As climate change threatens economic opportunities for smallholder farmers in the Caribbean, it is imperative to introduce new business models and technologies that will enable them to not only adapt, but to thrive.
Through technical and business training in INMED Aquaponics®, INMED Caribbean is strengthening food security, climate resilience and sustainable income-generation opportunities in Jamaica. With the support of multi-sector partners, INMED is offering a free program called Increasing Access to Climate-Smart Agriculture (IACA) to help smallholder farmers and aspiring entrepreneurs to launch their own aquaponics enterprises.
Aquaponics is a climate-adaptive agriculture technique that combines fish farming with hydroponics (soilless crop production) in a closed system that produces year-round harvests at a rate roughly 10 times higher than traditional farming. Aquaponics consumes up to 90% less water, is scalable to any space (urban or rural) and is resilient to destructive climate-change events.