 Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Farming Podcast brought to you by Private Property. My name is Mbali Noogh or your host every Tuesdays and Thursdays. As always, right here on our YouTube channel, Facebook, live on Instagram, you name it. I hope that you have been subscribing to our YouTube channel and really getting some information around farming as we've had an array of different guests in different industries or sub-sectors within the farming industry doing amazing things. And I think if you're looking to go into farming, I truly truly believe that this podcast is for you. For any regulars watching the show, thank you so much for your continuous support. We have great competitions that we're running right now with the Private Property team, the Farming Podcast team, specifically the Echo Bus competition. So go to our social media pages and have a look around that because it involves the home growers gardening series addition that we do within the Private Property once a month. I also hope that you've been enjoying the gardening series. I can definitely say I love being outdoors and obviously getting to chat with guests, I think is such a great and fantastic individual and his whole philosophy around growing your own food, producing your own food, more so in your backyard garden. Today we have an interesting topic called fermentation and modern farming. And we're joined by Pierre Cronier, who's the manager of Leafies Farmery. And we're going to learn about his operation. I believe he's an aquaponics farmer. And Leafies Farmery is an aquaponics farm with a bit of fermentation involved. So if you have any questions and if this topic interests you, please comment, like, share, engage. We definitely want to hear your thoughts as well, over and above the questions that I'll be asking Pierre. And I hope that we could give you some sufficient information around this specific topic. Well, let's get straight into the show. Pierre, how are you doing? And thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much. I'm doing very well. Thank you. Awesome. Awesome. So you have quite a unique business. I mean, we're talking just behind the scenes to say that you are currently doing aquaponics and a bit of fermentation if I'm correct with that. So just maybe give us a brief background on who you are and what is Leafies Farmery all about? Yes. Leafies Farmery got the two legs, as you mentioned, the growery and the fermentery. The growery is an aquaponics farm where we grew grow leafy greens in a deep water culture system with the assistance of fish to provide your nutrients for that leafy greens. And then on the side, we have also a small fermentery where we ferment milk into kombucha and then also tea into kombucha. That's just a very small operation and both the growery and the fermentery is like I would suppose it's a niche farm. Yeah, yeah. Pierre, did you grow up in a farm? Are you an urban gentleman? How do you get into the space? No, no, I'm not a grown up on a farm. I'm very much a city person, but the technology and the benefits of the environment of aquaponics is very interesting and that bit my interest and that's how we started it to get more involved in this new technology and new urban practices. So other than just technology and having an interest, what really pulled you in within aquaponics farming? I mean, why don't you go find a farm somewhere and start forming the conventional way? Why did you specifically choose aquaponics? Because of its small footprint, because you're not in the soil, so I don't have any weed problems, so it's a clean production method. It allows me to do some other work in between, so there's minimal care that you need to do it. You need to do it daily, so you're quite involved. You just can't leave it, but it allows you to do other work for other income streams and then on harvest days and plant days, obviously you're more involved and they shouldn't peak times like where you need to spray the plants or need to clean the filters, but it's not that involved and you don't need a lot of planting tractors and equipment for that, only this equipment, so that made it possible for me to do this type of farming. Yeah, I think it's definitely quite a lucrative strategy. I mean, if we look at the input costs right now, fertilizers have gone up by 60%, getting machinery such as tractors are also quite expensive, so it's quite a steep investment that one would have to make when they're going into normal conventional farming, so going back to aquaponics, so what type of fish are you currently dealing with and you also mentioned leafy greens, specifically what type of leafy greens are you growing? Yes, so my fishing strategy is working around the temperatures or the climate of the year, so in the winter months at the moment I have cut in rainbow trout, that's cold water fish, so we put them into the holding tanks during the winter, it's getting a bit warm for them now, so we're about to harvest them and then for the summer months we're going to use tilapia, which is a warm water fish, so that's a strategy on the fish side and then on the greens we are growing fancy lettuces, spring onions are also surprisingly doing very well and then also we have kaolin there that's also doing very well and we also want to go forward and do other herbs, like basil for instance, want to bring in there as well, that's what we're growing in the, what we call the deep water culture, so it's a channel about 300 millimeters deep, so it's a deep water channel where the leafies are growing on raw. And can one start with aquaponics just starting with any type of fish or are there specific type of fish that will do well or grow well in a specific climate or area? For the, you couldn't use any type of fish, so people that's doing it as a hobby can use koi fish called fish anything, as a commercial farmer I want a commercial product and that's why I'm using rainbow trout and tilapia then because they are fairly fast growing and then there's a market for them to sell on into restaurants or to people because you can eat them while the koi fish is only ornamental. You know in my style of farming we talk about if you're scaling you must maybe have 20 to 30 to 40 greenhouse tunnels for a grain farmer if you're talking about scaling it's all about thousands of hectares how does one scale as an aquaponics farmer you know I've seen some aquaponics structures mostly it's just like tubs if I could put it that way I don't know if that's the right terminology so because your strategy is growing commercially so like what is commercial scale in your aspect in your industry is it the number of fish that you have the size of the tubs just maybe give us some insights there yes I'm using a aquaponics system that's provided by Aztec Agri and they probably provide a commercial system a commercial