💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › red-herring-a-fishy-future.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:38:45. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

View Raw

More Information

➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: A Fishy Future?
Author: Red Herring
Date: 2011
Language: en
Topics: interview, Northeastern Anarchist, agriculture, food
Source: Retrieved on December 2, 2016 from https://web.archive.org/web/20161202012629/http://nefac.net/fishfarm
Notes: Interview with Red Herrring, an unskilled fish culturist living somewhere in the North American rust belt and a supporter of the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC). Published in The Northeastern Anarchist Issue #15, 2011.

Red Herring

A Fishy Future?

“I work on what’s called a “recirculating” aquaculture farm. We’re still

trying to maximize fish production, but we deal with the waste problem

by closing the loop, doing our own water treatment on site and re-using

as much of the water as we can. We have very high stocking densities —

let’s say twenty to thirty thousand fish, in tanks the size of swimming

pools. Dozens of these tanks can fit together within one warehouse

building. The water they swim in is constantly flushed out, filtered or

treated in several ways, and pumped back in clean. The solids that are

removed in the treatment process are stored and sold for fertilizer. So

the water in the tanks “recirculates,” in parallel, and the tanks share

a number of supplementary systems that help maintain an optimal growing

(“culture”) environment: heating, feed, chemical regulation, and so on.

We grow them for about a year, with each fish ending up as about a pound

of meat when fileted. The idea is that this basic design can be scaled

up to make really huge farms. Ours is a really huge farm.”

Red Herring, fish farmer interviewed by Flint Arthur

Flint: The United Nations recently reported that “Oceans’ fish could

disappear within 40 years.” Is the situation really that desperate?

Herring: I don’t know! I know next to nothing about fish, or oceans. It

does seem like many of the remaining commercial fisheries are under

pressure, and the company I work for seems to think that a lot of the

future demand for fish is going to be met by farming. They cite all

sorts of dire statistics when they’re trying to convince investors to

buy in to the way we’re doing things. There seems to be something to it

— fish won’t necessarily go extinct, but fishing grounds reach the point

where the cost of catching fish exceeds the price you can get for them.

Human demand grew so quickly that not a lot of time passed between when

we saw oceans as being almost infinitely bountiful and when we started

scraping the bottom (sometimes literally, trawling the sea floors with

massive nets).

Simple overfishing is one thing: as I understand it, populations can

sometimes be restored through proper management. But in many cases we’re

destroying habitat in a more significant way. Right now we’re watching a

new dead zone develop in the Gulf of Mexico due to the Deepwater Horizon

spill — when you wipe out the microorganisms that transform sunlight

into food for everything else, it’s gonna take a long time for a wild

“fishery” to grow back.

I suppose fish could drop out of the human diet, or become a real

luxury, but first we’ll probably see more and more aquaculture.

Fish farms are sometimes criticized as “the feed lots of the sea.” Can

you talk about some of the benefits and problems of open sea/pond

aquaculture?

Raising a lot of fish, or a lot of anything, in a small space requires

concentrated inputs, and produces concentrated outputs. If that small

space is in a cage or net suspended in the ocean, or a river, or if it’s

a system of ponds outdoors, you’re going to have an impact on the

environment. If your number one priority is maximizing pounds of fish

flesh—or maximizing profits—chances are good that you’re making a mess

with your waste streams. For example, fish piss out a lot of chemicals

in forms that, as they break down, use up a lot of oxygen, so if you’re

concentrating them intensively in one place you’re damaging habitat

downstream, or under the cages, by oxygen depletion. There are other

outputs that are damaging in that kind of concentration.

Also, if your farm is open to the elements, it’s a real breeding ground

for all sorts of opportunistic disease. Many farms rely on a constant

regimen of antibiotics, which can be poisonous downstream as well as to

the workers and consumers. Keeping disease bacteria and other

microorganisms at bay for long enough to grow filets on fish is one

thing, but living systems also depend on “beneficial” microorganisms

doing their thing, and sustained exposure to antibiotics can damage

those processes.

Aside from the risk of disease, fish also tend to gather and accumulate

mercury, PCBs, dioxins and other industrial contaminants in their

bodies. There’s a lot of official disagreement over how some of these

things affect consumer health, and I’m not an expert, or an alarmist,

but if you’re concerned for what you’re eating, you might want to do a

little research before shopping for fish.

How is the farm you work at different than open sea/pond aquaculture?

