Le Figaro Bordeaux
It is a virtuous circle that wants to establish itself in the agriculture of tomorrow. In the Bordeaux metropolis, Nouvelles Fermes produce salads, vegetables and herbs as well as rainbow trout in greenhouses. Fish droppings are used to fertilize plants installed on rafts, the roots of which are submerged. In doing so, the water is filtered and can therefore return to the fish tank. An atypical but profitable model, which the company wishes to generalize on a larger scale, in Île-de-France.
For the moment, the two farms of the Bordeaux company are quite small. Only 1000 m² for the first experimental greenhouse, installed in Lormont, and half a hectare (5000 m²) for that of Mérignac, inaugurated in June 2023. Thanks to aquaponics, however, they manage to use ten times less water and five less energy than open-ground agriculture (because the greenhouses are not heated).
“We have started to be profitable since March
,” says Thomas Boisserie, co-founder of Nouvelles Fermes.
1% of the city's salad needs
This agricultural model is intensive but does not use synthetic chemistry, with the plants practicing a form of phytoremediation by purifying water. Allowing agriculture to be brought back to cities, aquaponics developed by Nouvelles Fermes aims to participate in the reconquest of the country's food sovereignty, while remunerating producers with dignity. With half a hectare, the Mérignac farm produces 1% of the needs of the inhabitants of the metropolis in salads and 4% in trout.
Buoyed by this success, the company is launching a fundraising campaign and hopes to obtain 1.5 million euros by June 2024 and 15 million euros by the start of 2025.
“L “The idea is to build six hectares of farms in Île-de-France, on one or two sites, in the Greater Paris area
,” explains Thomas Boisserie. The development of this model in France could make Nouvelles Fermes
“the first aquaponic farm in Europe to be profitable through its production”
, rejoices the co-founder of the company. The fundraising will open on April 25 on the Tudigo platform, based in Bordeaux. Investors will be able to become shareholders from 1000 euros.
Despite the success of this model, aquaponics does not have the ambition to replace open-ground agriculture, but wants to participate in the agricultural mix of tomorrow.
“The idea is not that aquaponics is the alpha and omega of agriculture”
, explains Thomas Boisserie, but
“one of the factors of a necessary agricultural revolution”
, in particular using land on which cultivation in open ground is not possible, by producing food which more or less meets the criteria of organic farming - but which cannot have the label because the roots are not buried - and which are sold to customers and to partner stores within a radius of just 15 kilometers.