Hydroponics
The term Hydroponic comes from two Latin words. Hydro meaning water and Pono meaning work. It’s a fitting term for a method of production that makes water work at its maximum capability. Hydroponic farming uses only 10% of the water that conventional land farming does.
Mostly used for growing produce and some fruits, Hydroponic growing systems are enclosed and climate controlled. Because of this pesticides and weed killer aren’t needed. In this sense they have the same advantages that USDA Certified Organically grown produce does. The difference between the two are soil and land needed. Organic needs plenty of both and Hydroponics need up to as little as a tenth of land space and in one type of system, no soil at all.
There are basically two methods that fall under Hydroponic farming.
if you’re a gardener you’ve likely had experience with one of them when you bought those little starter plant pods filled with granulated soil and fertilizer mixtures at the local home and garden center.
They’re usually grown in enclosed “hoop” houses, laid out in densely packed rows on long tables where there attended to by the grower daily.
Another method is entirely revolutionary.
It all works by recycling water through tiny pods just big enough to hold materials that the plant can root itself in firm enough to grow to maturity but provides no nutrients . Instead, a nutrient “film” made of natural nutrients is introduced that swaths the plants roots continuously with the films composition adjusted as needed. The plants grow round the clock as they are continuously bathed in ultraviolet lighting that provides the plant the light energy it needs for it photosynthesis process to work. And work it does! Such hydroponic systems provide maximum quality and fully mature market ready product much much faster than land grown produce methods.
It’s neither organic or industrial in the chemical farming sense. The description is to say that it’s intense without the harm.
This second method holds out promise and insurance of a consistent food supply as we head into the uncertain
climate future. Large scale collapse of land based food production systems is no longer the stuff of biblical stories and science fiction, including in the US. Google “US drought, flood and fire” and you’ll see what I mean.
You may think the second Hydroponic method described sounds other worldly. You maybe right. But it may also be just what we need as our planet warms to temperatures humans have never experienced, truly making another world that we’ve never known.