I work on what’s called a “recirculating” aquaculture farm. We’re still

trying to maximize fish production, but we deal with the waste problem

by closing the loop, doing our own water treatment on site and re-using

as much of the water as we can. We have very high stocking densities —

let’s say twenty to thirty thousand fish, in tanks the size of swimming

pools. Dozens of these tanks can fit together within one warehouse

building. The water they swim in is constantly flushed out, filtered or

treated in several ways, and pumped back in clean. The solids that are

removed in the treatment process are stored and sold for fertilizer. So

the water in the tanks “recirculates,” in parallel, and the tanks share

a number of supplementary systems that help maintain an optimal growing

(“culture”) environment: heating, feed, chemical regulation, and so on.

We grow them for about a year, with each fish ending up as about a pound

of meat when fileted. The idea is that this basic design can be scaled

up to make really huge farms. Ours is a really huge farm.

Are you concerned about disease with the fish? Do you use antibiotics on

your fish?

Disease is one of the main dangers of intensive production. If fish get

a given bacterial infection or parasite, it spreads very quickly within

a tank. By closely monitoring fish health, trying to prevent

contamination from outside the building, and proactively culling any

weak-swimming fish, disease can largely be kept at bay without the use

of antibiotics.

Would you eat the fish you farm?

I do eat it. My company gives us a small fish ration on top of our

wages.

Do they taste good?

I think so. But I ate fish growing up, and I’m not a picky eater. Some

of my coworkers hate the product.

What is the nature of the work? Is it a skilled or unskilled occupation?

You certainly need some people who know exactly what they’re doing,

because so many things can go wrong and you have to be attuned to small

early warning signs. Given the current spread and separation of

specialized knowledge in our society, I’d say if you were starting up a

big fish farm you’d better have an engineer, a fish biologist, and a

professional chemist in house, as well as someone who can negotiate the

markets for feed, chemicals, machinery and other materials. Once you get

going, those people are only needed part-time. You will need some

skilled, handy folks around for maintenance. But the bulk of the work we

do requires between a day and a month of training.

I came in off the street with very little related background. Most of my

time is spent slinging feed into tanks and removing dead or dying fish

from the systems. Those are the two most labor-intensive parts of

culturing fish. If the water temperature drops a degree or two

overnight, it might mean pulling forty dead ones out of a tank instead

of the normal ten. I’ve learned a lot more than that on the job — water

chemistry, mechanical skills, and so on — but I’m not a skilled worker.

Recirculating aquaculture uses a lot of technology intensively. Is that

hard to maintain and keep together? Do you have a lot of waste and dead

fish when systems fail?

Sometimes. It’s not pretty. It’s a high stakes process — so many factors

have to line up, and one little mistake can have pretty huge

consequences. The culture tanks aren’t self-regulating like natural fish

habitats are.

In another conversation we had, you said you’d double the staff size to

make the job more enjoyable. How would increased staff help, and what

isn’t enjoyable about the job now?

Well I’m sure the company that owns the farm couldn’t double their labor

budget, and they used to run the same farm with even fewer workers. In a

different society... if more people were available to train in depth and

then work part-time to do the boring repetitive tasks at their own pace,

for example, you’re producing a lot of food for the work you put in. I’m

not saying people should be willing to work for food, but if we were to

do away with money — the regulating substance of poverty and social

austerity — someone working for a few hours and taking home a few pounds

of fish would be a win/win on a farm the size of ours.

Right now, it’s like any other job under capitalism: shitty. Stressful.

Boring when it’s slow, and dangerous when it’s fast. If you find a way

to do a given task more efficiently, you don’t have an incentive to

share that knowledge with others — you either spend the resulting free

time alone furtively, or else your method becomes standard procedure and

everyone is expected to work more productively. It’s dim and hot and it

smells kinda bad, and there are thirty unemployed people out there who’d

love to have your job.

What are some typical work-related injuries and illnesses in

aquaculture?

According to government statistics, slips and falls, and cuts, with the

outside chance of drowning. There’s a lot of electricity and water, and

spinning machinery. Some farmed species have sharp spines and other

defenses. There are bacterial infections that can cross over from fish

to mammals. Obviously if you’re cutting or canning fish on site you have

all the hazards of that job. It can be heavy work. I’ve seen older folks

mess up their backs pulling nets or carrying feed around, working

against the clock.

