Someone's already had the idea. Dori sent me this link back in '05, and I still remember it. It's pretty entertaining and worth the click to hava look. It's one of the funniest threads I've ever seen on GW.

Al

Here is a link that might be useful: Make your own .....

Great idea, but fertilizer is a high volume low margin business, so it's hard to make it economical. It would be interesting to try it on a small local scale, selling fish meal or liquid fertilizer at the farmer's market, etc.

They're actually not bad to eat. I had flying carp ceviche once, quite good.

These fish are highly prized in China, one of the reasons they grow so fast is that these were selected/bred over thousands of years for fast growth.

Given all the seafood that China grows and sends us, you wonder what the market would be if someone harvested, processed, and exported these back to China. There's sure enough of the things.

Tapla: Thanks for the link to the fish emulsion thread. Hilarious, only because I didn't have to smell it!

I know some Thai folks here who will eat flying carp if they can catch em. Carp is hit and miss with Americans though. But I've had it (American carp that is) cooked up like catfish (breaded and fried) and it was quite good.

I had a native MO friend who said his family always hated it. So much so that his dad's carp recipe was as follows: Take a bucket, layer some carp in the bottom, cover with manure. Repeat layering until bucket is full. Age 3 days. Discard carp and eat manure.

That's how much he hated carp. :-p

Living along the Mississippi and as a fisherman, we have watched our area closely. South and North of us they already have canneries that are taking the carp and useing them for something ( I am not saying what Fast food restaurant is rumored to be buying the processed meat). There is also Federal funding being pushed through to find ways to export the carp as they are prized in Asia. There is also a Fish market North of us that when they get the Asian carp and smoke and sell them they cant keep them in stock, because they say the meat is 100 times better than normal carp. That being said the idea of using them for commercial purposes has some concerned if they overfish them then some may start encouraging the reproducing of the evasive species.
I have used fish in my garden and even buried deep the critters still find them, but use every year Fish emulsion.

I don't think you can overfish invasive Asian carp. A friend at the USGS lab here (central MO) told me about a study in the Missouri a couple years ago where they netted fingerlings in the spring. 90% of the hatchlings were Asian carp. They don't need any encouragement to reproduce! Overfish them to extinction, I say.

I laughed so hard at the fishy thread I started wheezing.

Why fish emulsion?

What about beef emulsion? Pork emulsion? Chicken?

I grew up in the Region and my family is all there. The carp problem is huge. Not sure why but no one wants to eat them. Making emulsion from them or fish sanwiches sounds like a win for everyone. Kind of like Milogranite and Milwaukee's waste problem.