Hmmm......I did introduce myself a couple of months ago but I don't see any sign of the post......not important.

JCO....I am headquartered and live in Phoenix but we work throughout central and southern California (San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys), all of Arizona and much of New Mexico. With so many years in the industry, I have friends and contacts throughout the US.....even had a Blueberry grower fly me to Maine last year to look at some work...little too far for me, though the summer climate was certainly appealing. At one time or the other we have worked with farms in most of the western states.......who ever has the money to pay their bills

Don.....thanks for the kind words. Regulations (even the necessary ones) will definitely be a burden to both large and small growers/packers.....more so to the smaller grower, not by design but rather the simple fact that implementation and compliance costs will essentially be the same whether you grow 20,000 acres or 20 acres. Fortunately, at least for the time being, the smaller grower can simply "stay under the radar".... 20 acres of AP may make that a difficult proposition.

I have been reading this forum for several months now with great interest....even working on the major components to start a fairly good sized system myself. I believe all eleven of the OPs original questions were good and there is a solution to each.....Personally, from my experience I'm afraid that two questions have not been asked (or I missed them) if someone is desirous of going commercial.

12) How will you meet 'quality control' levels established by numerous government agencies for possible exposure to, who knows what, pathogen or parasite (again 'possibly') present in a FT affluent? With terms like 'e coli', 'salmonella' and 'listeria' sending chills down the spine of every grower, packer and retail outlet in the US......describing a functioning AP system, may not/probably won't, be well received by many retail outlets. I have seen growers remove literally hundreds of decades old trees just to lower bird populations to reduce possible fecal matter contact on produce. "Barnyard" has become a thing of the past without first going through a thorough and complete composting process. Not so many years ago every dairy in California's San Jouquin valley grew almond trees.....it was a great way of disposing of barnyard and dead day-old calves.......that came to an end when Kirkland products had to recall several million metric tons of almonds due to a Salmonella outbreak. I don't know that AP produce 'won't' meet current standards but I do wonder if they currently 'will' and for how long.

13) How to handle disease. My wife can plant Hollyhocks in our yard and they are beautiful with zero pest, parasite or virus problems, but.......plant 40 acres of the suckers and every pest/parasite/virus known to man will attack them. I grew up on a state Fish Hatchery, maintain a 350 gallon fresh water tank with a 90 gallon sump/bio system in my home for 30 years now and watched my dad work with the state fisheries biologists and conclude that it is virtually impossible to raise high density fish populations without "something" going haywire. There are solutions to each of those issues, however, most solutions to fish issues will be detrimental to the vegetable crop and/or bio system and most solutions to crop issues would be detrimental to the fish and/or bio system. In a 'commercial' operation.....disease issues would need to be addressed prior to promising any retail outlet a continuous supply of Tilapia and leaf lettuce.

My apologies for the lengthy post.