More to the point, with just about any job there’s some level of

investment in safety precautions that gets traded away in a competitive

market environment. I like to recommend Kris Paap’s book, “Working

Construction,” which talks about how sometimes employees in competitive

industries choose to collude with their bosses against safety, to keep

the jobs... this is why you see workers treating safety inspectors as

their enemies, out to shut down a jobsite or cut into the bottom line.

If recirculating aquaculture becomes profitable, or better yet, if the

profit motive is removed, it will become easier to improve safety.

Are any of the labor laws about fishing or agriculture used by owners to

exploit aquaculture workers?

I’m making above the prevailing (poverty) wage for farm work overall.

And I’ve only worked at one facility. Without getting too specific, I

have seen instances where falling under USDA jurisdiction as farmworkers

(rather than the Department of Labor) is used to management’s advantage.

I’m sure that if we were trying to organize ourselves a little better,

we would see the hammer fall.

I know shellfish such as oysters have almost completely shifted to

aquaculture. Here in Maryland, prisoners make wire oyster cages that are

used by volunteers to raise oysters in a dozen rivers. Any thoughts on

that?

We must free the prisoners and burn every prison to the ground.

What sort of resources does recirculating aquaculture use? Can you give

us some numbers on productivity in terms of the amount of the fish

produced, relative to power, water, feed, and labor hours? How many

people do you work with?

When done right, recirculating aquaculture can be an incredibly

efficient use of land, water, and labor, per unit of food produced. And

compared with all other meat production, it’s an efficient use of

biomass — many species can convert their feed to edible flesh at a ratio

that approaches 1:1 when conditions are right.

The core of the work, i.e. fish culture, maintenance, processing and

transportation, is done by a couple dozen people working full-time. We

need quite a bit of water to fill up, but a lot less once we’re up and

running.

But, it’s energy intensive, and drains resources in hidden ways — much

of our “ecological footprint,” so to speak, is offsite. This isn’t quite

the miracle industry portrayed by its capitalist backers and their media

hype men. It’s important to be skeptical of some of any claims you hear

about new (or old) forms of agriculture, as long as there’s money

involved. Anyone trying to turn new forms of scarcity into new sources

of profits does not have the needs of the people at heart, and will in

the end resort to smoke and mirrors when rational, informed collective

decision-making threatens their profitability.

The most obvious resource we’re using a lot of is electricity. We pump

an awful lot of water around in circles, and filter and sort it, and

heat it in the winter. Producing the right environment in the culture

tanks also needs direct inputs, first and foremost aeration with oxygen,

so we’re dependent on outside companies that produce liquid oxygen, as

well as salts, chemicals to raise or lower pH, and any number of more

specialized tricks: biological supplements and so on. We’re raising fish

in an entirely synthetic environment, and the components of that

environment break and need repair or replacement.

This is sort of abstract, but it might help to think about it in terms

of the laws of thermodynamics: we can’t just produce an ever-higher

level of order within our walls without it being offset by a greater

amount of disorder somewhere else. The more usefully arranged

matter/energy (edible fish meat) streams forth from our loading docks,

the more disorganization we’re pushing elsewhere. You can’t just turn

dirty water into clean water. I don’t think people should be discouraged

by this, but I do think we need to have an understanding that all human

endeavor has unintended consequences, and if some green capitalist is

describing ideas to you that sound a little too tidy to be true, your

bullshit detector should be going off.

Wild evolved living systems are more materially ordered than anything we

can design. We can choose to prioritize other forms of order (like human

pleasure, freedom, justice, intelligence, and longevity), but in doing

so we need to have a realistic understanding that there will be some

material sacrifices, imperfections, and surprises.

Can you explain the difference between farming vegetarian and

carnivorous fish?

As with all meat farming, you have to picture the end product as the

peak of a matter/energy pyramid. The more levels there are on the

pyramid, the broader a base of resources are ultimately being used to

produce it. Fish are no exception. If you’re catching menhaden at sea to

feed to bass on land, you aren’t doing anything to address the current

problem of human hunger.

There are some grey areas; some farms use feed made from bycatch or

other industrial byproducts. “Feathermeal,” for example, is secondary

material collected in poultry processing, and a lot of it ends up as

fish feed. In the same way, a lot of fish processing waste ends up as

pet food. I’d say there’s a benefit to turning byproducts from other

industries into food, as long as it doesn’t provide opportunities for

diseases to emerge. In the short run, if you tolerate the existence of

these massive poultry operations, then it’s hard to argue against using

feathermeal to produce fish.

