Steffi Lee’s Green Dream

If you follow a small, winding road leading away from the traffic-choked main road to Wulai’s hot springs, you’ll arrive at an experimental aquaponics farm in the village of Quchi. A river courses through the valley, lush greenery fills your eyes. In the distance you see several small greenhouses, from which emanates the chatter of disembodied voices.

You push open the main door only to find farm owner Steffi Lee giving a class to a room packed with students. Her aqua­ponics course includes a half-day of lectures, followed by a hands-on course. Add to this an aquaponics kit, and the total price is NT$3,800. Yet her course is fully booked through the end of the year.

 

“Would you like to try some okra?” asks Lee as she holds out a green-tinged red vegetable. It’s red okra picked fresh that morning. Fresh and tender in texture and more nutritious than regular okra, it’s perfect for eating raw.

“With just 10 minutes a day of care, you can eat these fresh vegetables at home,” Lee goes on to say. Common household vegetables like sweet potato leaves, water spinach, scallions, chili peppers and basil are ideal for aquaponics. When they hear about it, the people there are eager to try.

Aquaponics is a simple idea. Microorganisms break down wastes in a fishpond, converting them into fertilizer. A water pump sends the nutrient-rich water to media beds containing vegetables, whose roots absorb the nutrients and filter the water. The clean water then flows back into the fishpond, completing this virtuous circle. There’s no need to fertilize the plants or change the pond water: the fish help the vegetables, the vegetables help the fish, and the cycle repeats itself.

This kit designed by Lee is easy to assemble and ready for starting your own home aquaponics project.

Lately the issue of food safety has been coming to the fore. If we can find out where the vegetables we eat come from, or better yet, grow them ourselves, that would surely put us at ease. But in the big city, where land is at a premium, this is easier said than done.

The advantage of aquaponics is that it can make the urban farming dream come true.

In terms of size, an aquaponics system suited to the average home needs just two plastic storage containers, two water pipes, and a small electric pump. The containers can be placed one on top of the other, and you can set the system up on the rooftop, balcony, or even in the living room. And if there’s no direct sunlight, you can illuminate it with LED grow lights.

Next, those who raise fish know you have to change the water or the fish will be poisoned from too much ammonia. Fertilizing vegetables is an even more exact science: apply too much or too little and it hurts yields.

With the help of micro­organ­isms, aqua­ponics con­verts toxic ammonia into nitrates which are fed to the plants. In this way, feeding the fish is equivalent to fertilizing the plants, and it saves you the effort of changing water.

Furthermore, plant roots absorb nutrients more easily from water than from soil, so plants don’t expend so much energy developing their root systems, instead concentrating on growth. As such, plant growth rates may increase by many times, depending on the species. For example, growing romaine lettuce from seedlings takes 55 days in soil but only 35 in an aquaponics system.

Farm owner Steffi Lee, now 41, used to work in the financial industry in Hong Kong. But despite taking in a salary exceeding NT$1 million a year, she was under too much stress.

Lee, who had always been in good health, suddenly fainted after getting up one morning in early 2010. After being rushed to the hospital for a health check, she learned that she had a 7.6-centimeter brain tumor.

She decided then to return to Taiwan for surgery and treatment, quitting her job and concentrating on restoring her health.

“This was a turning point, allowing me to go home,” says Lee. The finance industry is a cutthroat, competitive line of work. She had wanted to leave the business after the global financial crisis that followed the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse, but like the devil’s fruit, the high salary had enticed her to stay on.

During her hospital stay, Lee thought about the words of a friend who had studied vegetable farming in Hawaii, and had urged Lee to do the same. Worried that she wouldn’t be able to work later, after finishing the first stage of radiation therapy in February 2010 she flew by herself across the Pacific in search of the unknown.

In 2008, the Hawaiian farming operation Friendly Aqua­ponics became the first aquaponics farm ever to receive the USDA Organic Certification of Aquaponics Systems. The farm supplies fresh lettuce to local hypermarkets.

Steffi Lee spent six months studying aquaponics techniques, working from dawn to dusk while gradually regaining her health.

After returning to Taiwan, Lee installed an aquaponics system on her balcony and started taking part in volunteer activities wherever she could. One time she went to Hua­lien to help a charitable organization with daily planting, watering, fertilizing and weeding, and she even had to drive a big tractor. Alarmed at the amount of manpower, energy and water resources put into traditional farming, she became even more aware of the energy-saving advantages of aquaponics. After that, she rented farmland in Xin­dian and began building and promoting her farm.

The principle of aquaponics isn’t difficult. You need some basic knowledge of vegetable cultivation and fishkeeping, but more importantly you need to know how to manage water.

“Water is the most precious part of the system. If you don’t manage the water, all else is moot,” says Lee. A balanced cycle can only be achieved when the waterborne microorganisms reach a certain count. It’s estimated that a small system takes about three months to reach equilibrium; vegetables grown during this span are dry and withered, unfit for human consumption.

To manage water properly, it needs to be tested daily for pH, nitrogen and ammonia levels. If any of these are too high or too low, it’s necessary to change the number of fish or plants. Besides this, during daily fish feedings it’s vital to pay attention to portions. One time a student put in too much fish food, turning the whole pond black, and in turn harming the vegetables.

Currently the farm offers classes on Saturdays, comprising a free tour, a beginners’ course, and a hands-on class. After completing the courses, many people ask her straight out, “Can I buy vegetables from you?”

To keep people supplied with fresh vegetables, Lee sold her house in Xin­dian and invested over NT$2 million to expand the farm. She estimates that her farm will achieve steady production and break even early next year.

“My dream is for every community in Taiwan to have its own aqua­ponics farm, so people can eat without worry,” says Lee. Aqua­ponics is a trend in “green” living, because it only uses 2% of the water used in traditional farming. If this concept becomes deeply rooted in communities, we can reduce the carbon footprint of food and be more eco-friendly.

Aquaponics is gradually entering people’s lives thanks to the students’ word of mouth. Last year, residents of the Da­peng Hua­cheng Community in Xin­dian asked Lee to convert their unused rooftop space into an aquaponics garden, where they began growing toxin-free vegetables for themselves and selling the surplus at weekend markets; anything left unsold is donated to feed the elderly in the community.

Though the varieties of vegetables that can be grown aquaponically are currently limited, bit by bit the seeds of Steffi Lee’s green dream are spreading through the concrete jungle, from individual to community. It’s the dream of building a paradise of self-sufficiency.