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Hydroponics can’t scale like industrial farming. Our farming practices need to improve to make industrial farming sustainable. My own foray into hydroponics ha

by wil421 7y ago

Hydroponics can’t scale like industrial farming. Our farming practices need to improve to make industrial farming sustainable. My own foray into hydroponics has been lack luster. Lettuce didn’t taste as good and it’s much more maintenance. I can setup water timers and fertilize every x weeks in my garden. You have to constantly check hydro and put chemicals in it very often. Too labor intensive.

nitrogen 7y ago
Eventually the timers and sensors will be able to apply the right inputs to hydroponics, too.
chimi 7y ago
it absolutely can scale and does scale. It is being done at scale right now. My experience was the opposite of yours. We found through experimentation that the flavor of the crop was directly related to the mineral concentration in the solution. We too had bland crop, but a little research suggested we starve our plants of water. In other words, if you want more flavor, increase the concentration of nutrients. It was easy to check the PPM and pH of the water with two devices you can get on Amazon for under $20. We also used timers. Our organic farming required a dump truck load of compost, while the hydroponics was about a 5 lb bag of minerals and used about 10% of the water as the soil based. It's much more efficient. In the back yard, it's not that big a deal, but at scale, farming is largely about material movement. The amount of labor to run an organic farm was incredible. It's also expensive and requires heavy equipment to scale a large farm. Hydroponics not as much, because there is no soil to move, which is heavy! Tilling, raking, tons of fertilizer and pesticides distributed across acres by machines and planes. Whereas hydroponics does that all just by pumping water, which is already being done in those same industrial farms. Hydroponics requires a lot less labor. Just more thinking. You have to research. You have to engineer things. But you lift less. You move less. Physically its easier. Yes, it's harder because you have to think smarter, but it's not more labor intensive, precisely the opposite.
- jfim 7y ago
  > it absolutely can scale and does scale. It is being done at scale right now. It certainly does. The videos of automated hydroponics farms are fascinating to look at. This is one such automated system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI17ZwWOEcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI17ZwWOEcI
jillesvangurp 7y ago
Recent trends in vertical farming are to heavily automate all of this and use sensors to maximize yields and minimize waste. Greenhouses in the Netherlands have been using hydroponics at scale for decades and are a reason it's a leading exporter of e.g. tomatoes and many other crops. The whole point of hydroponics is industrial scale and maximizing yields. What you call industrial farming started roughly mid last century when people were people figured out how to grow a handful of crops at scale using large machinery at the cost of diversity and quality. The modern variant of that heavily relies on overusing pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, etc. The downside of farming like this is the lack of diversity of crops and the negative side-effects on the environment. Industrial farming has destroyed vast amounts of land and turned them into eroded wastelands and deserts. Modern farming is becoming more high tech and using data driven approaches, automation, etc. enables smarter use of land, a wider variety of crops, better quality produce, and more efficient use of resources (water, chemicals, nutrients, light, energy, etc.). Hydroponics are one form of that but also organic farming has evolved way beyond hippies growing small amounts of produce like the industrial revolution never happened. Organic farming at industrial scale is becoming a thing.
- noobdood 7y ago
  Interesting. Examples?

by wil421 7y ago

nitrogen 7y ago

Eventually the timers and sensors will be able to apply the right inputs to hydroponics, too.

chimi 7y ago

it absolutely can scale and does scale. It is being done at scale right now. My experience was the opposite of yours. We found through experimentation that the flavor of the crop was directly related to the mineral concentration in the solution. We too had bland crop, but a little research suggested we starve our plants of water. In other words, if you want more flavor, increase the concentration of nutrients. It was easy to check the PPM and pH of the water with two devices you can get on Amazon for under $20. We also used timers. Our organic farming required a dump truck load of compost, while the hydroponics was about a 5 lb bag of minerals and used about 10% of the water as the soil based. It's much more efficient. In the back yard, it's not that big a deal, but at scale, farming is largely about material movement. The amount of labor to run an organic farm was incredible. It's also expensive and requires heavy equipment to scale a large farm. Hydroponics not as much, because there is no soil to move, which is heavy! Tilling, raking, tons of fertilizer and pesticides distributed across acres by machines and planes. Whereas hydroponics does that all just by pumping water, which is already being done in those same industrial farms. Hydroponics requires a lot less labor. Just more thinking. You have to research. You have to engineer things. But you lift less. You move less. Physically its easier. Yes, it's harder because you have to think smarter, but it's not more labor intensive, precisely the opposite.

jfim 7y ago
> it absolutely can scale and does scale. It is being done at scale right now. It certainly does. The videos of automated hydroponics farms are fascinating to look at. This is one such automated system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI17ZwWOEcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI17ZwWOEcI

jillesvangurp 7y ago

Recent trends in vertical farming are to heavily automate all of this and use sensors to maximize yields and minimize waste. Greenhouses in the Netherlands have been using hydroponics at scale for decades and are a reason it's a leading exporter of e.g. tomatoes and many other crops. The whole point of hydroponics is industrial scale and maximizing yields. What you call industrial farming started roughly mid last century when people were people figured out how to grow a handful of crops at scale using large machinery at the cost of diversity and quality. The modern variant of that heavily relies on overusing pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, etc. The downside of farming like this is the lack of diversity of crops and the negative side-effects on the environment. Industrial farming has destroyed vast amounts of land and turned them into eroded wastelands and deserts. Modern farming is becoming more high tech and using data driven approaches, automation, etc. enables smarter use of land, a wider variety of crops, better quality produce, and more efficient use of resources (water, chemicals, nutrients, light, energy, etc.). Hydroponics are one form of that but also organic farming has evolved way beyond hippies growing small amounts of produce like the industrial revolution never happened. Organic farming at industrial scale is becoming a thing.

noobdood 7y ago
Interesting. Examples?