In the long run, if we’re talking about food security, it’s preferable

to farm vegetarian fish. They’re like little naive swimming machines

that convert plant matter into fatty acids.

What about the difference between monoculture and polyculture?

Polyculture means raising multiple species together. Some farms try

what’s called “aquaponics” — raising fish in conjunction with

hydroponically grown plants (herbs, seaweed, leafy greens, tomatoes,

etc). The idea is that stuff in the fish waste can serve as nutrients

for these plants, which can also convert carbon dioxide back to oxygen.

So it conserves resources in water treatment, reduces some air

pollution, and yields a secondary crop of food. The idea of growing

algae is also becoming popular — algae capture sunlight, and their oil

can be extracted to use in making biodiesel.

But it’s difficult to design a factory system that mimics a wild

ecosystem in a regular, beneficial way, especially at larger scales. I

can see the appeal of wanting to further reduce the number of factors

you’re trying to manage, and just sell the manure on the side so farmers

somewhere else can use it as fertilizer.

What do you think of more organic, permaculture farms like Veta la Palma

in the south of Spain — low-density, open pond aquaculture?

Veta la Palma looks beautiful, and it’s inspiring to see human intention

engaging with the ecosystem so actively. I don’t know if they describe

what they’re doing in terms of permaculture, but it’s definitely on the

same page: design that seeks to echo nature by reintegrating as many

components as possible, making every output an input. This approach

makes the total system the priority, and “production” (of harvested

fish) less central. They’re also restoring the wetlands, providing food

and habitat for migratory birds, and growing the shrimp that their bass

eat. I think it’s great in and of itself. That said, it isn’t going to

be a very helpful tool in solving the food/energy crisis humans might be

facing. They say they harvest 1,200 tons of fish a year on something

like 8,000 acres of their land... with recirculating aquaculture, it’s

not unheard of to hit that kind of yield on 2 or 3 acres, though I’m

sure our hidden land use is much higher.

Your farm is located in a rural area. Is there any reason that it

couldn’t be in a city, closer to where the market for fish consumption

is?

I don’t think so. There’s quite a bit of empty industrial space,

especially in inner-ring suburbs, that can be rebuilt or converted for

aquaculture. I’ve heard that abutters complain about manure storage at

fish farms, but I imagine there are ways to avoid that problem — storing

it better, getting rid of it faster, or getting better neighbors. Farms

smell! If the neighbors complain about the compost pile at your urban

community garden, they’ll probably complain about a nearby fish farm,

too. Besides that, so long as it remains possible to transport resources

in and fish out, we should be able to site these in urban areas with no

problem.

It would be preferable to site them in population centers — if all the

product were prepared and eaten locally, the energy savings in “food

miles” would help make up in part for the high energy cost of

production. I would even go so far as to say the greatest benefit of

recirculating aquaculture is that we can site it in cities.

How affordable are recirculating aquaculture grown fish compared to

other kinds of fish harvest? Can recirculating aquaculture compete in

today’s market?

They’re expensive. We’re competing with wild overfishing, and with more

environmentally destructive types of fish farms. There’s a niche for

what we do in the current markets, but my guess is that most of those

customers are intentionally paying a premium, either because they want

to help sponsor this kind of production, or because they’re buying an

uncommon or hyped species for status or novelty.

Let’s say you’re looking to feed two or three people on the income of

one full-time working person in the USA. The median hourly wage here is

about $16, or $640 a week, and on average people are spending 10 to 15%

of our income on food, so let’s say between $60 and $100. (The

Department of Labor says that the “average consumer unit,” which has 1.3

incomes and 2.5 eaters, spends $118 a week on food, but that’s $67 at

home and $51 out.)

Buying a couple pounds of fish at $8 to $12 a pound retail, which is

what a lot of the “green,” “safe,” farmed fish are going for, is going

to look prohibitively expensive — it’s a luxury purchase. If you’re

lucky enough to live near a fishing port, you can probably find fresh

fish at market for $4 or $5 a pound. But if you live inland you’re

buying farmed, processed, frozen, and trucked product for that price.

And that’s probably flavorless, breaded, and may contain traces of

mercury, hormones, or antibiotics. It’s pretty grim.

The current capitalist perspective is that since the seas are going to

be commercially unfishable, and traditional aquaculture is eventually

going to face more scrutiny and regulation, we might as well get in on

the ground floor of recirculating aquaculture now! But that’s the

thinking of the enemies of food security.

