Kimberly Aney, a recent graduate of the agriculture program at SUNY Cobleskill in Upstate New York, has dreams of building a small farm that grows fish and lettuce in concert with one another. She says she sees the practice, known as aquaponics, as a cheap, clean, and compact alternative to the inefficiencies she observed on the dairy farm on which she grew up.

In southern Oregon, Michael Hasey extends the growing season of his 40-acre organic farm with an aquaponics system that produces greens and tilapia throughout the winter. It’s a way to squeak out an extra margin, rest his fields, and, he believes, improve both his own soil and the environment at large.

And, in New Orleans, Marianne Cufone uses her in-ground aquaponics system—in which ponds full of fish provide nutrients for the trays of herbs, cucumbers, and melons floating above them, and vice versa—partly as an educational tool. She wants more people to know about the myriad benefits she’s reaped while farming this way: about the hyper-local crops, the reliable fresh food in flood-prone regions, and the minimal waste inherent in the system.

Diagram courtesy of Aquaponics Phillipines. (Click image for a larger version.)

Unlike modern hydroponic farms, which can feed plants regular quantities of synthetic fertilizers, aquaponics harks back to early growing methods developed in Asia and South America that blend aquaculture (or fish farming) with agriculture. The practice functions in an ecosystem in which the fish eat things like duckweed and, when they’re housed outside, insects; their waste feeds the plants; and the plants filter the water for the fish. Any remaining waste is composted and, as in the case of Hasey’s farm, added back to the soil in which he grows his row crops.

Cufone also has a larger goal. What began as a community-based mission has expanded into a national effort as she seeks to drum up awareness about aquaponic farming in her role as executive director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition (RFC), and to mobilize other farmers using the technology to become more vocal about its virtues and its future.

First, though, she has to find them.

“Even though [aquaponic farmers] have been operating in the U.S. for more than 30 years, we don’t have a good count,” Cufone says. That applies both to commercial operations such as Hasey’s that sell to regional supermarkets and also to backyard, or “recreational,” farms like the one Aney would like to set up. The latter are especially difficult to track. RFC wants to see aquaculture acknowledged as a positive addition to American agriculture and thereby boost its lobbying power. Haney, an RFC member, calls aquaponics, “the answer” to generating year-round income for farmers constrained by the seasons.

Cufone is currently working on a map of the larger outfits, and reaching out to organizations that keep track of the smaller ones. So far, estimates put the number of commercial aquafarms operating nationally at between 40 and 100, although Cufone says it’s likely higher if one includes backyard operations.

Cufone’s work comes at a critical juncture for American aquaculture. For over a decade, the USDA Organic label, through some third-party licensing organizations like Oregon Tilth, has been conferred upon compliant aquaponic and hydroponic farms. Recently, traditional “dirt first” organic farmers have been pushing the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) to make aquaponics and hydroponics ineligible for the Organic label.