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This Old Factory—Now Full Of Fish And Kale—Is Revitalizing A Neighborhood

Urban Organics uses aquaponics to grow tilapia and vegetables in an old industrial space with no dirt and sun. It’s bringing jobs and production back to a downtrodden neighborhood in St. Paul Minnesota—and local food, as well. 

What’s most striking when you enter the brick bunker formerly known as Stock House No. 3 is the green, says Fred Haberman, a cofounder and partner in Urban Organics, a futuristic farm housed inside a long-vacant structure on the former site of Hamm’s Brewery in East St. Paul. “It’s mind-boggling to come into this old building and see so much greenery,” he says. “The colors are almost electric. Looking at this kale planted two weeks ago, you’d be shocked at how quickly it’s grown.”

The “secret sauce” for growing that electric-green kale, chard, and leafy herbs is the nutrient-rich wastewater pumped from four 3,500-gallons tanks of tilapia, which flows through a system of pipes and filters to irrigate and fertilize the plants before returning, clean, to the fish. The closed-loop, recirculating aquaponics system may be the largest such indoor facility in the United States, and one of the most technologically sophisticated.

Read full article on FastCoExist

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