Aquaponics - what do you want to do???

Whenever a new thing that arrives on the scene, a lot of people starts to have various ideas how this one thing will work for them.

For Aquaponics, in my opinion, you have to be clear about what you want out of it. What you ultimately choose to do may need you to take very different paths. So be careful.

If your intention is more of a backyard Aquaponist, you path is quite simple. Just understand the basic function of how it works, set it up, and keep at it regularly. If you are passionate enough, then you will regularly upgrade your knowledge and maintain you system, you have a high chance of being successful in making Aquaponics as a supplementary food source for you and your family.

There are a lot of people out there with little or no formal education that had made this system work for them. Don't let some people tell you that you need a biology or engineering degree to make this work. They are just being ignorant.

My starting point for this project is just that. To create a reasonably cheaper and more importantly healthy food source. Whether I am successful in this experiment will not affect my living standard and my financial positions.

The good things about Aquaponics is that it is scalable if you want to. 

Now that makes things a little bit more complicated....

If you are thinking about going commercial, well, it is a whole different story. You need to know how to run a business successfully. Fish and vegetables are easy to produce relatively. But marketing your product to the right people, the logistics and operations and the financial considerations are all important to make it work. You need to know how to work with people and more importantly you need to know how to manage people. So think carefully before you end up being a heartbreak story.

For starters:

1. What kind of commercial entity will you be having? Sole proprietorship, partnership or private limited? If it is Pte Ltd, you accounts will need to be audited and so on and so forth. If you are a sole proprietor or a partner, you are personally liable for this enterprise.
2. What are the compliance issues you will have to meet vis-a-vis local authorities, Ministry of Agriculture, and etc.? In Malaysia, sometimes the Ministry of Agriculture will provide grants and subsidies to small farmers. You have to know how to take advantage of that.
3. What is you location? How will you transport your end  products to the buyers? Do you sell to wholesalers or directly to shops and restaurants?
4. What product mix will you adopt? For example, basil has a higher commercial values versus Bak Choy, but the consumption of basil is higher in larger city than smaller towns, so if your farm is in a smaller city, will transportation cut into your profit and how much?
5. How much will you produce and attempt to sell? What is your pricing strategy - large quantity at low price or low quantity (with appropriate product positioning) at a premium?
6. How about being certified as an "Organic Farm"? Would that be a way to go?

These are just some of the fundamental issues that you will have to confront if you want to go commercial or even semi-commercial.

So your mindset will have to be different. You have to be a business person before you are a Commercial Aquaponist.

I know someone who might be a decent engineer and programmer but he has zero business sense and practical experiences. He has embarked on countless dream apps ventures and thinks that he will be the next Zuckerman. Each one of his ventures fails and end up with losses. Nothing will change until he understand this basic principle.