system it's consistent one tunnel about 10 meters by 15 meters that's a space needed and there's three lines now in each line got two holding tanks of 3000 liters each and then a filter system of 2000 liters more or less and then a deep water culture channel and a media bed so that's one one channel so it provides about 2200 plant thing opportunities per channel so you have 6000 almost in total with the media bed you got 7200 plant it's called opportunities of plants that you can put in there and you can harvest about 1200 plant say liters of a head per week can you harvest off the system once it's fully operational so my it depends obviously on your operational costs and your overheads but you can make it work with one commercial system but you probably need two to be to be profitable and earn an income from it and to cover all your operational costs and overhead costs yeah so that's a scale you would be looking at and obviously as soon as you get more than that then obviously it's getting better and better down the line right and as a start-up investment you mentioned a 10 by 30 tunnel 1200 cabbage lettuce heads going back to the fish as well how many fish does one need to start off with is it buying hundreds or maybe say how many fish could fit in that 10 by 30 structure as well yes so it depends on the type of fish tilapia you can put in a bit more and ramio chart a little bit less so it's a fine balance in the system you need to balance all the factors you're getting too much fish your system might crash so at the moment I've got 150 tilapia per 3000 tank and then with with the ramio chart with the tilapia you can almost double that so that's what we put in the tanks that's to ensure that there's not too much solids in the system because it's an anaerobic anaerobic system and then if you create too much solids you get anaerobic zones which might flow out your chemicals and your balances in the system and then you could be crashing so you definitely don't want right you know as part of our topic this evening it's also about modern farming right you're definitely coming with a different strategy with a different system and different setup in which you're running your aquaponics structure so tell me going back to still or sticking still to the to the topic around modern farming how reliant is the specific system that you're referring to on electricity can one be reliant on electricity or can you build such a system of grid and would it make return on investment in terms of the capital outlay this is totally reliant on electricity wow that's where I'm farming at the moment there's no electricity there so we're using solar so electricity would be not one of your major cost items your fish feed is your biggest cost item in terms of operational expenditure and the system we're using use very little electricity to run one of those lines is using the normal run of the mall not been all the other pumps and other filters are coming on is using the same watts or the same energy as a large bulb so it's about running on about 200 watts so the electricity is not the problem so we're using it running it off solar but even if you do have escom you will have to have a backup system in terms of the battery because during load sharing you can't switch off the system the system must be continuously circulating to ensure that the the nutrients get to the plants and to ensure the oxygen is getting to the fish so it's a 24 seven day a week every day of the year operation you can't just switch it off and go away well it sounds definitely much more intensive than what I'm used to at least I can get a break during the weekends so I really really do not wish I was in your position but in terms of labor um as well how many how many staff would one have to get running um to manage such an operation it's not a huge labor intensive to run the system your labor is coming in when you harvest and it's as per normal with any operation once you take off the lettuce that it needs to be or the greens you need to package them and you need to transform it so that's that's so normal like everybody knows and the labor to run the system you need for one tunnel of three lines you can get away with two people one two maybe three people as soon as long as you get your operations nice in a row and you get the sequence of the correct the activities that's going in there is just going through all your plans to look for diseases and take out the ones that are failing making sure it's clean you need to keep that tunnel exceptionally clean so it's a whole day cleaning then it's also spraying with bio or chemical not chemicals you can't spray with chemicals that will kill the fish so we use agricultural soaps or certain oils that we spray very careful not to affect the fish so you need to do a preventative you can't come in when there's too many pests in there because then then you've got a problem so you need to do preventative so that's an ongoing thing feeding off the fish as well you want to get maximum growth so you will feed at intervals looking at the size of the fish so you don't overfeed because then you get solids in the system again and then we also got a different filters and systems that actually take the solids break them down put them back for nutrients so that's basically what the person would be doing to do on the upkeep of the system and then obviously the harvest you got your harvest days then there's a lot of then you need more people taking off all the produce and package them and so forth but yeah so the day to day stuff two to three people per tunnel will be more than enough right isn't true that with aquaponics like you have that the fish at the bottom the vegetables at the top is it true that your vegetable growing practices is heavily reliant on the feed that the fish provide so are you not adding any additional fertilizers to you know to get that lettuce going is it is the lettuce completely uh grown by the the extracts from from from the water which is as a result of a fish well it's a sort of a science yes to to grow it so you've got that nitrification cycle from the fish which produce ammonia which is converted to nitrates and so to provide nutrients for the fish but micronutrients are a lot of the times lacking in the system like this so what and also you need to carefully watch your pH of the water so what I'm doing is I'm using certain chemicals to lower normally normally the pH are lowered by the aerobic system so I'm using chemicals to raise it to get it at a specific level but the same chemical we're using hydroxide so the same chemical once it's breaking down and doing each pH work it's also then providing nutrients to the micronutrients of the plant in the form of of potassium and calcium also the systems like this are typically iron deficient so we also add a little bit of iron and then