Article Image Alt Text

Jose Varela is pictured in front of his new aquaponics facility north of Holyoke, which he hopes to have finished by the end of July. — Johnson Publications

Local trucker starts new aquaponics venture

    On a 13-acre plot of land located a mile north of Holyoke, Jose Varela is quietly pushing the boundaries of both agriculture and aquaculture.
    The career trucker and operator of EVD Trucking is setting up an aquaponics operation on his family’s property, and has his sights set on providing sustainable, locally-grown produce for Holyoke businesses.
    “We’re the only ones I know of that are doing this locally,” he said.
    Aquaponics combines hydroponics — a technique that grows plants in a nutrient-rich water solution, sometimes among rocks or gravel, rather than soil — with traditional aquaculture, creating a system of food production that is both market-flexible and environmentally sustainable.
    In an aquaponic environment, wastewater is cycled between a hydroponic planter system and one or more fish tanks. The plants are fertilized by the waste produced by the fish, and the fish are benefitted by the clean water that is routed back from the plants.
    Large-scale commercial aquaponics has only come into existence recently, even though hydroponic technology has been around for decades, and primitive aquaponic setups have existed since antiquity.
    Varela will be breeding male Wami tilapia with female Mozambique tilapia to obtain a hybrid tilapia variety that is overwhelmingly male. He currently has about 600 fish, but plans to be raising five times that many, distributed across six 1,000-gallon tanks when the operation’s new aquaponics facility is completed.
    The facility will include a 3,400-square-foot greenhouse and a 680-square-foot fish habitat. Construction has already begun, and the steel skeleton of the building currently stands on the west end of Varela’s property.

The full article is available in our e-Edition. Click here to subscribe.

Holyoke Enterprise

970-854-2811 (Phone)

130 N Interocean Ave
PO Box 297
Holyoke CO 80734