Aeroponics, Fabulous Solution for Sustainable Gardening, Could Be Even Better

I ran into a fellow the other day who distributes the “Tower Garden,” a device that uses the principle of aeroponics to enable consumers, restaurateurs, and even grocery stores to grow vegetables quickly, effortlessly, and with far less carbon footprint than traditional methods.  The food that most of us Americans find in our grocery stores was grown with chemical fertilizer and pesticides (that are getting more intense each year as our soils are further depleted and our farming techniques get more aggressive), then trucked an average of 1200 miles to reach us.  Aeroponics replaces all that, making it very easy for anyone to grow vast amounts of organic produce in any sunny spot around his house, or, as shown here, indoors.

I love the concept overall, but I’d like to see it promoted and deployed differently.  Here is what I wrote to my new-found friend:

The concept of aeroponics is extraordinarily sound.  I’ve spent a lot of resources forwarding the idea to my readers, and for all the reasons that are articulated in your video. 

You’re targeting the affluent LOHAS market, and there is nothing wrong with that; it’s a great place to find people with both the willingness and the ability to buy your product.  Having said that, aeroponics can bring organic, locally-grown food to some of the places on Earth that need it far more than people like I do, insofar as I live just a couple miles away from a farmers’ market that I visit every Wednesday afternoon religiously.  Think about the inner-city food deserts and the places in the third world where crop irrigation isn’t even remotely feasible. 

Here’s my other concern for you folks:  your product is more expensive than it needs to be, due in part to your multi-level marketing structure.  Yes, you’ve patented certain aspects of your design, but I really don’t think this will protect you adequately once the world figures out what an important concept this is overall and starts trying to drive the cost down with new approaches that use the same underlying concept. When I think about it, your concept is rooted (pardon the pun) in gravity.  You pump water and nutrients a few feet up, and let them cascade down across the plant’s root system.  I doubt that is patentable. 

In any case, I urge you to start thinking large-scale now.  It’s fine to cherry-pick individual customers, but I would simultaneously start to contemplate how you’re going to make all this happen on a planetary scale.  If you want more specific suggestions, please let me know.