If I’m growing my vegetables with fish crap – am I going to get the same curled upper lip when I mention it was Carp that made that Spinach?

Like people, the “good looking fish” get all the breaks – and fish with big tails, feelers, and roman noses, are relegated to a second tier of desirability – except for the Catfish, and only because 72 million Southerners insist on it.

I figure the next big outbreak of Ecoli will have everyone pointing at the Pikeminnow, while the Salmon responsible crap indiscriminately in your radishes.

Farmed fish effluent transformed by bacteria into fertilizer – feeding a hydroponic vegetable plot. It sounds like the best of both worlds; no Red dye #3 to taint the rockfish below, and no “trout chow” shoveled into the ocean causing oxygen deprivation and blight.

“Aquaponics” is still on the pricey side – and cannot compete with a ball of fish in the Ocean, but it doesn’t have all the detrimental side effects plaguing the large aqua-farms.

These demands make it tough to compete with foreign and industrial-scale aquaculturists on the metrics of price and size alone. (Luckily, the fast-growing vegetable crops are the primary moneymaker.) Cabbage Hill’s customers are mainly local restaurants and markets that prize what Ferry refers to as “farm-to-table” relationships. “These systems are fairly expensive,” Rakocy notes. “So you have to raise really high-value crops and look for niche markets.”

Now all you need is a hardy, fast growing fish that can thrive in tepid water, doesn’t migrate, and is content to munch stems and seeds, as we’re eating all the other stuff.