Water Education Foundation
This is just one post in the Agriculture Category
Click here to view all posts

Urban hydroponics: growing food in small spaces

Posted by: Maven on December 22, 2008 at 5:48 am

From Ag Week:

Terry Fujimoto sees the future of agriculture in the exposed roots of the leafy greens he and his students grow in thin streams of water at a campus greenhouse.

The program run by the California State Polytechnic University agriculture professor is part of a growing effort to use hydroponics — a method of cultivating plants in water instead of soil — to bring farming into cities, where consumers are concentrated.

Because hydroponic farming requires less water and less land than traditional field farming, Fujimoto and researchers-turned-growers in other U.S. cities see it as ideal to bring agriculture to apartment buildings, rooftops and vacant lots. “The goal here is to look at growing food crops in small spaces,” he says.

Long a niche technology existing in the shadow of conventional growing methods, hydroponics is getting a second look from university researchers and public health advocates. Supporters point to the environmental cost of trucking produce from farms to cities, the loss of wilderness for farmland to feed a growing world population and the risk of bacteria along extensive, insecure food chains as reasons for establishing urban hydroponic farms.

However, the expense of setting up the high-tech farms on pricey city land and providing enough year-round heat and light could present some insurmountable obstacles. “These are university theories,” says Jim Prevor, editor of Produce Business magazine. “They’re not mapped to things that actually exist.”

Read the full text of this story from Ag Week by clicking here.

December 22, 2008 · Filed Under Agriculture

Comments

Leave a Reply