Lack of financial information is of the biggest stumbling blocks in aquaponics. University of Hawai’i recently released a tool that should help with that: a financial modeling tool for aquaponics.
This tool is an Excel spreadsheet built from real-life data. UH scientists collected info from a number of AP farms in Hawai’i to learn how individual financial components– like labor costs, price of materials, etc– affect financial outcomes. Of course most locations have very different costs of living, shipping, and food prices than Hawai’i, so the model allows for you to input costs for your own area.
UH also has a cool little presentation on basic AP costing from two farms in Hawai’i in Guam. It’s eight minutes and a really great demo of how different market conditions can drastically affect the profitability of an individual farm.