Farmed salmon lands sustainable markets

Derrick Penner
September 14, 2010
The Vancouver Sun

Agassiz-based fish farmer Bruce Swift has come a long way from his first foray five years ago trying to sell his tank-raised coho salmon to local restaurants.

Today, he and wife Mary Lou, along with sons Eric and Crutis, operate an integrated system that produces around 3,000 salmon per year, uses its waste for raising other crops, and is heralded as the epitome of sustainable farming by locavore gurus (those who prefer to eat locally produced foods).

"It's just basic farming, farming 101," Swift said in an interview. "For us, having an integrated system where you have fish and you're utilizing the nutrients [the waste manure] trying to make money that way, that's the key issue," he added.

Swift's Agassiz farm, Swift Aquaculture, can't call its product organic, but it farms on organic principles eschewing the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and it never uses antibiotics on the fish.

Swift said being able to sell the fish as a niche products allows him to command a bit of a premium price for the coho salmon.

Read the full story in The Vancouver Sun

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