If money were to completely lose its value overnight, would

recirculating aquaculture be a sensible use of the available resources

to meet our food needs? If so, then it’s a valuable technology, and if

money is getting in the way of developing it, then it shouldn’t be

commodified in the first place. On the other hand, business plans not

panning out due to per-unit production costs might indicate that it’s a

waste of real resources. Either way it merits careful investigation and

thought. If energy costs go up, fish grown on recirculating farms are

unlikely to get more affordable.

Is capital transforming the way labor works in regards to fishing? Seems

that if aquaculture dominates the market then many current fishers will

be unemployed? It also seems that a lot of working conditions will be

more subject to time management, manager surveillance, etc...

The shift toward aquaculture isn’t because fishermen have become too

powerful and well-paid. If wild fish remained as abundant as they once

were, fish farming wouldn’t be competitive. Instead it’s relative

scarcity putting upward pressure on prices. Small, often family-based

fishing crews are competing in tighter markets against larger scale

operations which use more extreme techniques (various sorts of trawls,

tangle nets, purse seines, and so on).

Market entry already favors larger capital, and from that perspective

building an onshore farm might look more attractive than buying a bunch

of boats, nets, navigational equipment and moorings. I don’t think labor

costs factor heavily in the equation — it isn’t a case of technological

“advancement” being spurred by capital’s desire to break down worker

control, as was the case with longshoremen and containerization, the

initial mechanization of coal mining, the introduction of numerically

controlled lathes, or the development of the moving assembly line.

My guess is that even in the more established, traditional fish farming

industry, where multiple farms are competing directly to make profits,

there’s a somewhat more established division of labor within the farms,

since more profit can be re-invested into improving labor control and

minimizing labor costs. Recirculation aquaculture is a fledgling

industry where employment is a little more ad-hoc and wages are kept

down by the fear of plant closures. These farms only exist at all

because private investors or institutions think they’re a good idea in

the long term, and some consumers are willing and able to pay a premium

to support their methods.

Maybe that’s more of a question for people who work on fishing boats,

though — in their view, are we scabbing? Our jobs are a lot less

dangerous than theirs, and it could be argued that we benefit from the

same environmental regulations and population declines that put them out

of jobs.

It also sounds like there won’t be so much room for small producers, but

rather large aquaculture corporations would come to dominate the market?

If the technology becomes profitable, larger companies would certainly

have an advantage. I don’t see this as a good or bad thing necessarily.

Do recirculating aquaculture farms ever cut corners and compromise

environmental ethics to maximize profit?

Yes. I could be wrong, but from what I can tell, if anyone is currently

making money on recirculating aquaculture in this country, they are

probably lying to their customers or misleading them in some way.

Would you say that your job is exploitative or that your labor is

alienated?

Is that a multiple-choice question? Just kidding. My job is not fun, or

lucrative. It’s hard to say how much of that has to do with

recirculating aquaculture, and how much has to do with being part of a

more or less deskilled workforce in a rural part of the US during this

global recession. It’s hard to ask for raises on a farm that’s operating

at a loss. Everyone just keeps their head down and hopes the job lasts.

Something worth mentioning is that some colleges are offering

aquaculture programs, and students are graduating from those programs

much more quickly than the industry is expanding. So that training is

being wasted as those graduates either take menial jobs in the industry,

or work in other fields, or end up underemployed facing a fresh debt

burden. I wonder how many workers out there have the basic principles of

aquaculture system design in their heads, and if they will ever be able

to put that knowledge to use.

Is there any potential for workplace organizing? Is there any

manifestation of low intensity work resistance now?

Where I am there’s some regular individualized resistance of the smoking

dope and stealing tools variety, which is great unless you’re the one

trying to find a certain tool or annoyed that your coworker keeps

staring at the fish. I don’t think fish farmers are likely to become a

vanguard of working class political recomposition in the next few years,

unfortunately.

The actually existing labor movement has no economic reason to see these

farms as strategic, since the profit margins are slim to negative, and

since it’s a capital-intensive (or rather really resource-intensive)

form of food production, as opposed to a labor-intensive one. I would

love in theory to have worker control of our farm, or even to get into a

position where we can exert some counter-planning, but I don’t think the

improvements we could make for ourselves would be worth the fight, if

they were contained within our walls. We might be able to arrange our

work better without managers, but would we really want to share in

ownership of a company struggling in such a painful marketplace? I don’t

know if we could do a better job of courting investors and wholesale

customers than our bosses do.

