A station platform that grows for the restaurants next door.
Aqua Garden Lab · Enoshima Electric Railway · Enoshima Station, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan · operating since April 2023
A railway with an empty corner of a platform.
Enoshima Electric Railway runs the coastal line between Fujisawa and Kamakura, along with buses and property in the area. When ridership fell during the pandemic, the company went looking for new uses for idle space in its stations.
In December 2022 the railway and Aquponi agreed to test one idea: grow food at the station and serve it in the shops outside it. The system also had to earn its place as something passengers would stop to look at.
Aqua Garden Lab: ten square metres on the platform.
A small glass greenhouse on the Fujisawa-bound platform, about ten square metres. Two fish tanks, a media bed, and a vertical tower, in view of every passenger waiting for a train.
Aquponi designed the system to the space, supplied the equipment and the fish, and trained the railway's staff over the winter. It went into operation in April 2023.
Station staff, not farmers.
Staff from the railway's planning department do the daily work: feeding, water tests, and harvest. Aquponi stays on as production adviser, on call for water quality, pests, feeding, and filter maintenance.
The greens and herbs go to an Italian restaurant and a gelato shop near the station, delivered by shared e-bike. Passengers watch the farm through the glass, and it has been on national television and in the business press.
TV Asahi news, 3 April 2023
“The pandemic hit our company and the region hard, but we see new possibilities in aquaponics, which can contribute to the SDGs. Working with Aquponi, which already runs farms in Fujisawa, we aim to build this into a business and to raise the value of the Shonan, Fujisawa, and Kamakura area our line serves.”
Susumu Narai, President, Enoshima Electric Railway. Public statement, March 2023.
The operating case behind the restaurant and hotel offer.
A company with no farming background grows food in ten square metres it already owned, sells it to the restaurants next door, and runs it with the people already on the payroll. Enoshima Electric Railway was the first railway operator in Japan to run an aquaponics farm. That is what a restaurant or hotel system is asked to do.