Aquaponics

Sustainable sustenance

Paul Shumlich graduated from Mount Royal with a Bachelor of Business Administration — General Management and a minor in Entrepreneurship in 2017. He is co-founder of Deepwater Farms and one of the Calgary Herald’s 20 Compelling Calgarians for 2019. He saw entrepreneurial opportunities to improve the food supply chain and wanted to show people exactly where their food was coming from. The business began taking off when it performed very well at Mount Royal’s JMH LaunchPad Pitch Competition, sponsored by JMH & Co., an Alberta accounting firm, earning $30,000 in cash and in-kind services, and enabling Shumlich to focus on Deepwater full time.

Shumlich’s state-of-the-art aquaponics operation produces fish, greens and herbs with little to no waste. Deepwater Farms is the first of its kind in Calgary, blazing a trail for local, sustainable food production.

Aquaponics is a system of agriculture that uses the waste from aquaculture (fish farming) to supply nutrients for plants grown hydroponically (in water with no soil). In turn, these plants purify the water, which is fed back into the fish habitat. Plants grow faster because of the biologically active nutrient solution derived from the fish waste and because they are provided with the optimal environment to thrive. Food that is transported (usually taking from three to seven days) loses 25 per cent of its nutritional value within the first four days. Being grown locally, Deepwater’s kale, mustard and arugula are also higher in nutrients.

“Essentially what we’re doing is raising fish more sustainably, completely using all of the fish waste,” Shumlich says. “Typically, fish waste is just discharged into the environment and that’s where you start to see eutrophication in water systems causing the death of a lot of animal life.” Eutrophication happens when water becomes nutrient-rich and the resulting dense plant growth uses up oxygen fish and other animals need.

Deepwater is one of the first in Canada to raise the Australian barramundi fish. “We chose the barramundi because they’re friendly, we liked the accent and they think they’re still in Australia, so they swim upside down,” Shumlich laughs. In fact, the fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids and are marketed as upscale sea bass, making it more attractive to restaurants. More practically, barramundi are a naturally schooling fish and are faster growing and less sensitive to water quality changes than trout or salmon.

“As first-time fish farmers, we needed something a little more forgiving.”

In fact, Shumlich and Deepwater co-founder Kevin Daniels have encountered a lot of “first times” as they continue to build their business, which germinated while Shumlich was attending Mount Royal. He built teams to analyze the idea in classes, creating initial traction for his venture.

“Getting into the mindset that nothing ever works the first time has been important for us,” Shumlich says. “We’re problem-solving and this farm is the first of its kind, so there’s no set path for us to follow.”

Shumlich credits Ray DePaul, director of Mount Royal’s Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, with instilling in him the enterprising spirit he needed to get going.

“Ray asked me at the inception of it all, ‘What is your greatest assumption?’ I said, ‘That people are going to buy this,’” Shumlich explains. “He challenged me to find one person that was going to buy our product. I decided grocery stores are too big and I didn’t have distribution to consumers door to door, so I had to go to restaurants because they were going to buy just the right amount at just the right price for our scale.”

Shumlich also realized that change had to be spearheaded by chefs and restaurants. As they are market influencers, “that’s where we’ll see the trickle-down effects in the greater economy and the choices people make.”

Since then, Deepwater Farms has signed up the likes of local Calgary restaurant Ten Foot Henry, which offers a vegetable-anchored menu. The alignment between the two businesses was clear from the start and Ten Foot Henry became one of Deepwater Farms’ first customers.

“Paul just did a cold call one day. He was looking for restaurants that were going to be important for his brand,” Ten Foot Henry’s chef and part owner Steve Smee says. “And ours kind of hit the mark.”

Deepwater Farms hopes to continue scaling up to a point where they can export the business to major cities across Canada and, eventually, the world.

“The interesting thing is, in Calgary, we’re solving year-round growth and extreme cold climate issues, whereas in somewhere like the Persian Gulf we’d be solving water shortage and extreme heat issues,” Shumlich says.

It appears that Deepwater Farms is more than just a business — it’s a business that has the potential to change the world.

“We’re seeing what it takes to actually feed thousands of people and what goes into that — the energy, the inputs, all the human labour — and then what the output is. It’s really putting into perspective what it takes to provide food at actual scale and feed into the food system.”