Nothing Not To Like About Aeroponics:
It’s been quite a while since we’ve had any discussion of aeroponics, the cutting-edge agricultural system for growing plants (and raising fish) in an extremely compact manner, with a fraction of the environmental impact of conventional farming. It’s funny, it was just a few hours ago that I wrote a piece to the effect that there is no such thing as a free lunch in anything we do to preserve the quality of our environment, i.e., that all our actions have themselves some adverse effects. I suppose that’s true of aeroponics, but this really is pretty darn close to a midday meal on the house.
Very low land and water use, no insecticides or herbicides, local farming, minutes from garden to table. It’s hard to beat this, described nicely in the video linked above, that’s making its way admirably around Facebook.
Craig,
If I told you I’d invented a perpetual motion machine, you would shake your head in disbelief, and quite rightly so.
However, if get a water tank, and make it look pretty, describe it in touchy-feely “kumbaya” type gobbledygook, you are quite ready to suspend belief and happily believe in a utopian concept.
There’s just two obvious problems with such a project.
1) It doesn’t work ! Plant’s and fish need more nutrients than can be obtained from water,air and sun. Even the simplest of plants need lot of minerals, etc to survive. When you create an artificial Eco-system, the system must have an outside (or added) supply of nutrients to replace soil.
(natural aquatic plants rely on silt rich water run offs, or mud reached by roots).
Plants and fish are highly water and ambient temperature, Water must contain the right oxygen levels in addition to amyriad of other factors. This requires pumping water, heating water, cooling water, etc.
The mono-type systems are also incredibly vulnerable to disease, pests, weather etc. Very few plants,and fish, adapt easily to such conditions. Most are inedible or basically water. (try growing hydroponic tomatoes and see how much added nutrient is required.
2) Unfortunately, aquatic systems of this nature don’t produce enough highly nutritious food for humans to digest. Although living on a diet of fish, may be good for avoiding heart disease, growing Human beings require more things like high levels of food stuffs only available from a widely varied diet.
Digestible proteins, V B12, calcium, iron etc, are all needed. growing young male adults especially, need the proteins only eating meat can supply. (Evolution has made us omnivorous, that’s why we have such complex teeth, liver and digestive systems).
Like hydroponic agriculture, aquaculture is a toy for affluent hobbyists, and a fad for ideologically committed adults with more money than sense !
A great business for Californians !:)