{"id":2379,"date":"2022-01-20T14:59:22","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T13:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/?p=2379"},"modified":"2022-01-20T14:59:22","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T13:59:22","slug":"aqua-quoi-internship-at-europes-largest-aquaponic-rooftop-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/2022\/01\/20\/aqua-quoi-internship-at-europes-largest-aquaponic-rooftop-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"Aqua-quoi? Internship at Europe’s largest aquaponic rooftop farm."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It\u2019s Monday morning, as I casually roll onto the Abattoir site on my bike. I can\u2019t help but notice people looking at me. I smile toothless and nod, the classical white guy greet. I\u2019m still not sure if people are starting to recognize me or they\u2019re just laughing at my cowboy hat. I\u2019m hoping it\u2019s the first but it\u2019s probably the latter. In any case I made someone smile so I still count that as a win. I arrive at the service elevator and take it up to the 2nd floor where I arrive at the farm. Passing the seeding- & germination station, I greet some other interns and push on through the glass corridor, a 40-meter-long corridor in between the pisciculture and tomato greenhouse. I love passing through this glass hallway. On the right I can see a couple of thousand plants with shiny cherry tomatoes pushing towards the sun, fighting to get as much light as they can. A bit like people who rush to the terraces after work to get a good couple of hours of vitamin D in their system before going back home. On my left I\u2019m passing the bio-, and drum-filter of the pisciculture. These \u2018boyzz\u2019 make our whole operation possible. They turn the ammonia in the fish waste into nitrites and then into nitrates, our core nutrient provider for the hydronic system in the greenhouses. Yeah, we grow tomatoes with fish-poop, and they\u2019re bloody delicious, the tomatoes \ud83d\ude09 Some people react a bit shocked, even disgusted at first when I explain the system to them. But this feeling fades as soon as I remind them that most of our food is fertilised with cow manure. I\u2019ll take fish over cow poop any day mate, and so should you. Pardon my French. And pardon me some more because\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Une fois arriv\u00e9 \u00e0 la ferme, je salue mes coll\u00e8gues au bureau et je me dirige vers l’espace \u00e9v\u00e9nementiel, o\u00f9 je pr\u00e9pare un d\u00e9jeuner VIP pour quelques investisseurs potentiels. Notre fondateur et architecte du projet, Steven Beckers, am\u00e8nera quelques clients pour visiter sa ferme pilote. Steven est sp\u00e9cialis\u00e9 dans l’architecture “cradle-to-cradle” et la conception circulaire, ce qui se refl\u00e8te dans la conception de notre ferme. Nous r\u00e9cup\u00e9rons la chaleur produite par les syst\u00e8mes de refroidissement de l’abattoir pour chauffer nos serres et l’eau des bassins de pisciculture. Cela nous permet d’\u00e9conomiser beaucoup d’\u00e9nergie et, \u00e0 ce propos, nous utilisons des panneaux solaires pour alimenter la plupart de nos installations de production. De plus, nous utilisons les eaux de pluie et les eaux souterraines pour tous nos besoins en eau. Peut-\u00eatre pas tous nos besoins en eau, car je servirai de l’eau SPA en bouteille pendant le d\u00e9jeuner VIP. Pour cette occasion, j’ai besoin de trouver un chef qui peut venir \u00e0 la ferme pour pr\u00e9parer quelque chose de fantaisiste et de savoureux avec tous nos produits : c’est-\u00e0-dire 4 vari\u00e9t\u00e9s de tomates, 4 types d’aubergines, quelques vari\u00e9t\u00e9s de piments, nos herbes aromatiques et enfin mais surtout, notre merveilleuse truite arc-en-ciel. Le d\u00e9fis du chef et de pr\u00e9parer un d\u00e9jeuner exquis qui convaincra les gens de la haute qualit\u00e9 des produits cultiv\u00e9s sur un toit en ville. Je suis d\u00e9j\u00e0 convaincu que l’agriculture urbaine durable est viable. Et m\u00eame si nous avons encore un long chemin \u00e0 parcourir, je serai heureux de faire partie de ce voyage vers l’avenir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Monday morning, as I casually roll onto the Abattoir site on my bike. I can\u2019t help but notice people looking at me. I smile toothless and nod, the classical white guy greet. I\u2019m still not sure if people are starting to recognize me or they\u2019re just laughing at my cowboy hat. I\u2019m hoping it\u2019s … Lees verder “Aqua-quoi? Internship at Europe’s largest aquaponic rooftop farm.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":570,"featured_media":2382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stage"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/111\/2021\/06\/eyes-closed-final-2.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pavQFa-Cn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/570"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2383,"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions\/2383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.mm.ehb.be\/trm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}