occasionally maybe maybe if I want to if I see maybe there's some the plants are not reacting as well I may add some kelp or fish emulsion but then in the little quantity you don't want to add too much and then also carefully watch how much fish feed you are providing because also fish feed that's not taken up or not eaten by the fish that's also getting broken down and provide nutrients so you there's a fine it's almost the art so you need to have a fine balance using the technology in the science but also there's some feeling and art to to the whole thing yeah and I get the sense that you also have to definitely be hands-on you know just to see how the operations go and just pick up pick up any mistakes or minor issues that may potentially arise so how do you then come with it seems like you've got a very solid base going but where does the fermentation part of the business come in and I heard you say tea so so far we've been talking about fish and lettuce so how does tea and milk I suppose come into the space it's a whole thing to do of doing good for the earth and doing good to others and then for main three products are very good for one's health so we're using it ourselves so we are lucky to have very immediate vicinity very good dairy farmers with a good fresh milk from and then we promote that for the goodness of the earth but also to get the name out of the out there so we provide these fermented products to health shops that's just to get a bigger awareness of our name leafy's farmery do the people out there and to do the good and that's that's why we are doing it also to supplement income where we can and how we can so both of the kombucha and kiff is good very good profit margins on them although the markets are very small but it's something nice to keep us going provide a small cash flow and make us name known a bit wider than we would have if we had only have greenery yeah could you please explain to the private property what kombucha is it's the first time I hear that term yes kombucha is basically fermented tea so you use black tea or green tea with a little bit of sugar and you place it with what I call the scoby so it's a it's a symbiotic combination of bacteria and yeast that eats the sugar and a caffeine from the tea and then making it if you leave it long enough you actually get like vinegar so it's changing it into something slightly sourly sweet with the new unique taste and yeah and that's what you get right this is such a fantastic eye opener I mean who knew that we could you know ferment tea I had no idea and obviously turn it into such products and how tea could eventually transform into vinegar so I'm definitely learning something new but I think to sum up our conversation Pierre what's your take on modern farming it sounds like you are not only just farming for a commercial perspective but you're actually farming to change the environment around you and maybe just also to change your immediate household health in terms of what you consume when you consume why you consume it and it sounds like you've given a lot of thought into your farming practices which encompass you know healthy living healthy lifestyle preserving nature so what's your take on modern farming and where do you see Liffey's Farmery growing to? The drivers for any business must be sound so I mean we must realize modern farming techniques has its place you can't do it anyway if you've got good soil good water good farming equipment and so forth in your root rather than farming the soil so for us we had an opportunity on an area that that was not farmed by soil or by equipment and there was certain infrastructure and there was good water to do it so you guys look at the fundamentals of why you are doing it modern farming techniques are more efficient but not so much so I mean you can still the latest we are planting are more densely planted than they do in the fields or an open farming system but not that much so you must still look at the drivers when doing it so if you have a small space or a piece of a farm that's not used or can't be used for soil farming this may be an ideal place to do it or you want to diversify or planting something specifically that will work in water because remember we're planting in water so you need to look at the drivers why you are doing it this is ideal also to do in the city environment to do farming and we have a very early stages of a case study looking into that expanding this into an urban environment because you don't need to do it on a farm and then you get obviously the competitive edge of being close to the market or closer to the market so yeah that's we are doing it because we've got opportunity on a piece of farm that's not used for fields and that's why we are doing it here yeah well thank you so much for our conversation up here I thoroughly enjoyed learning about your business and yeah I think modern day farming is the place the way to go you know I heard technology efficiencies and I mean systems as well and that's essentially the purpose of just running a business not only just generating capital but having certain systems and processes in place especially to grow your business and make it more sustainable but thank you so much for your time this evening and I hope you could have you once again on a different topic around aquaponics or aquaponics farming maybe deep dive into it in more depth but yeah thank you so much for your insights and your time my pleasure thank you very much it's a pleasure if you just missed this episode we're talking to Pierre Cronier who is from Leafy's Farmery and he told us about his operation in terms of aquaponics and also adding a bit of leafy crops into it and also diversifying into fermentation who knew that tea could eventually become vinegar in this very specific yet sounding almost technical and complicated process of his fermentation processes but I hope you enjoyed this conversation this evening and learned quite a lot about aquaponics farming or just got a brief snippet into it and if you're looking to venture into the space I definitely would encourage you to do a lot of research and speak to aquaponics farmers because based from our conversation today with Pierre it sounds quite technical you have to be hands-on it sounds quite intensive and even though from a scale perspective only a 10 by 30 greenhouse infrastructure there's still a lot of work that needs to be taken into place and also find markets, tilapia, your your your leafy crops it's always about being able to sell that crop at the end of the day sell your product at the end of the day so you can reinvest those capitals into your business I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Pierre and hope you did too and thank you so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you next week at 8 p.m on Tuesday see you then take care