Hydroponics: If You Weren’t Convinced Already

Sustainable farming is the future. Hydroponics is our ticket to bring agriculture to urban centers, all while being resource efficient and environmentally friendly.

What is Hydroponics?

Hydroponics involves the growing of plants directly in water. While this may seem simple, the benefits that both the plant and farmer reap are vast. The main benefit is that hydroponics can be done on an extremely small plot of land because the plants are able to be stacked upward, and are also able to be done completely indoors. Growing plants like this reduces the amount of water required to grow a single plant, as all the water the plant needs is consolidated into one spot, all while making the plant grow at a faster rate. Hydroponic farming practices have been shown to increase the growth rate of plants by around 40%.

What’s Wrong With Traditional Farming?

As Earth’s population continues to grow, scientists have grown increasingly worried whether or not traditional farming techniques will be able to keep up with not only food demands, but energy and land demands. As the population has grown in recent history, we have seen an increase in this demand of energy, and the environmental cost of farming as a result of increased energy demand will only continue to compound. This does not factor in the general health of the soil that traditional farms plant on. As we continue to annually plant new crops, the fertility of the soil in these fields wane year after year. To combat this, traditional farmers use many chemicals in the form of pesticides spread over a large area of land. This not only catalyzes the degradation of the soil, but puts animals living in the area at risk of death. While there are other sustainable farming practices made to make traditional farming less harmful to the environment, they pale in comparison to the benefits of hydroponic farming. The issues that those techniques partly prevent can be mostly prevented by switching over to hydroponics.

A Future of Sustainable Farming

Hydroponics becomes increasingly valuable as we inch closer to the future. By 2050, it is projected that 68% of people are expected to live in urban areas. Hydroponics is the key to meeting agricultural demands while reducing the poverty rates in urban and rural areas because of the small physical footprints of these hydroponic farms. Less land being used for traditional farms allows for more space for more people to live comfortably. There are some concerns with hydroponics however, mainly involving the cost of hydroponic farms. These farms are much more expensive to create and uphold than traditional farms, with costs mainly coming from the energy needed to keep the plants under a source of light. Of course while keeping a constant source of light is beneficial due to being able to grow any crop year round and also keep it growing 24 hours a day, energy costs are a real concern. However as we inch closer to this urbanized future, with our continual increase in population, the many benefits of hydroponic farming will eventually outweigh the negatives. We would benefit largely from not only investing in hydroponics in the future but also investing in clean and efficient energy sources to power these farms, such as nuclear or geothermal.

Recap

While hydroponics has not seen large investment in our present day, the environmental benefits of hydroponic farming grows increasingly valuable as the soil health on traditional farms continues to falter, and as more and more land is taken to feed our growing population. If urbanization lies in our future, we would only be hurting ourselves to not make hydroponics a part of that future too.

References:

NIH

Edengreen

Princeton