Here’s why I don’t advocate for hydroponics

From towers in the front of restaurants windows, to companies converting empty warehouses scoring contracts at national grocery chains, hydroponics is a growing trend for fresh greens. On nearly a weekly basis someone asks me if I’m into it, I share two main reasons why I’m not interested.

I support anything that gets people closer to food, and contributes to local food production. A salad from a PVC pipe under grow lights in the cafe you’re eating at is objectively better on a number of levels than one from Mexico, but we can do much better.

First, a hydroponics operation cannot be independent. Everything you need to grow the food is an external input. The fertilizers, chemical, electricity, hardware, most likely even the water, they are all imported to the operation. Even a small farm can compost and utilize livestock to built their own fertility. A number of options are available to capture or harvest rainwater, including the best collector: healthy soil itself. And when it comes to producing nutritious food, you want healthy soil and its myriad of microorganisms helping you.

Secondly, we simply don’t need to do hydroponics. I could see where, in some dystopian future where we’ve simultaneously completely scorched the Earth and overpopulated, that we will need to squeeze food production into any nook and cranny we safely can. However, as it is right now, we have an abundance of land available for growing food. St. Louis has about 2500 acres of land they don’t know what to do with, and the side of every highway is prime for grazing.

Vote no on #nosoil.