In a warehouse on the east side of Colorado Springs, Gavin Vitt and his wife, Marshea, have started a business focused on what they see as the future of farming: aquaponics.

So I was intrigued when the first thing I saw when I entered the lobby of Daily Harvest Aquaponics was a tribute to farming's past.

Gavin's great-grandfather immigrated from Czechoslovakia and started a farm in Nebraska that is still in family hands; Marshea's mother grew up on a farm in Georgia, and her family still has that farm. Family photos reflecting those roots are part of Daily Harvest's decor.

"Growing has always kind of been in our blood," Gavin Vitt says.

Now they're trying a different way of growing. A wall inside Daily Harvest bears a definition of aquaponics: "an integrated, soilless system for raising fish and plants in a controlled environment."

There are three key components, Gavin Vitt says. First is the fish, whose waste is largely ammonia. Second is bacteria, which transforms the ammonia into nitrates that provides nutrients for the third component, the plants, which absorb the nutrients and clean the water, which goes back to the fish.

Surprisingly - to me, anyway - this water-based form of growing actually uses 90 percent or so less water than traditional farming. Vitt sees that as aquaponics' big advantage.

Water "is just the new gold," he says, pointing to, for example, the lengthy drought in California.