Nigerian-Born Wellness Expert Creates an Aquaponic Farm in Bushwick As She Teaches Food Sovereignty
We first met Yemi Amu at the Healthyish Homecoming produced by Bon Appétit. She was on an amazing panel called “Why Food Sovereignty Matters”. On the panel she discussed how access to food should not be a burden and how her daily work provides information and access. Since that conversation, Yemi has been on our radar as we are always excited to connect with local Black/POC farmers working on food justice in urban communities.
However, we were even more excited to connect with Yemi because her farm doesn’t utilize soil! She is the founder of OKO FARMS, which is an aquaponic farm situated on a Bushwick city lot - “Green Thumb Garden”. The site is mainly used for educational purposes - where 80% of the produce they grow goes towards education and rest they sell to people in the neighborhood, local restaurants and farm shares.
BUT what exactly is aquaponics?
“Aquaponics is growing fish and vegetables within in a recirculating ecosystem. It’s a simple ecosystem where you’re recycling fish waste to grow plants - fertilizer. Plants take up the waste as nutrients. The plants in turn are cleaning the water for the fish. Fish manure has been used for 1000’s of years to grow food. The same thing happens in the ocean if you see rice patties growing - there’s aquaponics happening. We also have the advantage of recycling water in the process. We end up using way less water than you would in a typical soil farm ... like 80%. The microbial community you would find in soil that keeps soil rich - you find the same ones here. Just the way it takes years to build good soil, its the same thing. The older your water system is - the richer and more nutrient rich it is - so you really want to hold onto that water for as long as possible. ”
Born and raised in Nigeria, Yemi shares that her mom was an avid gardener. Although she didn’t participate as a kid, she was always surrounded by it, which indirectly sparked her interest in farming.
“In Nigeria during middle school, I took an agricultural science course where I had my own plot of land with chickens. The thing that stayed with me was my experience in the gardens.”
When she moved to the states, she focused on nutrition and nutrition education - studied Ayurveda - Indian holistic health. In graduate school, she studied nutrition behavior modification. “Helping people understand the barriers of healthy dietary and lifestyle habits and figuring out how to get around those barriers”, became a passion of hers.
Through her work before starting a Oko farm, Yemi had experienced the oppressive systems that continue to pigeonhole urban communities. Once a member of the Park Slope Food Co-Op, she felt that the process was stressful as your swipe card can easily be suspended. “It shouldn’t feel like work to get food at affordable prices.”
She has worked with a lot of people who were low income and later worked with an organization that had a housing facility for formally homeless/ mentally ill adults.
“You can’t get back to the earth if its not around you. ”
Photo via Oko Farms
Yemi undeniably is a visionary. She grew a kitchen garden on the roof at her job - primarily growing vegetables that they were familiar with. She discovered aquaponics in that process where one of the volunteers suggested this system for growing food where she can also raise fish for her clients. YES - in an urban environment.
“Obsessed with the way food is grown”, Yemi has been farming full time for a long time. Amongst other things, she grew food for a food pantry for several years and ran the farmers market and youth program at Weeksville Heritage Center. After starting her aquaponics garden about 2 years ago, she saw that residents began changing their diets to more plant based and this is largely because she’s able to teach people about the food system.
“A lot of this work is connecting to nature - so many lessons you get out of doing this work. It’s not that I think aquaponics is better than soil - I just think there are lessons to learn about how food is produced. Especially with water. We take water for granted. It’s the key to everything. What do you know that is living that can exist without water? You can have the best soil in the world, if there is not water in there your plants are not going to thrive. We as human beings are 70% water. The Earth is 70% water. The earliest plants in the world evolved from water. It’s in there DNA to grow in water. We made a shift from water to soil, but they came out of water. We come out of water … literally we are surrounded by water in the womb. It gives me a great opportunity to talk about water. It also gives me a great opportunity to raise awareness about fish. So many people don’t know anything going on with fish or fish farming.”
The truly beautiful thing about Yemi’s farm is that so much of what she does is for educational purposes - she’s really passionate about sharing her knowledge.
There’s so much we have to learn about fish:
“If you want to be able to talk about farm raised fish, people need to be able to experience it”, says Yemi.
Photo via Oko Farms
The edible fish she uses are channel catfish and blue gill (native fish to the north east). She shares that she doesn’t farm talapia because it can only survive in tropical climates. Tilapia is the biggest farm fish and the oldest (talapia and carte). It blew my mind when she shared that talapia was being farmed in the Nile like 400 BC and the Chinese were farming a version of Channel catfish and carpe. Tilapia originated in the Nile!
“The 3 most sustainable fish to raise - tilapia, carpe & channel catfish as far as farming fish are concerned because they’re omnivores. Looking for fish that aren’t dependent on fish meal wholly. If you’re farming fish that are dependent on fish meal - that means you’re literally emptying the ocean to raise fish. If you take salmon for example - people farm salmon - it takes 5 pounds of ocean fish to get one pound of salmon. Thats not a good math because when you do that - you’re depleting the ocean stock and starving out the bigger fish that depend on the little fish that you’re taking out to feed your farmed fish. So in terms of sustainability for farming fish, it makes more sense to raise fish that you can feed a variety of things, so that you’re not fully dependent on fish meal. You can feed them a more vegetarian diet, or bugs or worms. ”
As we dove deeper into conversation of meat and seafood. Yemi’s greatest advice when it comes to consumption of meat is “Know the source”.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s beef, chicken or fish … if you don’t know where it’s coming from - it’s all the same. What matters are the values of the person who are raising the animals. When it comes to fish - it’s very difficult to trace the supply chain. You don’t know where your fish is coming from. Even retailers can’t tell you exactly who the farmer is who raised your fish.
The answer is not being vegan. The answer is to participate in how food is being grown. It’s not about veganism. Because most people who are swapping to veganism still don’t think about the relationship to the land, what impact almond milk has - growing almonds at that rate. It takes 5 gallons of water to get one almond.
First you have to learn about nature. We’re so distant from nature - we have to understand what it takes to actually grow food. And understand how ecosystems works and then demand better from people who grow food. Also policy makers. If they’re not supporting the people who grow your food, who make huge sacrifices to grow your food ... then who will?
We’re not suppose to be consumers, we’re suppose to be citizens. How do we become better citizens? How do we participate more than just, let me just consume? ”
We need to be in the world differently!
Photo via Oko Farms