Try to figure out how much you spend on food in a year. For me I would say it is probably around 4 – 5 thousand a year for me and my fiancee (roughly $40 – $50 per person per week). Could you imagine spending less than half of that and having all the food you need for life?

In a recent episode of At the Buzzer, the guys mentioned a man living in Arizona who converted a run down pool into a self-sustaining ecosystem – an aquaponic garden, from which he and his family gets unlimited tilapia, herbs, fruits and vegetables. He and I stand apart on motivation for doing something like this (he is a doomsday prepper), but you have to admit that this is amazing. He spent $1,500 and now his family is set on food.

This is called an aquaponic garden, and it blends two modern day practices: aquaculture, or raising and breeding fish; and hydroponics, or a soil-free method of growing plants. By themselves, they both have problems to overcome: fish make waste from respiration and digestion, which will make the water toxic for themselves; hydroponics uses dissolved salts that have to be repeatedly flushed and replaced in order to maintain the system as the plants consume them. In aquaponics, the fish waste replaces those salts for the plants, which the plants are more than happy to remove, making the water clean and healthy for the fish. The result is plants and fish living together to form an ecosystem.

Thriving plants will bear fruit for the gardener, saving money on food. The fish will grow and breed, so the gardener can have meat as well. It can be entirely sustainable, and the food grown is both local and organic.

I will be making an aquaponic garden soon, because I believe that anyone who can have one should have one. I’m doing it for financial, health, and environmental reasons and to be honest I imagine I only needed any two of the above three reasons. I think I’d have to be a fool not to build one with the trifecta.

I hope to update in the future with plans and progress.