Where I see the most potential is in using our position to plug into a

wave of struggle that’s initiated elsewhere, especially if food security

is an objective of that struggle. The actually existing food movement is

about as remote from our world as the unions are, which is another whole

discussion. If it advances to the point where it can welcome farmworkers

as agents of change to the food system, and develops a critical

perspective of the social position of small farm owners, I think

aquaculture workers have a lot to contribute.

Given all the problems with aquaculture in general, and recirculating

aquaculture in particular, do you see it as a positive development?

I don’t think any productive technology will really help address coming

natural resource shortages unless it meets two criteria. First, it needs

to in some way overcome what Marx called the “metabolic rift” — the

severing of material society from its soil. Matter and energy that we

use need to be reincorporated into wild ecosystems afterward. Second,

the technology needs to require that we change our social structures to

adopt it, and be obviously worthwhile to us. Ecological destruction and

austerity are driven above all by the wealthy, and by the poverty that

sustains them. Taken alone, recirculating aquaculture meets neither of

these criteria.

If you were to design a fish farming system in utopia, what would it

look like?

I can’t bring myself to imagine a utopia that rests on changing what

people prefer to put in their mouths... but I do hope people who want to

eat meat start eating more fish. If people make that switch more often

it will reduce the resource base of their diet. We need to find ways to

meet the demand for fish that aren’t depleting limited resources, be

that wild fish populations or fossil fuels. If we discover new energy

sources (or better ways to use and store solar and wind energy), then

sure, let’s build hundreds of big, inland, monostocked recirculating

aquaculture facilities! If not, we probably need to continue to develop

and propagate creative design solutions.

It’s a little embarrassing to look at some of the 1970s utopian

aquaculturists’ ideas of what would be possible today. If you look

through the New Alchemy Institute’s journals, or any of the Soft Tech,

Whole Earth, etc catalogues, they were pushing the idea that

psychedelically painted passive solar greenhouses, supplemented by

hand-built windmills, might supply the energy required to intensively

farm tilapia and vegetables together in mild climates. I guess it could

work for your separatist rural commune, but I don’t think it would do

much for a village, much less an urban neighborhood. They were just very

optimistic about how easy it would be to raise fish and edible plants

together in polyculture.

Since the least-bloody predictions for a free and voluntary population

degrowth involve a peak of six to eight billion urbanites by midcentury,

we need to focus on ideas that are relatively modular and can be

incorporated directly into cities. Allowing people to move into cities,

but finding a way to grow a large part of our food and reuse a portion

of our waste there, will be crucial. I don’t think we can permanently

sustain a spatial separation of farming, residence, and the treatment of

farm and residential waste streams. I think that figuring out how to

grow fairly complex biological culture systems on the interior of city

blocks will be part of the solution, if there is one.

So the real scientific advances we’re looking for aren’t in aquaculture

but in wastewater treatment. If we can find sanitary ways to

decentralize water treatment, and to use the resulting bioavailable

solids (such as growing algae and plants), which is easier said than

done, we will be directly addressing rather than deepening the metabolic

rift. Fish production might be a useful component of such systems.

So I’m inspired by the experiments people are doing with smaller-scale,

backyard aquaculture — which I guess is getting trendy in Australia and

elsewhere — not because they’re building directly toward the solution to

our food needs, but because it might be a piece of a much more

complicated patchwork of solutions. Current attempts to raise fish in

intensive polyculture, and even according to permacultural design

principles, are contributing to this knowledge base, even if they fail

materially or are shut down for being a waste of money.

Whatever useful lessons we learn from any of these various approaches to

fish farming, though, I think it’s going to be important to combat the

tendency to divide the engineering and design know-how from the

day-to-day operational work of fish culture. The profit motive drives

this division, since management saves money whenever it can replace a

team of five well-rounded problem-solvers with one expert and four

menial workers. If the people are going to confront and overcome the

food crisis of the 21^(st) century, it will be by developing our

industrial, nutritional and ecological literacy, and resisting our

stupefication as workers and consumers.

What is the most inspiring thing about your job?

I raise meat in vats! I feel excited to be living in the future.

What is the most disappointing thing about your job?

This gnawing feeling that we’re headed into the wrong future.