Aquaculture and Mariculture

Aquaculture and Mariculture
1. Is aquaculture a part of your design? Could it be developed later, given the storage facilities you currently have planned? Do you want to practice aquaculture on your property?

Due to the relief at our site, aquaculture has not played a role there. We have a small pond which realistically is probably just a dew pond and a couple of swales to help with retention of water on such a steep slope. Due to the nature of the geology of the site, it doesn’t lend itself really to even a moderate aquaculture project. Predominantly being chalk, which is highly porous, we have only focused on slowing the transit of water across/over our site. On another site i think practising aquaculture would be excellent but not on this particular one.

2. Where does your food and fuel come from? Make a list. Do you depend on the oceans for food or as transportation routes to get materials, food and goods to you? Are you able to substitute goods/foods to eliminate or reduce your dependence on the resources of the ocean?

We get the majority of our food from the local Cooperative and supplement this with our allotment. On the occasion that it isn’t these it will be one of the major supermarket retailers in the UK, Sainsbury, Tesco, Morrisons or Asda. The UK being an island means that any resource, mineral or foodstuff that can’t be mined, grown or manufactured needs to be imported and much of this is carried by sea or by truck via the channel tunnel.
I attempted to find a percentage figure for foods that are grown and supplied to the UK market, by the UK food industry (http://www.defra.gov.uk/food-farm/food/) and also found an interesting paper on food security policy (http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/food/pdf/food-assess100105.pdf) hoping to glean from it how dependent we are on foreign market supplied foods and fuel. I can only say with any confidence that we still import WAY too much of our food even if you simply carry out a store audit as I do on occasion at our Cooperative, and they are the market leader in ethical trading policies in the UK, in my humble opinion (http://www.co-operative.coop/food/ethics/).
Of course with the right motivation, correct land use and community involvement anything is possible as far as producing “substitute foods” if not fuel in order to reduce dependence on the oceans resources.