Development Tax Incentive returns based around our key invention, we scaled it up to the size it is now, with around 600m2 of growing area, and have recently restocked with 6000 gold perch (callop/yellowbelly).

2.How are you integrating aquaculture with agriculture to create a closed-loop farming system?

Our setup works by taking the water from the fish tank and pumping it up to the gravel medium-growing areas. The plants then clean the water and return it to the fish, replicating and using natural ecosystems, hence our name EcoSystem Farms. 

We aren’t the first to do this, there are a lot of backyard scale systems that do the same thing and even at a commercial level there are farms technically doing aquaponics. The difference between what we are doing and other current commercial farms is they do traditional aquaculture, so instead of dumping their wastewater, as much as 10% a day down the drain, they put it into a hydroponics system. There the nutrients are used until the water becomes too salty and then disposed of- so they use the water in two systems.

 Our system recycles the water between the plants and fish indefinitely, the only water we need to add is from losses to evaporation and what the plants take out, giving us water usage as low as 1 megalitre/hectare/year, 95% less than what would be needed for the same harvests with traditional methods. 

By fully integrating both disciplines, agriculture, and aquaculture, we not only gain huge water savings but gain significantly improved conditions for the fish. The point is that the system is so stable and safe for the fish, that with remote monitoring and software, we can put the system in the hands of anyone. This lets us make the system available for farmers, without prior experience, to add on their farms, helping them to make their farms more profitable.

3.What are the benefits of soilless planting?

It can work regardless of the soil conditions, can be rapidly scaled in comparison to new farmland, has no weed beds, no leaching into the environment, can use land that is currently unusable, can be done in the desert, on an urban rooftop, or in the snow!

There are a lot of benefits to soilless planting as a farming method. We can take any land, be it the desert, the snow, or even an urban rooftop, and turn it into the most fertile growing environment possible, growing both plants and a protein source. It changes what is possible in terms of areas of food production, making all of Australia an option for growing high-value crops, and can be scaled rapidly, producing food from a site mere months after construction begins. 

Soilless farming at scale can create new farmland out of low diversity environments rather than needing to cause more deforestation to increase food production, and at the same time, the closed-loop system means we do not damage the environment around where production occurs through nutrient leaching or contamination.

Our system uses large, modular, scalable growing areas on the ground filled with gravel where inside the water rises and falls with no moving parts. By doing this we are taking the technique of aeroponics, one of the most effective methods of growing plants, because they get optimum amounts of air, water, and nutrients, and we make it low-tech and low-maintenance.

4.Since introducing your farming concept, what has been the response from both investors and other farmers?

There has been a lot of skepticism about what we are doing from many parties. A lot of companies have attempted and failed at aquaponics in the past and both agriculture and aquaculture industries have long memories. A lot of the feedback on that front has been that people will be very interested once we can show, with multiple years’ worth of data and financials, that it can work. 

These industries work in decade timelines and two guys in South Australia fresh out of uni saying they have a better way to produce food and we can show it growing and working hasn’t gained as much interest as we were hoping. Investors have been pretty wary of new tech that is just beyond an MVP scale. 

We are currently seeking funding too for a commercial pilot site with a hectare footprint, to demonstrate the profitability at that scale in conditions similar to the farmers we are looking to sell to. The investment is for cash-positive infrastructure but not for sales to farmers in the short term so we are in an awkward spot trying to demonstrate yields and financials for farmers at scale, but not entering into our planned business model right away. 

We have dual difficulties as a startup in Agtech, needing years of proof, and hardware is always hard. We are still reaching out to investors looking to find some that believe in driving for a big change with big ideas, and are always interested in talking to more people about what we are doing.

Farmers as a whole have been pretty interested but they are businesses first and want to know that it can work on their farms, what it will cost in money and time to operate at the sort of scale that makes sense for them. A lot of them have been excellent in giving us their thoughts and time to talk, even generous to the point of letting us have a crack on their land to show it can work and we are looking forward to being able to offer the system to farmers with the data and yields they need to get more out of their farms.

5.What upscaling are you currently conducting with your farming systems and how is the process going?

We have our proof-of-concept site just outside of Willunga in South Australia, in the Adelaide Hills, which we bootstrapped to get it up and going. We have been putting the final touches on infrastructure there and are now working hard to push the limits of what and how much is possible to grow within the system, testing a wide variety of plants from lettuce to tomatoes and even banana trees. 

We are in the process of setting up a test system one-quarter of the size of what we have now in Renmark, with some changes to demonstrate to regional farmers how it can be scalable on their farms, test yields on some warm weather long term crops such as ginger and lemongrass, and how much water use is required in arid dry conditions.

To find out more about EcoSystem Farms, check out their website: https://www.ecosystemfarms.com.au/about-ecosystem-farms