Short Summary

Hello!

I'm Robert Stanley, and before I begin, I'd like to say thank you for taking the time to read about my project, and allow me the chance to make you as passionate about feeding the world as I am!  It's said that if you gave a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach him to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime!  And that's my goal!  I want to be able to empower people with the ability to efficiently grow vegetables & fish with less than 1/10th of the water needed in a regular dirt garden.

I served in the U.S. Navy, I've seen combat in places like Africa, South America & the Middle East.  The one thing that all of these areas have in common, is high levels of poverty and a constant shortage of food to feed the villages in the isolated regions of these countries due to the collapse of their Governments and their Countries currency.  If it can happen there, it can happen here in the U.S. as well!

I love to fish, and I love gardening, one day in 2006, while I was reading one of my gardening magazines, I came across an article about Aquaponics, I immediately became intrigued about the concept.  And 6 weeks later I had a fully functioning Aquaponic Garden in my backyard!  That season I grew sweet corn that had ears 14 inches long, and Beef Steak tomatoes that weighed over 2 pounds!  Not to mention the size of my potatoes, carrots & red beets!  I'm married and have 4 kids that range from 3 to 19, and they eat A LOT of food!  After I built my own Aquaponics system in my backyard, I was able to reduce my annual food expense by over $12K! 

That's when I had an epiphany!  Why couldn't I take my Aquaponics system and condense it down to an affordable, portable size structure complete with a green house?  After 2 months of research, trial and error, I successfully built a portable, solar powered unit that is capable of feeding a family or can be expanded and placed in an empty parking lot as a Retail Produce & Fish market year round using 20' to 45' repurposed shipping containers.  The size of the system needed will determine the size of the shipping container & greenhouse used.

With your contribution, we can go from prototype to full production and sell these Micro Aqua-Gardens to individuals for personal use as an Urban Garden, or Retailers as a way to offer fresh from the farm to the plate produce, these units can even be sold to Charity Organizations that can then set these up in poverty stricken villages.  Who wouldn't want the ability to grow fresh fruits & vegetables and be able to harvest fish without having to rely on others or having to go to the grocery store?  Families who normally spend $300 - $500 per month buying produce & fish can save that amount just by harvesting the very food that they grew in their own Micro Aqua-Garden!  An annual savings of roughly $6,000!  Imagine what you could do if you had an extra $6k!  Not to mention the savings that occur because you are only using 1/10th of the water used in a typical in ground dirt garden.  Potentially, there could be a combined savings of over $10K per year!

In the end, this is about utilizing an extremely efficient, environmentally friendly, cost effective method to obtain self sufficiency & long term sustainability simply by using the Micro Aqua-Garden.

What We Need & What You Get