The social benefits generated by a quaponics and especially those developed in social enterprises have been presented indirectly by several authors, but these manuscripts do not measure these benefits. This work aimed to measure the social return on investment in the CEFOPEA aquaponics farm located in São Paulo city , Brazil. CEFOPEA aquaponics farm runs a permanently coupled system, in a 225.37 m² of built area with 7.5 m³ of fish tanks and three hydroponics subsystems (Grow Bed-GB, Deep Water Culture-DWC, and Nutrient Film Technique-NFT). Data on disbursements and activities carried out were obtained from physical records (copybooks and invoices), digital documents (electronic spreadsheets and reports), and a semi-structured questionnaire applied to managers and employees of the farm. The social return was determined using cost-benefit analysis . The benefits generated by the aquaponics farm were classified into two items: 1- food production and 2- social services provided to the community. In food production, fish and vegetables were considered . The cash flow was prepared with a 10-year horizon. The outputs are the investment in initial fixed capital, the reinvestments in fixed capital over the horizon, and the annual operating costs. The inputs are the values of monetized social services, the value of food production, and the residual value of fixed capital. The moment zero was considered as the project implementation. The eight-month disbursement amounts (June 2019 to January 2020) were presented for one year. All the values were defined for February 2020 using the IGP-DI. The Net Present Value-NPV and the cost-relation were determined considering a discount rate of 3% per year. The NPV was regarded as the social return generated by the farm. USD 32,471.60 was the value for constructing the aquaponics farm and USD 6,315 year-1 for its operation. The food production was mainly fish (180.84 kg eighth.month-1) and lettuce (310 units eight months-1) used in the farm’s kitchen and sold. Social services (visits, seminars, workshops, and courses) were the primary source of social return, with 89.61% of all benefits generated by the enterprise. The enterprise was feasible when considering that the social benefits comprise food production and social services, with a social return of USD 24,517.49.
Acknowledgment
To FAPESP (2017/50431-9, 2019/21315-6, 2018/13235-0, 2018/ 23605-9 , 2019/21703-6, 2018/20463-9 ), to Forum Belmont (726744), to CNPq (311108 / 2017-2), to CEFOPEA-RECYCLAZARO and to Fundação Cargil.
Keywords: urban aquaponics, social enterprise, food production, social return.