 Do you like to eat fish? What about vegetables? What if I told you you could grow both at the same time in your own backyard using an innovative type of agriculture called aquaponics? Hi, my name is David Klein and I'm an aquaculture specialist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Today I'd like to invite you to take a fresh look at an old form of agriculture. While aquaponics has been around for more than a thousand years, there's been a renewed interest in using this technique for home food production. This is the combination of aquaculture, or the farming of aquatic plants and animals, and hydroponics, the practice of growing plants without soil. It's a three-part system that includes fish, bacteria, and plants. It starts with feeding the fish. Some nutrients in the food help the fish to grow. Other nutrients pass through the fish's waste and could become toxic. But helpful bacteria convert this potentially harmful waste into a nutrient-rich fertilizer for the plants and creates a filter to clean the water. Incorporating pea gravel, or another inert substrate, provides an anchor for the plant roots and lots of surface area for the beneficial bacteria to grow. This can improve your chances of success. Aquaponics is an organic process that saves water and increases production. In fact, you can grow up to ten times the amount of vegetables in the same space using just ten percent of the water compared to traditional agriculture. This small system, with a footprint about the size of your kitchen table, produced more than 160 pounds of food in just one year, including more than 5,000 cherry tomatoes. Other crops you might grow are leafy greens like lettuce and basil, or even peppers and cucumbers. Setting up a small system is easy using items from your local hardware store, and it makes a great hobby.