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Forget Manure or Fertilizer, Fish Are The New Farming Answer

Farmers in a New York lab are growing plants in their lab using fish waste.

Kale is growing inside a high school lab in New York City, and they're not using traditional soil and sun. The crops are grown indoor all-year-round using aquaponics, a method that uses the waste from fish to fertilize crops.

Aquaponics is a sustainable farming technique. In a controlled environment, the waste from the fish provides the nutrients crops need to grow. In turn, the crops purify the water for the fish.

Philson Warner manages Cornell University Cooperative Extension's aquaponics lab. He first began studying this technology 40 years ago, but he says it's picking up steam now as more people are interested in locally sourced food. 

Warner said, "No pesticides, no fungisides. All nice and clean."

Asked if sees this as the farming of the future, Warner said, "This is the future."

Also, the world's population is climbing and this is a way to produce more food in less space, no farmland needed. The mini ecosystem also requires about 90-percent less water than traditional crop production.

The high school lab isn't the only place using aquaponics. Experts estimate that there are between 800 and 1,200 home aquaponic systems in the U.S.

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